Rain lashes against the window pane, driven by a wind pregnant with fetal Winter. Each droplet forms a rivulet of water scouring a pointless passage through the dusty grime. I watch their aimless movements with fascination. Individual streams intertwine, some merging to form a powerful river, others shrugging off anything more than just the briefest of encounters. Eventually, they are all absorbed into one vast flood-plain spreading out along the length of the pane. So much like life ..

A song drifts into my mind, its soft and gentle melody blunting the razor-wire bitterness of the lyrics. Lacking a voice I move over to my faithful Fender and switch on the Marshall amp. It takes a few moments to familiarise myself with the chords but after that, a fragment of my past rises above the folorn moans of the November storm.

Despite the fact I've been playing the guitar since I was ten, I've only ever written two complete songs. This is one of 'em, penned at the age of fifteen. I can remember Dan, the band's bass player (who always supplied the lyrics to my music), listening in awe as I sung the tortured words in my rawest, most aggressive voice. When I finished, he congratulated me on finally having experienced enough pain and misery to kick-start my poetic side. That was his pony theory - that suffering was the sharpest tool of the true artist. Fucking tosser! If that were true I'd be the bloody Poet Laureate by now.

Christ, it seems so bloody melodramatic in retrospect, especially compared to the shit I've had to endure since then. But, at the time, it was as if my life had come to an end. I was fifteen and I was in love and she'd broken my heart! Shit, everything I'd done from the age of thirteen had been for her - my music, my dress code, even the brand of fucking lager I drunk! At night, I'd close my eyes and dream about her; her strong, supple legs wrapping around my waist, the scent of her perspiration-soaked body swelling in my nostrils, her full lips wrenching back over gritted teeth ...

And the name of this Goddess? Lila Cheney, rock bitch supreme. She had a place quite near to my parents' house and the number of hours I wasted staking it out is well frightening. Yet, I was so hungry for her even the most fleeting of glimpses would have sustained me for days. It was during one of these voyeuristic vigils that the first cancerous threads of world-weary bitterness wove themselves into my heart.

There I was, crouched down by the window of the derelict building that oh-so conveniently over-looked her garden, idling away the time with a skunk spliff and a bottle of Wild Turkey. Boredom had started to colour monochrome reality with garish fantasy and I was picturing myself beneath the blossomed boughs with Lila by my side. She was shrieking with laughter as I lapped champagne from her navel. Dappled patterns of sunlight were dancing across her naked body, became a hypnotic, pulsating strobe filling my mind. Brighter, blinding - a molten incandescence bleaching my optic nerves and boiling my brain. As I started to scream, I realised this was no drug-induced daydream. It was real.

At first, I thought I was having a seizure but suddenly, the light seemed to rupture . Shadow bled out of the fissures, formed outlines of non-substance hovering within the static glow like pupae. I self-administered a hefty dose of Bourbon, unsure what the fuck was going on. Should I be running for the hills? Or hiding? Or crying like a little girl? By the time the whisky had blazed a blistering passage down my throat, the light had started to clear and I was looking at about half a dozen young people who had literally appeared out of thin air.

Blinking away the blindness, I moved closer to the window and had a butchers at the newcomers, who seemed as dazed as me. Two of the group - a gorgeous but strangely sinister blonde bird and a willowy, raven-haired Amazon - were squaring up to a figure lurking behind a gangling, gawky git dressed in the most unconvincing metaller gear this side of a Gwar gig. I pissed myself laughing, it was that shocking.

After a moment, the stunning sort with the pigtails stormed off towards Lila's house. The rest of the punters sort of trailed behind her, shock still written on their faces. As the twat wanna-be went to follow his mates, the anonymous figure reached out and took his arm.

My heart became so distended in my chest I could barely breathe. It was Lila - my Lila - hardly dressed in a skimpy black rubber leotard! Her carefree laughter liberated the stilted Englishness of her garden as she padded closer to the trembling sacrificial lamb in the pony leathers. Holding him, reeling him in, her lips enfolding his mouth as her fingers coiled around his crew-cut hair.

Nausea gave way to hysteria gave way to a shell-shocked emptiness that dropped me to the floor in a sobbing heap. Another mouthful of liquor to steady my nerves, another quick glimpse below to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. As if. They were locked in a passionate kiss, strafed by rays of gold arching through the branches. A gentle precipitation of blossom fell about their entwined bodies - so fucking prosaic, so beautiful, I wanted to chuck my guts up. That should've been me, not him, not that useless streak of piss who couldn't even dress the sodding part!

If I had to define the moment when I realised life was a vicious, sadistic joke, it would be watching two years' worth of fantasies melt into that wanker's arms. Until then, I'd never known anything but the charmed, gifted existence my parents and my rampant ego had created for me. Sprawled out over the rubble-strewn floor, my heart charred by the brutal conflagration of misery, I received my initiation into the grim cabal of adulthood.

For the next year, I dwelt in the obsidian shadow of depression, a sad and lonely wreck of a boy. Then, I met Gayle and I realised what it actually meant to love somebody.

Tears mimic the rain running down my window. Alone in the dark, I allow my fingers to slide down the neck of my guitar and try to remember how a woman's body feels. I'm thinking of Gayle, I'm concentrating on Lila but the only face I'm seeing is hers.

Outside, a violent blast of wind throws a sheet of rain against the glass. Individual droplets spatter the pane, hurled together by forces outside their control. I shut my eyes and listen to the desolate rage of the night. On my first night here in America, there had been a storm every bit as furious as this one. If I was superstitious, I might have seen it as an omen ...

Thousands of miles from friends and family, still hung-over from Emplate's welcoming party, I sat in Cassidy's office and tried to fill out the forms in front of me. All the way from the airport, I'd craved for something - anything - to remind me of what I used to be before I was forced to come here, a freak amongst freaks. Unbelievably enough, I found it pinned to the wall of that cluttered room.

Tired eyes wandered across the photographs and certificates that displayed all that was Sean Cassidy. Sepia fragments of a life fading behind their dusty frames - graveyard epitaphs to the man he'd once been before age drained his youth. A shot of him as a pig, one with his arms around a frumpy, bookish brunette and one of him in an outrageously camp costume posing with a bunch of weirdoes who could only be the X-Men. And a large photograph of a troop of teenagers, one of whom peered out at me with a familiar gormless look. Lila's lover - my rival - his laughable homely, rustic looks now something to envy. Cassidy identified him as Sam Guthrie, ex-New Mutant and latest X-Man, a friend of his daughter's and brother to my new team-mate, Paige.

Fingers form a chord and I strike the strings, a shiver rippling down my spine as the jarring, in-yer-face note dismembers the stagnant silence of my room. Not for the first time, I wonder if her 'affection' for me wasn't just another facet of her desire to be her brother. I'm from London, I play guitar, my wardrobe is wall-to-wall black leather ... . A second discordant growl throbs its way through the amplifier, any semblance of melody mangled by the gain. Not for the first time, I wonder if the two of them aren't laughing at me, laughing at how completely they've destroyed my life. The third note is grating and savage, a prelude to the sneering, venomous hostility yet to come. I pause to consider the fucked-up workings of Fate before I vent my frustrations on the instrument, bending and shredding and chugging until the air haemorrhages beneath the onslaught.

Outside, the wind shrieks a promise of bleak January to the starless night. I'm watching the rain through tear-misted eyes and I try to carry on playing - try to ignore the parody of life dribbling down the glass. Somewhere in this building she's sharing her smile with another boy whilst I sit here in the dark and hate her for it.

I said I've only ever written two complete songs and this is one of 'em, penned in the hollow warmth of my single bed the day she stopped loving me.