And as for swimming, I didn’t even have the security of a flimsy cotton white T-shirt to cover my bosom. I had to do it naked, except for a pair of dark green woollen swimming trunks, which ironically when they came in contact with water would weigh like lead and make you drop like a stone to the swimming-pool floor.
When you tell people that you had a swimming pool at your school, they raise an eyebrow and naturally assume you went to an idyllic Etonian establishment where it was pony riding, croquet and water polo before tea and scones on the lawn. Don’t be fooled by the swimming pool; it was basically a concrete bunker attached to the school that was filled with so many chemicals your eyes would weep as you entered the building. The chemicals were so strong I swear that if you did more than two lengths you’d end up changing sex. All the boys including myself would stand there in their trunks, and even though it was a mixed group none of the girls would be in their bathing suits at all because – quelle surprise – they were due on. Every week, they would turn up and hand over a note which their ‘mums’ had written. ‘Sharon, Kelly, Rachel, Caroline, Jenny cannot do swimming as it’s their time of the month.’ What? Every week?
The older boys would smirk, but I was none the wiser. I knew it had something to do with periods, but the woman on the telly went rollerskating, dog-walking and potholing, and she had a ‘period’. All I knew was, I was standing there half naked trying to learn the butterfly and being giggled at by a group of allegedly menstruating young ladies.
People naturally assume I was the class clown – I was and I wasn’t. The typical class clown is the lad that tells the jokes and the tough lads laugh and he doesn’t get punched. That wasn’t me, unless my jokes were really bad, because they used to punch me anyway. I was the one always playing the goat, mucking around. In Science when discussing the planets I was always the one asking the teacher, ‘How big’s Uranus?’ Not particularly witty, I agree, but at twelve it would have the room in stitches, and the other children would look to me as if I were Dorothy Parker.
Even though I used comedy to make friends, I never really felt that I fitted in. I felt like an outsider, looking in, making jokes and comments that turned things on their head, which, writing this, strangely enough sounds like the job description of a stand-up comic. I never seemed to find anyone at school that I felt I had anything in common with, not just hobby-wise (Hey, lads, do you want to come behind the bike sheds and read an Agatha Christie?) but in everything. To me, they could have been another species, let alone another class. Plus, my best friend at the time, Jason, had come into school and took me to one side. ‘My dad says I can’t hang around with you any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re turning me gay!’
‘I’m not gay,’ I protested convincingly, I thought.
But Jason was adamant, our friendship was over. Apparently after hanging about with me all day at school, he had been coming home talking in an affected, camp manner, decorating sentences with over-pronounced ‘ooh’s’ and raising his eyebrow at anything remotely worthy of innuendo. His dad definitely had nothing to worry about. Jason was very laddy, and I’m sure he must be married now with lots of kids. It goes without saying that you can’t ‘catch’ homosexuality, but I’m afraid to say from personal experience ‘camp’ can spread quicker than bird flu if not kept at bay. I’ve reduced builders to simpering Danny La Rues in my time. It’s all in the wrist, I guess.
Losing Jason as a friend was a real blow. We’d had a lot of fun times. Every weekend we would go into Northampton Town Centre and wander aimlessly around the Grosvenor Centre or Abington Park, generally mucking about, popping on the wigs in Debenhams or shouting out ‘shoplifter’ and pointing at an old person in BHS. I’m not proud of what we did, but it killed time.
We would usually end up at the ABC Cinema, this gigantic art-deco building that dominates the top of Abington Street. It’s not a cinema any more – it’s now the headquarters for the Jesus Army and, quite frankly, it’s seen better days – but back then in the late Eighties it was the centrepiece of our Saturday afternoons. I saw everything there, ET, Batman, Turner and Hooch. It was during Tango and Cash that one audience member climbed up the curtains and swung daringly in front of Sylvester Stallone’s face and had to be told to get down by the cinema manager.
With Jason doing his own thing, I started to dread the bell ringing for breaktimes and lunchtimes because it would normally mean walking around on my own. In class, you feel a bit like you belong, but time out of those lessons tended to make me feel a bit empty, with the breaks seeming to drag more than the actual lessons.
In my moping, I must be thankful for one blessing: I never went down the ‘goth’ route. Yes, I had been known to write poems expressing my angst, but I had never popped on some mascara and a black leather trench coat and hung around the library looking wistful. I might have been feeling sorry for myself, but I wasn’t tacky.
* * *
It was only when I was on the cusp of adolescence that things started to happen. An identity started to manifest before my eyes, an identity that I wasn’t particularly happy with.
Almost overnight words like blowjob, wank and cum were on everyone’s lips, if you see what I mean. In the corridors you could almost smell the sex, which made a change from the toilets. All of sudden, no one was interested what Liam Gill did in Home Ec, we wanted to know what Tracey did with Darren after school in her back bedroom. Carnal lust swept through breaktime like a tropical breeze. I remember the controversy when one girl, Sharon Bell, had got a boyfriend who didn’t go to school. He had a proper job at Homebase and would turn up in his tight white T-shirt revving his motorbike – how cool was that?
To the girls and me, he was the epitome of cool, but technically he was a paedophile. Soon every girl wanted a man with a proper job – sixteen-year-old boys weren’t good enough any more. They wanted real men, and in that sense, not only were the lads in my class defunct, so was I. Suddenly girly talk and a boy who liked me for me was as cool as New Kids on the Block. As for the boys, they’d be talking about what they did with whom, where, when and how many times.
They’d all laugh with bravado, and I’d laugh along, but on the inside thinking ‘Ugh!’
Then it dawned on me, my role had changed. I wasn’t the class clown any more; no, I was head eunuch in the middle of a debauched orgy. Stop, stop, I want to get off. This wasn’t meant to happen; even Paul Simmons was telling people he’d kissed a girl. I mean, he had a long way to catch up with Steve Templeton. He had been wanked off on the back of the bus on a school trip to the Northampton Boot and Shoe Museum, and Donna Dalton had said it was the biggest one she’d ever seen – she was only fifteen so hopefully she hadn’t seen too many.
Panic gripped my body. I needed to act now, and my body went into what can only be described as a hormonal trolley dash. I needed to fuck a woman now, now, now, or at least to look like I was getting some kind of action, but sadly like the proverbial trolley dash my trolley wheels were buckled and I kept steering it towards the willy aisle. It just wasn’t fair. It riles me when people say being gay is a choice. It really isn’t. Why would anyone choose that? Your pants on the Science block roof – where can I sign up for that? You cannot describe to anyone the sheer terror and isolation you feel when adolescence finally dawns on you, and the path of girlfriend,