‘That’s disgusting.’
‘In where?’ I asked.
‘They’ve got a hole,’ Huntly-Jones told us.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, ‘that’s where they wee-wee.’
‘No, they’ve got another one,’ Huntly-Jones said.
‘That’s where they poo-poo,’ Jenkins sniggered, and we all giggled again.
‘I’m not pushing my thingy in a girl’s bottom.’
This remark was prophetically ironic because some years later Jenkins was arrested in London for trying to push his thingy inside a young man’s bottom.
‘No, it’s a special hole for babies,’ Huntly-Jones informed us.
We all stood in silence for a bit. Jenkins undid his fly-buttons and began playing with himself and one by one so did the rest of us.
‘Yours isn’t very big,’ I said, looking at Jenkins, ‘and it’s all funny at the end.’
Jenkins was the only boy who hadn’t been circumcised. He rolled back his foreskin and waved his tiny penis at everyone. It looked horrible.
‘That’s because you’ve all had the ends cut off yours,’ he said.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Smith Two.
‘What would they do that for?’
‘Dunno,’ said Jenkins, ‘but it’s true.’
‘This stuff with making babies,’ Harcourt asked. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, my brother showed me a book,’ Porter said, ‘with drawings. The woman lies down and the man lies on top of her and puts his thing inside her and she has a baby.’
‘That’s stupid,’ said Jenkins. ‘My mummy and daddy wouldn’t do that, it’s dirty.’
‘It’s true,’ said Huntly-Jones.
‘My mummy and daddy wouldn’t,’ Jenkins insisted.
‘They did,’ Huntly-Jones laughed. ‘That’s how they got you.’
‘It’s called sexualintercourse,’ said Porter.
‘Your parents did sexualintercourse,’ said Huntly-Jones.
‘I’ll bash you if you say that again,’ Jenkins said and started crying.
The rest of us stood in a circle pulling at ourselves. Jenkins said he was going to tell matron what we’d said, but we said if he did we’d put him out on the top window ledge and cut the end off his penis too.
‘And I’ll tell her you touched mine in the showers,’ I said.
‘And mine,’ said Porter.
‘And mine,’ said Huntly-Jones.
‘He’s touched everybody’s,’ Harcourt said, which was true.
Jenkins had even touched the headmaster’s but then so had quite a few boys, but it was all right because he’d touched ours. Mr Harris, the headmaster, who actually owned Forest Hall, liked touching our willies.
He didn’t touch everyone’s, just the nice-looking boys.
‘My Pretty Angels,’ he called us.
I thought it might be naughty, but I wasn’t sure why and beside no one said anything, not even the teachers, and they must have known about it, so I guessed it was all right. In the evening about six of us went
to his bedroom for ‘extra lessons’ and we all took our clothes off and stood in a circle while Mr Harris stroked us. He took his clothes off too and played with himself. Sometimes he knelt down and sucked our willies. I liked that, because it got hard and felt really nice.
One day I was in his room and while he was sucking me, he put his finger up my bottom.
‘Can I put my willie there?’ he asked, but I shook my head.
He asked me if I would like to suck him. I didn’t want to. He had a really tiny willie. It was smaller than mine, but I was a bit frightened to touch it. He put his arms round me and pressed his willie up against mine and held them both in his hand at the same time. Then he started groaning and then this funny white stuff came out of his willie all over my tummy.
He said if I would suck him, he’d make me a prefect. So I did. It tasted salty and after a bit, he pulled it out of my mouth and more white stuff came out. When I told the others in the dorm, Huntly-Jones said that was the stuff you put inside a lady to make babies.
‘It’s called sperms,’ he told us.
Mr Harris said he’d take me to Switzerland in the holidays with some other boys, like he did every year, but my mother wouldn’t let me go.
That’s how I learnt the facts of life, standing in a circle with the sons of the wealthy, wanking in an old oak forest in the Yorkshire hills. I found it very difficult to imagine grown-ups taking off their clothes and doing it, especially my mother and grandparents, but I knew it was true and it sounded quite exciting and I wanted to do it.
FEBRUARY 6th 1952
I was ill in bed, under the sheets making tunnels with books. Tigger was under the covers down at my feet staring up at me as I pushed toy cars down the tunnels.
‘The King’s bed,’ a muffled voice over by the door said and I came up to find my mother sitting on the eiderdown.
‘What?’
‘The King’s dead,’ my mother repeated.
‘Oh, I thought you said the King’s bed,’ I said and went back to my tunnels.
‘Is that Tigger down there?’ my mother said.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, get him out. I’ve told you about having the cat in the bed.’
‘But he likes it,’ I said, and so did I.
She didn’t like the cat being in the room. She didn’t like the affection he showed me or the affection I showed him, affection she couldn’t evoke or match. I used to hide Tigger in the bed in the evening and if I got away with it, my mother would have to get up in the middle of the night and let him out into the garden. No one seemed to notice that when Tigger was there I never had nightmares or wet the bed.
1954 – SEX EDUCATION – PART 2
You have to be older than twelve to fuck.
When I was twelve I went to stay with my cousins in the summer holidays and one afternoon, left alone in the house with my eleven-year-old cousin Jenny, we tried to do sexualintercoursing. We took all our clothes off and Jenny lay on the edge of the bed with her legs open and I got stiff. She’d never seen it like that before and was fascinated. I told her about sexualintercoursing and that was why I’d gone hard, so I could put it inside her.
‘Do you want to do it?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
So I stood in front of her at the end of the bed and pushed.
‘Ow,’ she said.
‘You’re supposed to have a hole where babies come out,’ I said. ‘Where is it?’
‘I