On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God

by Louise Rennison

  I was shocked. I said, “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  And she said, “It’s just to relax.”

  Rosie put a cigarette in her mouth and got out her lighter. We were all looking. Unfortunately she must have set the flame too high because when she flicked it a flame shot up about twelve centimeters and set fire to her fringe. We beat it out but the hair was all singed and short. She went home with her hand over her fringe. After she had gone the rest of us swung backward and forward for a few minutes.

  I said, “Rosie smokes quite a lot, doesn’t she?”

  And then we all got the helpless laughing. You know, that laughing that makes your tummy hurt and makes you cry and gulp and choke? And you’ve laughed for long enough and you want to stop but you can’t. Then you do stop and you think it’s all right but then someone starts again. I just couldn’t stop. And that’s when I saw HIM. The Sex God. With his mates from The Stiff Dylans. He looked like he was coming across to say hello. And you know when you really, really should stop laughing because otherwise it will be really bad and everyone will hate you? But you can’t? Well I had that.

  10:00 p.m.

  Rang Robbie. His mum said he was at rehearsal. Still he likes a laugh himself, so it will be all right.

  midnight

  On the other hand I wasn’t by any means doing my attractive half smiling when he saw me. I had a look at myself in the mirror doing proper, unadulterated laughing, the kind of laughing where you just let your nose and mouth go free and wild.

  12:15 a.m.

  That is it, my life is over; I must go to the ugly home immediately.

  friday august 4th

  11:00 a.m.

  A letter arrived for me. From Robbie. My hands were shaking when I opened it.

  11:30 a.m.

  Back in bed. I cannot believe my life. It is beyond pooiness. It has gone well beyond the valley of the poo and entered the galaxy of merde.

  11:45 a.m.

  I reread the letter from Robbie again. It still says the same thing, though.

  Dear Georgia,

  I have been thinking and thinking about this. And although I think you are great, and I really do like you, well, I saw you with your mates yesterday having a laugh and you seemed so young. The facts are that I am seventeen, nearly eighteen, and if anyone knew I was even thinking about going out with a fourteen-year-old I would never hear the end of it. Where would we go for our dates? Youth club or something? You see what I mean, don’t you?

  I think it is best we stay away from each other for a year or so. You need to see someone more your own age. My brother has a really nice mate called Dave. He’s a good laugh. You’d like him.

  I’m really sorry.

  Love Robbie xxxxxxxxx

  midday

  On the phone to Jas. I was shaking with rage.

  Jas said, “Well, erm . . . if he’s a good laugh, maybe you should meet him.”

  “Jas, are you really saying that I should just stop liking one person and start liking another one, just like that? What if I said, ‘Hey, Jas, forget about Tom, why not go out with Spotty Norman? He’s got a really great-shaped head underneath the acne’?”

  saturday august 5th

  6:20 p.m.

  I hate him, I hate him.

  On the phone to Jas.

  “How dare he find another boyfriend for me? I hate him!!!”

  sunday august 6th

  3:50 p.m.

  That is absolutely it for me now. He can’t treat me like that. I have my pride. How dare he question my maturiosity?

  On the phone to Jas. “Jas?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t think I should just pop round to his house and sort of beg and plead, do you?”

  monday august 7th

  11:40 a.m.

  I will never get over this, never.

  Mum says there are plenty more fish in the sea. At a time like this! She doesn’t care about my feelings anyway.

  No one does.

  wednesday august 9th

  2:45 p.m.

  Took Angus for a long, moody walk. Part of me really hates the Sex God. Sadly it’s only a little tiny part of me; the rest of me really, really likes him!!!

  3:00 p.m.

  Even my breasts like him. They want to break out of my T-shirt and yell, “I love you I love you!!!”

  3:32 p.m.

  I hope I am not being driven to the brink of madness by grief. They say that some people never get over things, like whatshername, Kathy Thing. The one who wandered over the moors at night yelling, “Heathcliffe, Heathcliffe, it’s me a-Kathy come home again.” She wandered off into the rain and died from heartbreak. That will be me. I feel a bit tired now. If I just lie down here in the grass I might never be found.

  3:35 p.m.

  Angus keeps tugging at his lead. It was murder getting it on him but at least it means he can’t savage any small dogs that we see.

  4:0 0 p.m.

  Famous last words. Angus saw a Pekinese and dragged me to my feet and halfway across a field before I managed to get him under control. He’s senselessly brave. There is something about small dogs that really irritates him.

  4:30 p.m.

  Angus can fetch sticks!!! I was just carrying a stick along, hitting things with it. Then my arm got tired so I flung it away. And Angus pounced on it and dragged it back!! Superdooper cat!!!

  5:00 p.m.

  I wonder if I could get him to carry a little flask of tea round his neck in case I fancied a cuppa when we were having our walk?

  monday august 14th

  my bedroom

  1:00 a.m.

  Hot and stuffy. Big full moon. Sitting on the windowsill. (Me, not the moon.)

  1:05 a.m.

  I hate him.

  1:06 a.m.

  Oh I love him, I love him.

  1:10 a.m.

  I hate him, but he will not break me. I will make him regret the day he said, “I know a bloke called Dave. He’s a good laugh.”

  She who laughs last laughs last.

  2:00 a.m.

  I am going to be a heartless babe magnet as revenge.

  2:05 a.m.

  Oh no, no, that’s not what I mean. I don’t want to be a babe magnet—that would mean I was a lesbian. I am going to be a heartless boy magnet.

  2:05 and 30 secs

  Still, what is wrong with that? Each to their own, I say. After all, Mum must have kissed Dad (erlack).

  2:06 a.m.

  If anyone asked me to comment on sexuality, say in the Mail on Sunday or something, I would say that it is a matter of personal choice and nothing to do with nosey parkers. Or else I would say, “Don’t ask me, I am on the rack of love.”

  thursday august 17th

  in bed

  9:40 p.m.

  In bed early, healing my broken heart in the “privacy” of my bedroom.

  9:41 p.m.

  How can I stop Libby hiding her pooey knickers in my bed?

  friday august 18th

  9:00 a.m.

  Up. Up at nine A.M. in the holidays. Nine A.M.!! This just proves how upset I am.

  Mum hasn’t even noticed, of course.

  “Mum, shouldn’t even you be able to potty-train Libby by now? At this rate she’ll be a pensioner and still pooing all over the place. She’ll never get a boyfriend . . . still, that will make two of us.”

  monday august 21st

  8:30 a.m.

  I think I’ve lost a lot of weight from my bottom. No one has noticed. Mum just wanders around in a dream. She has got a calendar up in the kitchen with the days marked off until Vati gets back and a heart drawn round the sixth. How sad is that at her age? I said, “Don’t worry yourself about my breakfast, Mutti. I’ll get it myself; you get on with your own very important life.”

  She was humming and slathering herself with creams and ignoring me. So I said even louder, “Something quite interesting happened last night; I slit my throat and my head fell off. Have you seen it anywhere?”


  Mum called from the bathroom, “Has Libby got her shoes on?”

  “I think Mr. Next Door might be another transvestite like Vati.”

  She came out of the bathroom then. “Georgia, is it possible for you to help at all? Where is your sister?”

  “Mum, have you noticed anything unusual about me? I am not happy . . . in fact, I am very unhappy.”

  “Why? Have you broken a nail?” And she laughed in a very unpleasant way. Then she called out, “Libbsy, where are you, pet? What are you doing?”

  I could hear Libby’s muffled voice from Mum’s bedroom and a bit of miaowing. Libby called, “Nuffing.”

  Mum rushed in there, saying, “Oh God.”

  I heard bang, bang and Mum yelling, “Libby, that is Mummy’s best lipstick!”

  “It looks nice!!!!”

  “No, it doesn’t. Cats don’t wear lipstick.”

  “Yes.”

  “No they don’t.”

  “Yes.”

  “Owww; don’t kick Mummy.”

  “Bad Mummy!!!”

  Hahahaha. She who laughs last laughs . . . er . . . the last.

  tuesday august 22nd

  11:00 a.m.

  Raining. In August. Typical. Squelching along on my way to meet Mrs. Big Knickers, I was thinking . . . I could either give in and be a miserable, useless person, like Elvis Attwood, our barmy, sad old school caretaker. Or if I truly gave up I could be like Wet Lindsay. When Robbie dumped her she got all pale and even wetter than normal. She was like an anoraksick. (A person who is both very thin and wears tragic anoraks.) I just made that up as a joke. Even though I am very upset I can still think of a joke. I’ll tell Jas when I see her. As I was saying, before I so rudely interrupted myself, I could be a sad old sadsack or I could gird my loins and be like in that song. The one where you have to search for the hero within yourself.

  Jas was waiting for me at the bus stop. She said, “Why are you walking in that stiff way?”

  “I’m girding my loins.”

  “Well, it looks painful, like you’ve got a stick up your bottom. You haven’t, have you?”

  “You really are sensationally mad, Jas. In olden days people would have thrown oranges at you.”

  As I said, I can sometimes surprise myself with my own wisdomosity. And humorosity. Even in adversosity.

  thursday august 24th

  2:10 a.m.

  In bed. Oh God, it’s so boring being broken-hearted. I’ve spent so much time in bed I’ll probably start growing a long white beard soon, like Rip van Thing.

  2:15 a.m.

  Or perhaps I could just grow my eyebrows and train them into a beard.

  2:48 a.m.

  I can’t sleep. I’ve gone all feverish now. I’m going to creep downstairs and get Mum’s Men Are from Mars book and do some more research.

  3:35 a.m.

  God it’s too weird. Apparently boys might seem like they like you to be all interested in them, but really they want you to be like a glacier iceberg sort of girl. So you have to play hard to get. That’s where I must have gone wrong. I have been too keen; I must do glacial.

  saturday august 26th

  10:33 p.m.

  Same bat time. Same bat place. Same scuba-diving Barbie digging me in the back.

  According to the next bit in Mum’s book, boys are like elastic bands. Good Lord!

  It doesn’t mean that boys are made of elastic, which is a plus because nobody wants a boyfriend made out of rubber. On the other hand, if they were made out of rubber you could save yourself a lot of time and effort and heartache by just rustling one up out of a car tire. But that is not what the book means. Boys are different from girls. Girls like to be cozy all the time but boys don’t. First of all they like to get all close to you like a coiled-up rubber band, but after a while they get fed up with being too coiled and need to stretch away to their full stretchiness. Then, after a bit of on-their-own stretchy, they ping back to be close to you.

  Hmmm. So in conclusion on the boy front, you have to play hard to get (the glacier bit), and also let them be elastic bands. Sacré bleu! They don’t want much, do they?

  monday august 28th

  4:20 p.m.

  Round at Jas’s house. Been to town. I bought myself some new lippy to cheer myself up and Jas got a new hot air brush thing that gives you bouncability. She was making her hair all turn under at the ends.

  As she was tonging away at her hair she said, “I looked for a bra but I can’t get one small enough. In fact, I don’t need one; I’m more like Kate Moss. You have to wear one though, don’t you? . . . Because of the pencil-case test thing.”

  “Just pencil . . . the case was my mum.”

  “Yeah, but the pencil stuck, didn’t it? You said that if it did you had to have help and support.”

  “I know what I said.”

  She went on. “I’m only saying—there’s no need to have a nervy b.”

  Jas was really, really beginning to annoy me. A lot. All her things are really neatly put away which is the sign of a very dull person in my opinion. When Jas and I stalked Wet Lindsay and looked through her bedroom window all her things were very tidy as well. Jas even puts all her knickers in the same drawer.

  Besides it being VERY dull to do that it would also be useless at my house as Libby mostly uses my knickers as hats for her dolls. Or Angus eats them.

  To change the subject I said, in a really caring way, “When does Tom go off to work experience?”

  Jas stopped hot brushing her hair then and looked all mournful. Hahahahaha. She said, “Saturday—it’s going to be really horrible. Do you think he’ll meet someone else in Birmingham?”

  I looked wise and oraclelike and like I was really thinking (which I wasn’t). I said, “Well, he’s a young bloke and we all know what young blokes are like.”

  “Do we?”

  I laughed bitterly.

  She said, “Just because Robbie went off doesn’t mean all boys do.”

  “It does . . . in Mum’s book Men Are from Mars it tells you all about it.”

  She was interested then and came and sat next to me. “What does it say in the book? Does it say Tom is going to go off with someone else?”

  I said, “Yes it does, Jas. It says in the worldwide number one best-seller written by some bloke in America that ‘Tom Jennings definitely goes off with someone else when he goes to do work experience in Birmingham for a month.’”

  She looked a bit miffed. “Well, what do you mean, then?”

  I waited for a bit. Teach her to go on and on about my breasty problem and the fact that SG had left me.

  “Can I try your new shiny lippy?”

  She wasn’t interested; it was all just me, me, me with her. She just went on about her problems.

  “Anyway, Gee, what do you mean about this book? Isn’t it American?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well it will be about American boys, then, won’t it?”

  “No, it’s about boykind.”

  “Oh.”

  I paused. She looked all goggly and attentive; it was quite a nice feeling. Perhaps I might reconsider my career and think about becoming an Agony Aunt rather than a backup singer. Especially since I can’t sing. But I know all about agony.

  Jas was as agog as two gogs. She said, “Go on.”

  I explained, “Boys are like elastic bands.”

  “What?”

  “Boys are like elastic bands.”

  “What?”

  “Jas, if you keep saying ‘what?’ every time I say something we may be here for some centuries.”

  “Well, what do you mean like elastic bands?”

  “They like to be all close and then after a bit of being close they have to stretch and get far away . . . and you have to let them and then they spring back.”

  “What?”

  “You’re doing it again and it really annoys me. In fact, I will have to kill you now because I have a lot of untamed energy because of the Sex Go
d. I’m going to have to give you a bit of a duffing up.” And I shoved her.

  She said, “Don’t be silly and childish.”

  I said, “I’m not.”

  She got up and started making her hair have more bouncability with the air brush thing again. I waited until she had got it just right (in her opinion); then I hit her over the head with a pillow. She started to say, “Look, this is not funn—” but before she could finish I hit her over the head again with the pillow. And every time she tried to talk I did it again. She got all red-faced, which in Jas’s case is very red indeed. It made me feel much better. Violence may be the answer to the world’s problems. I may write to the Dalai Lama and suggest he tries my new approach.

  my room

  midnight

  I’ve got a plan. It involves the two “osities.” They are “maturiosity” and “glaciosity.” Firstly I have to prove to SG that I am very sophis and grownup. Not a laughing hyena in a school uniform as he thought the last time he saw me. (This is the maturiosity bit.) Secondly I must be distant and alluring and play hard to get. (This is the glaciosity bit.)

  The conclusion of these two parts is that SG comes springing back like an elastic band.

  tuesday august 29th

  2:10 p.m.

  Phoned Jas.

  I said, “I’ve worked out a plan.”

  She said, “I can’t talk; Tom and I are going to choose my tattoo.”

  Huh. Typico.

  Well, old huge knickers always puts her boyfriend first. Just as well I am so popular.

  10:00 p.m.

  In bed listening to a tape. Sadly it is “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” Libby has made me listen to it five times. If I try to turn it off she has a nervy spaz and growls at me.

  I phoned up my “mates” earlier to go out, but they were all busy.