Doing It

by Melvin Burgess

  ‘No, no no no,’ I said. Then, realising I was being far too emphatic, I shrugged casually. ‘What’s there to talk about? It was just a snog, that’s all.’

  ‘I bet they don’t think so,’ said Ben, nodding at the little huddle of girls by the lockers.

  Dino leaned over to me. ‘Your woman’s nipples are shaking with anxiety,’ he told me. I grinned weakly, but he terrified me. That was one of mine! I live in constant fear that someone is going to be as horrible to me as I am to them.

  The thing is, poor old Debs is the butt of an awful lot of jokes and most of them are mine. She never gets to hear them, of course. No one – especially me – would ever dream of hurting her feelings. She’s too well liked. It’s just that, well, jokes are funny. You know? And I like a joke more than anyone.

  For example. Deborah has wrap-round tits. Her nipples have ended up behind her head. She has more skin than a elephant. She had so many folds and flaps on her, it’s difficult finding the right one without a map. If you melted Deborah down and poured her into a fat-powered vehicle, you could drive to London and back without a refill. Some said it wasn’t her fault, she had a problem with her glands.

  ‘Sure,’ I liked to point out. ‘Too many gland sandwiches.’

  See? I really am vile. I’d be mortified if she ever got to hear any of these witticisms, of course – but behind her back, yes, I’m ruthless!

  ‘So, what was it liked to be entombed between her mighty thighs, then?’ asked Ben. See? That’s one of mine too.

  ‘Leave it out.’

  ‘Have you wiped the grease marks off, yet?’ said Dino, raising his voice so that although she never could hear, it felt as though she might. The bastard. That was one of mine too. If she ever got to hear any of it I’d die of shame.

  And so it went on all morning. It was all over school. I was amazed – really amazed at some of the attitudes that came out. I mean, all right: I am unbearably cruel, I know that – but it’s all for the sake of a laugh. I’m callous. I go too far. I’m insensitive. But it’s horribility by accident. Some of these guys really go for it. I’d always thought that the whole thing about fat girls was something you went on about because it was funny. It never occurred to me that some people actually seem to think that there’s something morally wrong with it.

  ‘Like sheep shagging or something,’ said Snoops.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I snarled.

  Snoops is a bastard, but even some of the nice guys like Fasil were all over the place on this one.

  ‘Sorry, Jon, but I can’t understand it … that sort of thing,’ he said. That sort of thing? What does he mean by that? Even Ben, who’s just about the nicest of us all.

  ‘Not my personal cup of tea,’ he said. ‘But each to their own, eh, Jon?’

  ‘Yeah, you stick by her,’ said Dino.

  ‘I shouldn’t think it’s all that easy to escape,’ I said. Joke. Stick, fat, get stuck, see? Bastards! Even I was joining in. Oh, we were all having a great time at my expense.

  I’m just as bad as they are. I’ve always taken the attitude that it doesn’t actually matter what size and shape a girl is. It’s the personality that counts. So how come I don’t want Deborah? I like her. My glands obviously think she’s great. Whenever I think about those twenty minutes outside the garage with the wind blowing around Mr Knobby Knobster and her tits out, I almost pull my trousers off from the inside. So what’s my problem? Could it be that I’ve been kidding myself all the time, and that actually it’s just that I’m ashamed to be seen with her?

  Because let’s face it, the humiliation would be endless. People would go on and on and on and on. It’s so stupid. She isn’t even that fat. She’s chubby. It’s just her bad luck that somewhere down the line she got appointed the school fat girl, and that’s it.

  But then, I always get like this. I mean – I like girls. I get on well with them. And I like sex. Not that I’ve had all that much experience of it – not with another person being in the room at the same time, anyway. I just can’t somehow put the two together. I can be getting on really well with a girl but as soon as I get an inkling that there might be a chance of anything happening, I just freeze up. It’s scary. Sex is … well it’s so rude, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think girls would like sex. You’d think it’s too rude for them. Doing sex with a girl, it’s a bit like putting a frog down their backs or scaring them with dead mice or throwing worms at them. They’re such sensible, grown-up sorts of people. And yet apparently even the nice ones like you sticking the rudest thing you have on your whole body up the exact, rudest part of their body that they have! It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

  The fact is, I can’t put together the sort of feelings that I get when I’m having a dirty big wank together with the kind of feelings I get when I’m having a nice friendly chat with someone. It just doesn’t work. But here’s Deborah, who I get on very well with and she actually appears to want me to do those things. It sounds too good to be true, right? Even better, she wants to do them back to me. I mean. Saying no – it just seems so stupid.

  Maybe I’m just scared. Maybe I need to bite the bullet and give her one and I’ll feel better.

  Nemesis came the next day. It was about the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me.

  I was talking about it to Ben and Dino, and a couple of others, the bastards. Ben was telling me off.

  ‘You shouldn’t have raised her hopes,’ he said.

  ‘She can’t help being fat,’ pointed out Fasil. ‘Do you think she likes it? You’ve encouraged her to think that it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ I snarled. ‘Some people like fat girls.’

  ‘Ugh, there, I knew it,’ said Snoops. ‘That means you do fancy her. Gross.’

  ‘I don’t! I’m talking about other people. Christ!’

  ‘You looked like you were having a good time to me,’ said Dino.

  I suppose I should have noticed that they’d started looking over my shoulder. Later, Ben said he tried to indicate what was going on with his chin. I’m not sure I believe him. He could have said, ‘Oh, hi, Sue, Jenna and Jackie, how’s it going?’ instead of just doing odd things with his chin. So these three harpies emerged over my shoulder just in time to hear me come out with this prime piece of bullshit …

  ‘I was doing her a favour,’ I said.

  I didn’t even mean it. It was a joke. Try explaining that to them.

  ‘You bastard!’ shrieked Jenna in my ear.

  I leaped round. I think I might have briefly fainted in mid-air.

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ hissed Sue. ‘She was doing you a favour, if only you knew.’

  ‘I didn’t mean I was doing her a favour, that sounded all wrong. I meant – Jesus! It was just a snog! It wouldn’t matter if it was anyone else I’d snogged.’

  ‘Yuk. All that flesh,’ said Snoops.

  ‘Shut up,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t tell him to shut up, you’re as bad as he is,’ said Sue.

  ‘You lot are the prejudiced ones,’ I told them, wildly going onto the attack. ‘If it was a thin person I’d snogged, no one could care less.’

  ‘You made her think she was in with a chance, that’s what’s wrong with it,’ said Fas piously.

  ‘You all make me sick,’ barked Sue. ‘She’s “in with a chance” with lots of people. She had a boyfriend, just recently. And she finished with him, what’s more!’

  ‘See?’ I said.

  ‘She’s upset,’ said Jackie seriously. She nodded across the common room. I looked sideways across. Debs was sitting at a table, half turned away. She must know they were talking about her. How could she bear it? Did she know all we were talking about was her weight?

  ‘I was only joking about doing her a favour,’ I repeated pathetically.

  ‘You have to speak to her. You owe her that much.’

  ‘All right. OK. I’ll have a word with her, OK?’ I begged. And all three girls answered as one:


  ‘When?’

  I am blessed among mortals. I know it’s hard to believe just looking at me, I expect I seem just your average geek to you. Don’t laugh. It’s embarrassing. See, I have a small flock of invisible magical helpers to do my every bidding.

  I know it’s ludicrous. I’m obviously mad. But – just imagine. Suppose it’s true. You don’t know. You can’t prove anything really. It’s a question of faith. It’s just the same with bloody old God, isn’t it? He’s no different, you can’t see him either. You don’t know if he’s there or not. God, magic helpers – they all basically have a big credibility problem. Something to do with moving in mysterious ways, or being invisible as I like to call it.

  There’s all these stupid rules these beings have. They’re so moral, which cuts out most of the stuff I want for starters. And they’re so touchy about it. If for instance, you asked them to bring you the Taj Mahal, or give you a twelve-inch knob or turn you into a millionaire or something like that, something really desirable and useful, they wouldn’t do it, even though they easily could if they wanted to. It’d be too obvious for them. It’d be like you were asking them to prove their existence to you, which would mean that you didn’t really believe in them properly … and if they get the slightest sense that you don’t believe in them properly, they go all stroppy and start sulking. What you have to do is ask them to do things that are within the realms of possibility. Things that mean you never know for sure if they’ve been brought about by chance, or by magic. Things like, for instance: Please make Deborah stop fancying me.

  It’s just exactly the sort of thing my magic helpers could help me with. All I have to do is work out what exactly they want me to ask them.

  But please stop Deborah fancying me won’t work because that would mean asking them to interfere in another human being’s feelings, and they’d never do that. That’s immoral. So how about this? Please please please make Deborah thin … but with big tits, so that I’d still have those wonderful bazookas to play with, but no one would sneer at me for going out with a fat girl.

  Nice thought, but that wouldn’t work either, because you can’t just make someone change shape to suit you. Making their body change is just as bad as making their minds change. That would make my magic helpers all huffy and disappointed for sure. Even if she wanted to be thin with big tits – and there’s a fair chance she does – it would still be immoral because it would be cheating. My magic helpers would expect her to go on a diet like everyone else.

  So how about – Make me fancy her! What do you think? Maybe they already have. Mr Knobby certainly thinks so. But in that case, why does doing sex things with her make me feel so panicky? It’s nice at the time – it’s brilliant at the time – but thinking about it makes me feel awful. What’s going on there? And anyhow, that’s immoral too. Most things are, I find, when you start thinking about it. It’s as wrong to change yourself to suit somebody else as it is to change someone else to suit you. Almost.

  So what about this?

  Please give me the courage to tell her that I like her very very much, but I just don’t fancy her.

  But they won’t touch that one either because, of course, I could do it perfectly well myself. Magic is only for things you can’t do yourself. And I’m certainly not going to do it as I am, and you know why? Because I’m a coward, that’s why. So I’m shafted.

  It makes you wonder. What use are they? They won’t do anything to make it easier for me, and the difficult things they insist I do for myself.

  I couldn’t bear to hurt her feelings. Really, simply, couldn’t bear it.

  The easiest thing to do would be just to go out with her. Why not? For one thing, I am actually very fond of her. That’s a start, isn’t it? She’s female for another. That counts for a lot. It means she has tits and a minge. Yes, I know, that’s amazingly superficial of me, but there you go. Tits and minge are actually very important things to me in a girlfriend. In fact, they’re just about the most important things I want in a girl. I dream about them. I think about them. I spend a lot of my spare time looking at them on my computer screen – tits and arses and minge till it comes out of my ears. And Deborah has them all. In fact, she has just about the best tits you can imagine. Big lovely womanly breasts with lovely big dark nipples and and … oooh, la, yum yum yum.

  Maybe I should just be prepared to accept what comes my way. Beggars can’t be choosers would be a bit harsh, but if I narrow my field down to the good-looking ones, I’m likely to stay a virgin for ever. It’s something I’ve noticed. The good-looking ones don’t tend to fancy me all that much. I’m just not one of the beautiful people. And she likes me. We’re mates. She could be my best friend, and having a best friend who lets you do sex with them – having a best friend who wants you to do sex with them – is something really worth having, I reckon. Me and Debs. Why not? She’s clever and funny. We like the same things. We share a sense of humour. We spend ages chatting about all sorts of stuff. She’s talented. I ought to be flattered, really. She does these amazing cartoons of people. It takes her about a minute, she just sits down, looks at you, draws a few lines and there it is, a really funny caricature. It’s like magic watching her. She laughs at my jokes and listens to my opinions. You know what? I think I make her happy. Isn’t that something? She was smiling and smiling and smiling at me at the end of the party when we were on the sofa next to each other holding hands. Isn’t that worth having?

  And then there’s the tits and minge.

  It wouldn’t last, though. Once she got to know me she’d go off me dead quick. I mean, I’m pretty weird, really. I’m only ever nice to people because I want them to be nice to me. Pretty superficial, huh? I think much too much of myself. I’m quite good with words but that’s about it, there’s nothing else. School work – very patchy. People – I’m shy. Chatting girls up – hopeless. Knowing when to stop – can’t do it. And that’s not all. My head – you wouldn’t believe the things that go through my head. My head is unbelievable, it’s a quagmire in here. How could I have a relationship with someone when I have so many secrets? My wank life, for instance. All the time! I’m like a monkey. And my magic helpers. Childish or what? And other things. The thoughts that fill my head! Sometimes I lie in bed and I spend hours thinking the most deliberately horrible things I can. The worst curses. The most violent acts, the most uncharitable thoughts, the most disgusting perversions. You just would not believe.

  But – the fact is, she seems to like me. She’s clever and sweet and thoughtful, and she likes me.

  But Deborah! As a friend she’s great but as a girlfriend she’s a joke. Is that what makes my hair stands on end? Because she’s overweight? I know I’m crap but that really would be too petty even for me. But why else? My knob likes her, I like her – but something just shrivels up and dies of embarrassment at the thought of doing it with her.

  By seven o’clock that evening when he arrived at the War Memorial in Scofield Park, Jonathon still hadn’t got a clue what to do.

  She wasn’t there yet. He kicked around the monument waiting and wishing and hoping, and dreading that she wouldn’t come. The truth about wishes is, they can come true – but only if you wish for the right thing. The wish that can come true fits in like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle and everything falls into place. What was the right wish here?

  He was walking around a bench muttering to himself when she suddenly appeared. He jumped. She smiled anxiously.

  ‘I was scared you wouldn’t come,’ she said.

  ‘I said I would.’

  They stood looking at each other and smiling.

  ‘Walk?’ she said.

  ‘OK.’

  They headed across the grass and around by the rosebeds. She took his hand. They walked right round the little park talking about school, about Dino, about why on earth Ben didn’t get off with anyone when they were literally queuing up for him. Neither of them said a word about … things. When they got back to the monument, she leaned b
ack against it and said, ‘Kiss me.’

  Jonathon put his arms around her and kissed her. She tasted of spices and winegums, which made him briefly want to giggle. Fat girl = winegums. He pressed his full weight right up against her, right down the length of her body and kissed her on the lips. She held him tight, her big bosoms pushed up against him. Mr Knobby rose up between them. Deborah pushed her tummy against it, and he pushed gently back.

  ‘We get on so well together.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  What could he say? Yes, I like you and I evidently do fancy you, but I can’t bear the social humiliation of being seen out regularly with a fat girl? He shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m … I need to think about it.’

  Deborah looked away, then back at him. ‘Is it my weight?’ she asked.

  ‘Good God, no! I don’t care about that!’

  She frowned. ‘Then what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ insisted Jonathon.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I understand, you know.’

  ‘What?’ he asked, all panicky.

  ‘You don’t have to fancy me. I know I’m fat.’

  ‘You’re not fat!’ insisted Jonathon furiously. ‘Don’t let them make you think that.’

  Deborah laughed at his anger.

  ‘You’re not, you know you’re not. Fat is – well, it’s a lot bigger than you are.’

  ‘Well, I’m chubby, then.’

  ‘Plump, perhaps.’

  ‘Plump,’ she smiled.

  ‘Don’t you like being plump?’

  She shrugged. ‘No. But all the other girls’ – she waved her hand over the park, the town, the world – ‘they’re all worried about being thin and the right shape and having the right boobs and the right everything. So I just think I’m not going to care about that. I’d like to be thin, I can’t help that, but it’s so stupid. Just fashion, isn’t it? I don’t go for fashion. It’s like … being bullied, you know. I’ve decided to settle for being plump.’

  ‘That’s just so amazing. I think that’s an amazing thing to do,’ he told her fervently. Who else would think like that? Wasn’t she something special? And she wanted to be his.