15. JAM-RAG
The big fear of my childhood was that I’d find my mother murdered, strangled in her bedroom. Whenever she was out, I immediately assumed that she was dead. I shout for her from downstairs, I walk through the kitchen, the hall, the back room, then started climbing the stairs. Talking loudly to her, as if she was there all along, trying to sound jovial, my mouth turned to dust. I approached her bedroom, convinced that she was lying in there, naked and dead, strangled by the hands of my father, her knickers stuffed in her mouth.
I stare at the back of the door and shout, ‘Hello mum, are you in there?’
I bang on it extra loud, grab the brass handle and barge straight in. I force myself to look at the bed, then I check the other side of it and underneath, then the airing cupboard and the wardrobe. No sign of her anywhere, nothing. She must have been run over by a lorry on the way back from the shops.
‘Nick! Nick! I think it’s mum! She must have cut herself, it’s blood!’ I hold one up, I present it to him; he looks at me, he does a double take and jumps up.
‘Get out my fucking room!’
‘But look, I think she’s hurt.’ I hold out the blood heavy towel, stinking. ‘I found it in the bathroom.’
‘Get the fuck out!’ He kicks at me. ‘And take that fucking jam-rag with you! Go on, piss off! Put it fucking well back!’
He knees me — my leg goes numb, I hobble. He shoves me and bangs the door behind me, it rebounds twice. I whimper to myself, I sit on the bathroom stool . . . Then I find some blood on the toilet seat, and a packet of her sanitary towels in a box. I put one up my jumper, go to my mother’s room, and undress in front of her mirror. You hook the ends onto this little belt, and it goes between your legs. I try my dick in four different positions. I admire myself. I pull at it, it goes hard, but the poor little fellow’s bald. I hobble about, trying on her suspenders . . . a bra . . . panties . . . stockings . . . I put on lipstick and one of her dresses and tie my hair in a silk scarf. Last of all I paint my nails and venture outside . . .
I put the Hearboy on his lead and take him for walkies, clacking in my high heels. A bus passes, I hike up my skirts and expose myself, daring people to recognise me, to spot that I am not a lady but a boy, that I’ve got a dick between my legs under the jam-rag.
I take the mutt up under the fir tree, get my dick out, take a piss, and let Hearboy lick at it. Shit, that stings! I suck my breath in hard, then a little bit of juice comes. The dirty mutt loves it, he laps at it — it must be the salt. Then he starts jerking himself off and I have to kick him in the ribs, three or four times. Actually, I have to strangle him a bit until he looks sad that he’s going to die. Really, I would much rather have been touching little Elizabeth from over the council estate: tasting her and licking her sticky-out bottom. I yank Hearboy on his chain; I pull him along, his claws scouring the pavement.
Now that I come to think of it, my mother was the only one who showed any care for that dog. ‘Hearboy!’ we named him, some kind of half-breed Collie with these manked-up eyes. Friendly, loyal, everything that a human being isn’t. Puppyish as well. And a flincher. ‘Hearboy!’ My mother was the only one who looked after him — I lost all interest. He got old and dotty, he pissed himself and walked round in little circles. In the end she took him away and had him gassed. ‘Hearboy!’, the little stray dog, out of pity. She didn’t bring the corpse back, they did something with it, they must have burned it.
‘I should of brought him back and buried him here.’ She tells me about it. ‘He was wetting himself all the time, I didn’t have any choice, I had to have him put down.’
I nod, I have no argument.
‘But I wish I’d kept his body, I wish I had him buried here.’
He disappeared out of our lives. We were friends once, but sex made me want to kick him. I hated that dog through guilt. That’s about all you’re left with in the end. The love flitters away, but guilt? It’s weighty, it’s resilient.
I pretended to strangle him, I wait ’til he starts choking, then I let him go — and his sad eyes, he must of trusted me . . . Goodbye doggy, nice to have met you, but now it’s time to shift your gears, friend of my childhood.
And me dressed up in drag, dick inside my Y-fronts, brought up on my father’s pornography, filched from his briefcase. I didn’t know who I was or what I was turning into: my delicate self had been ruined and there was an uproar of bad blood. The confusion, that one so young — me it seems, because I remember — should be so damaged, that no one looked out for me or cared. And even now, I grin and mock myself out of fear. But I hold the truth aloft, a golden torch, sacred, because no one else dares to.
By this time it was obvious that with a mug like mine, and my low-life nature, that I was a dog molester of the lowest instincts. My brother looks me up and down, whistles through his teeth and shakes his mangy head.
‘You’re just the sort that gets acne!’ he pronounces.
He stings me in front of his friends, his entourage of admirers, in front of his cuties in fact. I check my mug in the mirror, you see, I’ve got this jutting jawline and hollow cheeks. I examine them with my fingers; how I craved for some cream puffs like my brother’s. I hated my face, I cut into it with razors. No woman could ever love such an ugly customer.
I lie in bed and kiss the pillow. I kiss it, cotton and feathers; it sucks the spit right out of your mouth. I put a toilet roll in there; I cram it full of Vaseline, stick my little dick in and really start to run. I get a regular gallop on, chasing little Elizabeth’s arse. I guess I made quite a racket, shaking up the whole house, careering round the room, skidding on the carpet. I was banging my head into the wall: that’s what all the noise was about. You see, I have to put an extra spurt on — her delicate little arse, that special type of shape, it protruded, throbbing. I just had my nose in there, and that’s when I look up, to see my mother standing in the doorway, with a cup of tea in her hand . . .
‘You’re going to have to learn some facts of life, young man!’
That knocks the steam out of my little engine. I slam it into reverse, I shield my loins. Her with her, ‘you’re going to have to
learn some facts of life’ routine. That’s what she said. I’ve heard it a thousand times over; she repeats it in every situation, totally out of context. That and her, ‘it’s a question of survival!’ She’s kept that one going. It’s still doing the rounds, ‘sure as eggs are eggs’, an evergreen, she’ll take that one with her to the grave. That and her, ‘when you’re older, then you’ll see!’ ‘Bloody soddin’ kids!’ And, ‘the way you cried, my God, your voice. You were clingy and you wouldn’t eat anything!’ There you have it, the wisdoms of a lifetime.
But me lying there, with my dick in that toilet roll — I have to admit that I blushed.
16. THE GREEN BOOK
I’ll come clean with you, I’ve had it in for religion from an early age: for schools, religion and anybody else’s half-arsed dogma. I’ve no nose for that type of bullshit.
Lordswood Primary School: the vicar’s son sat right opposite me. I eyed him timidly. A fringe, eight little freckles and a perfect little nose. He stutters, he can’t get his tongue round his ‘t’s. He purples up, sucks his cheeks in then spits it out. We sit round holding our breath, waiting for the show to begin, for the big announcement. No one dares pre-empt him, or put words in his mouth. He sits there laying an egg, he waves his hands about like a diver. The truth of the matter is he bullied me. No kidding, even this bible-basher got one over on me: God’s kid! He wore Chelsea boots and a black rollneck sweater, he reeked of style, Johnty, the vicar’s son.
And they sat us down at the same desk, the ‘them’, the teachers. Mister Jones, six foot two or three. I remember his mug, Welsh with a shaving rash, bad breath and sincere.
‘Good morning, class.’
‘Good morning, Mister Jones.’
‘Now come along, you can do better than that. Good morning class!’
‘Good mo
rning, Mister Jones.’
He drags it out of us, we shuffle to our feet, scraping our chairs: nine o’clock and knackered already . . . ‘Good morning, Mister Jones.’ We sing it out and drop back to our seats.
‘Now then, that’s much better!’
He studies his wrist watch, looks up at us meaningfully, rummages around in his eye socket, then places his brief case on the desk top.
‘I wonder if any of you can tell me what this is.’ He put in his hand and extracts a flat square packet. He holds it up for all to see.
‘It’s an LP!’ he announces to himself. ‘Now can anybody tell me what LP stands for?’
He nurses the record from its dust jacket and holds it up between his thumb and forefinger, ‘hahs’ on it and gives it a quick scuff with his cufflink. He peers into all those little black grooves. He reads them like they were a book, mouthing all the notes, then slings it onto the turntable, crunches the arm across and forces the needle down in the plastic. As ham-fisted as a Dutchman. He’s certainly got all the gear up there, all the gadgets, a little turntable, a speaker, and two or three knobs to play with.
‘We killed these people!’ he announces. ‘These people were red skinned people. Can anybody tell me where the red-skins come from? America!’ he answers himself. ‘Long before Christopher Columbus even dreamed of the New World! Take that out of your mouth, boy! Come along, spit it into the bin! The white people annihilated the red people!’ He stands there flexing his feet, size twelves; he lets us know his opinions.
He gives us a moment to let it all sink in . . . We sit behind our little desks . . . His face, a blank of flesh, millions of intricate little specks, and the rash, the whole thing mushed in together.
‘The white man killed the red man; we systematically eradicated his culture!’
There he goes, sounding off again. Well, I knew I hadn’t killed no Indians. If anyone had done any killing it was more likely to be the likes of him with the big feet and the rash — old know-all, stuffed behind his desk. He clicks off his rotten music and hands round the pencils.
‘Alright class, pass them round!’ He pulls out his little white baton and conducts us like a chorus, ‘That’s right boys and girls, all the way to the back. Has everybody got one? Good, now what book are we on?’
The hands shoot up, eager beavers, they clamour for attention. Old Johnty can’t get his foot out his mouth . . . I slouch below my desk, long haired, reticent, not understanding the words, the numbers.
‘The Green Book, sir! The Green Book, we’re on the Green Book, sir!’
That’s the way they sing it, a chorus, keen, blonde, glittering eyes, Johnty too. ‘The Green Book, sir, we’re reading the Green Book!’
I listen in, I sit up, say, me too, the Green Book? Yeah, me too. They hand them round, a big stack of green: I take one and pass the rest on. I look it over, this Green Book of theirs. Green, definitely green, but a bit thick, a little on the robust side. And that’s strange, all that weird calligraphy on the spine, that got me thinking. Hey, wait a minute! What’s going on? My colour rises, I go to speak, but my tongue goes thick, I can’t swallow. I go to replace my book, to tell sir, to let them know, but the moment passes. I wave my hands about but no one’s in the least little bit interested. They’re all engrossed, the whole lot of them, heads down, mowing, nothing but a bunch of sheep. I try and attract their attention, my class mates, heads bowed . . . I make little movements, I pout and wrinkle my forehead, but it’s no good, no one could give a fig. And our Welshman, our Mister Jones? Picking through his scabs with one hand and scratching his balls with the other, totally engrossed.
I look to the pages, that book was some size alright, like some kind of hideous bible, totally unfathomable and hardly a picture in sight. Gross, indecent, never-ending. And every page crammed full of them, they marched on like an army of little insects. Hey, what are those things? Spiderish, intricate, detailed, repetitive . . . letters? Letters, shit! I finger my collar and swallow my puke, sour, bitter-sweet. This ain’t the Green Book, this is a green book, volume eight or nine I shouldn’t wonder. Green yes, but after that the similarities are pretty thin on the ground — a green book but not my faithful little volume one, the Green Book, the one with the cute little black and white mices on the front cover. No! These bastards have stitched me up, the whole stinking lot of ’em are in cahoots. Who the hell are they trying to kid? I want a recount, them with their ‘Green Book!’ Green Book my arse! Green Book bloody volume three hundred and twenty-one more like!
I had to go into that classroom, nine o’clock sharp every morning and sit behind that desk ’til half-three in the afternoon, and all the time making out to be reading those hieroglyphs, for two whole stinking weeks. I moved my lips, and stared sweating into that mess of spiders legs, sweating, trying to come to terms with the hatefulness of life, the seconds clocking. Sometimes moving a page, folding it back and peeping over into the beyond. There was more of it, exactly the same, page after page of the stuff, disappearing into eternity. I turned back double quick, it said something, something, something, then there was a number: a number ‘one’ I think it was, like a line, a stake! Tree-ish, but without the branches. I stared at that stroke, that line, I studied it and held onto it. I knew what that line meant, that line was a number. I took furtive glances at the other kids, my pals, the prodigies of the word, just their fringes and a bit of their noses showing. And that Johnty kid, the vicar’s son, sat opposite me. All I could hear all day long was the sound of his pages folding back, it seemed like every three minutes he finished one of those pages and started on another. That made me stare at him, his freckles and his superior little kisser mouthing the words, running sentences. I’d fill that for him! I’d teach him some fucking words!
The point is, you see, is that I didn’t want to let on — I was ashamed, me being thick and all that. You see, I was told it every day, my brother liked to remind me, he used to rub it in.
‘You’re thick, you are. You can’t read and write and you wet the bed!’
It was true . . . I stared down, kicked the dirt ’n’ played with my buttons . . .
‘Mother, Steven can’t read or write yet! I could read and write when I was five! He’s thick! Aren’t you, thicko!’
You see, I didn’t want to let on about the Green Book, the one with the mices on, ’cos that was an infant’s book, a beginners book, for stupid kids, for retards.
Mister Jones made us take turns to read out loud in class, and slowly his little white baton worked round the room until finally it’s pointing straight at me. I sit dumb and stupid, choking back a tear. I wanted to speak, to come out with a wonderful story, a story to break the hearts of impossible princesses, for the veil to suddenly lift and for me to magically understand their game. I cleared my throat, as if to begin. ‘Number one,’ I said, quiet, low down, into my jumper.
‘Could that boy speak up? Come along . . . what did you say?’ ‘He said nur-nur-nur-number one, sir!’
‘Yes, number one . . . and?’
I peered under my desk at my feet.
‘Come along, boy . . . What’s your name?’ ‘He-he-his-na-na-name-is-Ham-Ham-Hamperson, sir. ’
‘Is that your name? Come out to the front, Hamperson . . . Would that be a Christmas Hamperson or a picnic Hamperson?’
He smirks to the ceiling, he grins round the room so’s that the class know that they can laugh. I push my arse off that seat, kick my sandals onto the deck and approach his desk. Oaken, grainy, I stare into its molecules, and that fat-faced Jonesy boy sat stuffed behind it: sir.
‘There seems to be a problem, Christmas, can’t you read this book?’
He shows the class the cover. I open and shut my mouth and stare into the scuff marks on my sandals. I try to say it, to broach the subject, ‘the Green Book’, to tell him about the white mice, to open my dumb stupid mouth.
‘Are you on Green Book five, then?’
I shake my head, a tear hits the dust.
‘Green Book three? Come along speak up! We haven’t got all day! Green Book two, or three, which is it to be?’
I find something under my nail, like dirt, but sort of white coloured, sort of clean dirt.
‘Look at me when I’m talking to you, Hamperson! I said what book are you on, two or three?’
‘The one with the mices, sir,’ I whisper it.
‘Pardon!’
‘The one with the mices.’
‘The one with the mices?’
The classroom grows hushed . . .
‘It’s a-a-a-an infant’s book, sir!’
‘The one with the mices?’ Jonesy’s incredulous. ‘The one with the mices?’
He ‘tut-tutts’ me and bends his baton almost double . . .
‘The one with the mices! Dear, oh dear . . . My youngest daughter has already read book six, and she is still in kindergarten! I’ll have to bring her in to give you reading lessons, won’t I? That will be a turn-up for the books, an infant teaching a junior!’
He turns to the class and milks them again and again. He shames me with his English rose, the stuck up little bitch.
From then on I have to go to the retard classes in the afternoons, the dump for the no-hopers, backward kids, clodhoppers . . . That made me start pulling some faces, sat in that room full of thickos, and me the best drawer in the whole school. They told me to cut out the doodling and start drawing the alphabet. Single letters, one at a time, row upon row of the little bastards. You had to sing them out, to repeat them parrot-style.
‘Small, smell, smile . . . Small, smell, smile . . . Small, smell, smile ..
I draw a mousy-mousy, a couple of the little fellows, jolly, full of fun, noses, little whiskers, tails. And then the bell goes and we have to go and hang around the school gate waiting for Johnty’s old man to pick us up.
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