It's Not What You Think

by Chris Evans

  ‘Thanks for that,’ I thought. ‘Please die soon.’

  The next day at school I had to wear my old specs again, a far cry from the Reactolite Rapides that had said farewell the night before—these were altogether much more NHS. The weird kid with ginger hair from the grammar school had just got a little weirder.

  We had rehearsals for Oliver! scheduled again later that day and all I could think about was what was going to happen when I saw Tina. I couldn’t concentrate on my first lesson, I felt like such a loser. The only thing I knew for sure was that I must learn to fight—but first I had to endure breaktime.

  I wandered off into a corner of the playground and was in that frame of mind where nothing matters, nothing that has gone before, nothing that exists now and nothing that may exist in the future. I was numb to the core and also really confused. I had done nothing wrong, had been nearly half killed by an idiot and his big knuckles, yet it was me who felt like the schmuck.

  My poor old swollen nose was an inch away from the school wall. I was staring at a brick now, hoping breaktime would never end. If I had to stare at this wall for the rest of eternity I wouldn’t mind as long as I didn’t have to face Tina again.

  It was one of those moments like when you climb into a bath and can put life on hold until you decide to climb out again. I recognised I was both at peace and yet totally fucked at the same time, but as long as I didn’t move from the exact position I was in—ever—I would be fine. For anything else I would need a miracle. Which was, in fact, what was about to happen.

  ‘Er, Chris…hi.’

  It couldn’t be.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  It was—it was Tina’s voice.

  Slowly I turned around and sure enough the rest of the world was still there and in the middle of it all, larger than life with the sweetest, most benevolent expression on her face, framed perfectly, was Tina.

  ‘Yeah, I’m OK thanks—just checking out the wall.’

  ‘I know, I’ve been watching you for the last few minutes. I’d been trying to find you since break started and then I saw you over here.’

  ‘Oh…’ (Brilliant reply, Chris, simply brilliant. That’s how you get your girl, with a weak and pathetic ‘Oh.’)

  ‘I heard what happened last night and I’m really sorry, he’s such an idiot.’

  ‘Oh…’ (I was getting good at this ‘oh’ business.)

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend, you know, at least definitely not now. I was sort of seeing him but not really, I mean, we hadn’t ever done anything.’

  ‘Er…I see.’ (Hey, look at that, I was evolving, like prehistoric man—only slower.)

  She was still smiling, she really did have the greatest smile and she had more to say.

  ‘So now he’s not my boyfriend, that means we could go out together…if you liked?’

  If—I—liked?

  IF I LIKED?

  Of course I liked. Tina, I was in love with you.

  ‘But…’

  Here’s a little tip, whenever anyone gives you or offers you something you want, something you have longed for, something you have only ever been able to dream about before—do not—whatever you do—start your next sentence with the word…but.

  It’s pointless, there is no need, it’s not heroic or grateful sounding. To be meek at these times serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. It just sounds wet and feeble, it introduces tedium into the proceedings and, above all, it’s completely and altogether stupid.

  ‘…but…’ (Aggggghhhhh!!! Shut up, you cock.)

  ‘But what?’

  But nothing, you prick. Say—‘But nothing.’

  (The only word that should ever really follow ‘but’ is the word ‘nothing’, then the world would be a better place and we would all get more things done and there would be less wars.) Tell her you love her and you love her smell and you always have and you always will and that you would walk over hot coals just to be able to get her back her rough book.

  ‘But…’ and then it came, the most ridiculous self-pitying, crap line of all time, ‘…why would you want to go out with me?’

  Genius.

  ‘I always have, ever since we first met. I think you’re really nice and funny. I was going to ask you anyway. I just had to sort out the thing with Shit For Brains.’

  ‘Ha ha, that’s what I call him.’

  ‘Ha ha—see, we already have something in common…So what do you think?’

  ‘I think yeah, absolutely.’ This was more like it. Acceptance is everything in most occasions.

  ‘Brill, so I’ll wait for you at home time by the gates then. You can walk me back to ours.’

  Wow bloody wee. She was amazing, different class, she had sealed the deal—almost.

  ‘Alright,’ I said, ‘I would love to do that.’

  ‘I would love you to do that.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘Fab,’ she said.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘Well…’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss your new girlfriend?’

  Oh my goodness, this girl was the tops, the nuts, it didn’t get any better than this and if it did I didn’t want it.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I would love to do that.’

  ‘I would love you to do that.’

  And then we kissed—briefly but softly and beautifully. We pulled apart and smiled.

  ‘Should we do it again?’ I asked.

  ‘Yehhhh,’ said Tina enthusiastically.

  This time we went for it, a full-on playground snog and it was earth-shattering. Tina was totally into it, I was totally into it. Unfortunately the teacher on duty at the time was not so much into it.

  ‘Can you please stop that kissing, you two?’ said the master in question.

  When we pulled apart I remember him being visibly shocked to see who it was. As I said before, Tina was a model pupil.

  ‘And Tina, you should know better.’

  Without missing a beat, she replied, ‘Sorry sir, we weren’t really kissing, we were practising for later.’

  And with that, the coolest girl ever to walk Planet Earth grabbed me by the tie and said, ‘Come on Chrissy, this way.’

  Shit the bed, I had a girlfriend and she was the greatest woman in the world.

  Top 10 Schoolboy Errors

  10 Setting my pyjamas on fire whilst playing with matches. I was still in them at the time

  9 Not being grateful for my first big bike one Christmas morning (I went on to love it)

  8 Not going to see Queen at the Liverpool Empire (big big big mistake)

  7 Smashing my toy garage up with a hammer in a make-believe bombing raid

  6 Playing willy guitar and getting caught by my mum

  5 Lending my Scalextric to Andy next door and never asking for it back

  4 Thinking Mrs Tranter wanted to go out with me even though she was married with two children and I was only twelve

  3 Thinking Jill from the chemist ever even noticed me at all

  2 Listening to Mandy S. in the playground that day

  1 Succumbing to the allure of the dreaded netball skirt

  Tina and I were to enjoy the most idyllic of teenage courtships—sexless but beautiful. Maybe it was beautiful because it was sexless, I don’t know. Sure we messed around a bit but no more than that. What we did do, however, was love each other madly—twenty-four hours a day madly, seven days a week madly. Madly, madly, madly.

  What is it about ‘first love’ that makes it so incredibly special? It should be bottleable. (And while we’re at it—why doesn’t the word bottleable exist? We need to be able to bottle more good things in life, what with all the terrible things that are going on. But how do we stand a chance, when the word that defines its very possibility is not even in our language? If things that can be negotiated are negotiable and things that can be done are doable, why can’t things that can be bottled be bottleable.)

  Anyway I
digress—I used to see Tina all the time. Before school, during all breaks and lunchtime, after school, every evening—usually at hers, and then every weekend. And when I wasn’t seeing her I was thinking about her. She consumed my mind, my heart, my soul, my very spirit, my whole being. I couldn’t get enough of her and she couldn’t get enough of me. We did everything together—except the rude stuff, as I’ve just mentioned but for some reason felt the need to mention again. And we kissed, boy did we kiss, we kissed all the time. We couldn’t imagine ever not kissing and ever being without each other. We were going to die together and we didn’t care if that day was tomorrow or the next, as long as we were side by side.

  I remember one night Tina had to go off to Manchester to watch a play with her class as part of her English literature coursework. As I walked her to the coach, we were both in floods of tears at the thought of being parted for even just a few hours. It was as if one of us was going off to war never to return. We were inseparable yet we were being separated. Who had dared dream up this cruel fate?

  Who had thought to deny us our usual evening round at ‘hers’ snogging furiously on the bean bag in her parents’ spare room, listening to Queen’s Greatest Hits and Meat Loaf ’s Bat Out of Hell as well as, for some strange reason, an old King’s Singers album! These three vinyl wonders were the soundtrack to our very own love story.

  Tina was so sophisticated and clever and funny and energetic; her completeness was her beauty. And again that smile, so big and warm and welcoming. Her joy and abandon was infectious, she was naughty, too, cheeky and fruity in a way. I was sure this naughty side of her was only ever revealed to me—I used to think about that a lot, especially when we were at school and she was being the darling of the classroom. Little did they know what could also make Tina tick. They thought they knew but they didn’t—that was our secret. God, I loved her.

  I loved her so much that I went above and beyond the requirements of a normal teenage romance by bestowing upon her the lofty position of becoming the subject of my first ever padded greetings card purchase.

  Padded greetings cards were a mysterious but wonderful phenomenon. They could always be found sat majestically on the top shelves of the greetings cards sections in most newsagents or stationers. Maybe they still can, I don’t know. I have long since stopped looking for them. By the time I left school I was all padded out.

  Ridiculously big—even the small ones—they were made of shimmery silk-like material, usually consisting of a garish floral design, though what they were actually padded with I never found out—I suspect it was highly flammable. I wonder how many house fires in the late Seventies and early Eighties were down to the accidental setting alight of a massive padded card during some kind of revelry or other. ‘Here darling, here’s a magnificent padded card, cost me an arm and a leg it did. Happy birthday and make the most of it. It could be your last if Auntie May’s fag ash gets too close to it later on.’

  These great padded cards came in big flat white boxes instead of envelopes and they were expensive, like, really expensive—maybe a fiver or more! But Tina was worth it, every penny. I bought her several of the monstrosities—I wonder if she still has them. I have a feeling she might, along with a smoke alarm, I hope.

  So how does such a perfect, unblemished relationship come to an end? We’d never argued, we’d never stopped wanting to be together, we were the bestest of friendly friends and we still hadn’t done the real rude stuff.

  It’s simple and predictable and the answer is…

  Temptation.

  The Bible may be dodgy in all sorts of other areas but it’s pretty much bang on the money when it comes to explaining the evil that is temptation and the devastation it can cause.

  The destruction of peoples, nations and in this case, as far as I was concerned, the most beautiful love affair the world had ever seen.

  The apple is there—don’t eat the apple. But more importantly don’t even think about eating the apple. Basically, just forget apples exist and preferably as quickly as possible.

  The infection with temptation is perpetuated by the dreaded ‘thought’. One spends far too much time in this life of ours thinking about what we haven’t got as opposed to enjoying what we have got. What’s that about? I’ve been doing it for years, I still do! It’s like a disease.

  Temptation for me came in the form of the netball captain. Her name was Karen. Not the Karen from the junior school that took us to the park but another, more sporty, Karen—out of nowhere came Karen II.

  Here’s what happened.

  Tina and I were happily insulated in our bubble full of love and loveliness and then one breaktime I was left on my own in the playground as Tina had some extra work to catch up on—I was alone, I was vulnerable and as far as temptation was concerned I was the ripest cherry on the tree. The netball captain and her ridiculously short netball skirt were waiting to pounce.

  One of Karen’s ‘friends’ approached me.

  ‘Where’s Tina?’ she said.

  ‘Oh she’s doing some extra work,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh right, so you’re still with her then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Only…you know Karen fancies you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Karen, captain of the netball team, she fancies you. None of us get why but she says she thinks you’re cute and if anything ever happened to you and Tina, she would definitely go out with you.’

  And with that she was off.

  Little did I know what had just happened: the wind of change had visited me, silently and deftly.

  I was both rocked and shocked. The Karen in question—Karen II—although captain of the netball team, was actually quite modest and quiet in comparison to the rest of the female jocks in the main gang. They liked her because she was good at sport, by far and away better than anyone else. Sport was her ticket to the back seat of the bus and the big girls were more than glad to have her on board. She also had the most spectacular thighs.

  This was the first sign of foreboding, I should have known. I hadn’t thought about Karen’s thighs ever before, but now the mere mention of her name instantly conjured up a snapshot of those muscly and impressive haunches, so adept at springing her forth, up and high to net another victorious goal.

  I started to notice her and her thighs around more, like when you buy a car and suddenly you see them everywhere. I would smile at her and she would smile back. What was I doing? To smile at the enemy is to sleep with the enemy, you fool. And although Karen II wasn’t a bad person, she was the enemy. She threatened everything I loved, everything that brought me joy—Tina, her smell, her mouth, her mum and dad’s spare room—her mum and dad themselves, our beloved bean bag, Queen’s Greatest Hits, Bat Out of Hell and even The King’s Singers.

  I was infected—the sickness had taken hold. All the symptoms I now recognise started to fall into place, lining up obediently, one behind the other, like a well-organised army getting ready to attack. I was surrounded by my inevitable doom. It was only a matter of time before I committed my first true act of betrayal—I began to compare!

  I began to compare my beautiful Tina with the imposter that was Karen II, skipper of the netball team. What a lowly and despicable thing to do.

  And even worse, I began to look for areas where Tina might be weak and Karen might be strong—rarely was it the other way round. When I was with Tina, I would almost wait for her to do something that suggested a chink in her armour, all the while looking for future reasons for us to split up, all the time comparing her against countless shiny images of Karen II gliding through the air in that damned navy-blue pleated PE skirt. Thinking about it now makes my stomach churn. This is not the behaviour of a decent person, a loving boyfriend, a doting partner. What a total loser! What were you thinking? Be grateful for what you’ve got, you fool. In fact, more than that, get down on your knees and thank God you’ve got the greatest girlfriend a boy could wish for. But it was not to be. I had become blind to the perfe
ction that was our love and I was hellbent on tearing it apart.

  Tina’s heart was pure and true. She had given me everything and I had never been happier, but I was completely infatuated with the thighs of another. And this is what people do: especially blokes, they see a new nest and start to create an agenda that will justify them leaving their current one, even though if they were to stop for a second, they would realise there’s no better place in the universe than where they are now.

  The final act of the whole sorry tale began with a secret note and talk of, ‘If you don’t tell anyone I won’t.’ Karen II wasn’t as backwards at coming forwards as I had first imagined. Her mum and dad were going away for the weekend and she had invited me to come round and check out their living room carpet in their absence. After a whole night of rolling around on some of the finest shagpile, there was no going back.

  I was now with Karen II.

  I had moved on and my first true love was over.

  You only get one mum and you only get one first love and the passing of the relationship I had with Tina is a thing of gargantuan sadness. What can I say? I broke her heart and to this day I wish I never had.

  Tina and Chris: The Epilogue

  Two days later, Karen II dumped me.

  Not five, or four, or three but two! Two days!!

  I suppose it could have been worse, like one or none. (I wonder if anyone has ever dumped anyone in no days.) Karen II said she’d made a dreadful mistake and that she was sorry and that she thought I should try to get back with Tina.

  ‘Well, thanks for that astute piece of advice, Karen, but I think you may just have ruined my life!’

  For the record, I think the real reason she dumped me was more because she found me a terrible kisser.

  I’m not bragging but the thing was, I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t have been because Tina and myself had been getting off and on each other’s lips with great success for the best part of the last twelve months. I think it was more the case that Karen and I together were terrible kissers, dreadful in fact—just awful.

  It takes two to tango and it takes two to play tonsil tennis, but preferably two tongues on the same wavelength.