My body had betrayed me. Degenerated into a shape I was deeply ashamed of but which I felt powerless to alter. I sneaked my mother’s appetite suppressants for a while, but they didn’t seem to work. They tasted okay, a bit like chewy caramels. Some days I’d gorge on them, eat a handful in despair, willing them to save me and take me back to how I once had been. My mother must have realised what I was doing but she said nothing. Instead she bought another packet in chocolate flavour, which were even more tempting than the standard vanilla.
The clothes I was having to wear depressed me even more. They always looked strange because my mother had to buy trousers big enough to go around my waist from the menswear department and then lop about a foot off the length and rehem them. It was humiliating having to shop in menswear when all my contemporaries went to boyswear and could buy clothes that fitted perfectly and didn’t need any adjustments. My mother would try to cheer me up. ‘You’re becoming a real little man,’ she’d say. ‘Already shopping in menswear, just like your father.’
It wasn’t consoling. I didn’t want to become a man. I had seen what it was doing to Roy Schluter and I didn’t want to start growing all that hair and getting pimples. I looked bad enough as it was, I didn’t need anything else to mar my appearance. I prayed that I would be a late developer, but in the back of my mind, l knew I wouldn’t be spared. My body was having a huge joke at my expense. It was like the way kids disfigure faces in magazine photos, drawing moustaches and glasses over beautiful women – someone was doing the same thing to me. Was it God? Or had God abandoned me altogether? If so, for what reason? I brooded on this God matter for several weeks, then suddenly one afternoon I realised where I had erred.
My mother was at golf, and I had taken advantage of her absence to sneak into her room and scrutinise the centrefolds in her Cleo magazines. My cock got hard through my jeans (an old pair of my father’s, re-hemmed) and I started rubbing it. Unexpectedly, a glorious sensation began to stir within me, emanating from my crotch but rising up so that my entire body seemed newly sensitised and aglow. I soon realised that the harder I rubbed, the better it felt. I increased my pace, and the sensations correspondingly intensified, building to a peak of such rapture that I flung myself at the magazines, burying my face in the pictures, heaving against the bed, moaning. Then, abruptly, the feelings ebbed away, leaving me limp and groggy, and slipping off my parents’ bed.
I was shocked at myself. I felt as if I’d been possessed. I had been making sounds I didn’t know I could make. What had happened? I stared at the magazines. One of them was a little crumpled with a dribble of saliva upon it. I wiped it off with my sleeve, praying that it wouldn’t stain. I slapped the magazines shut, carefully arranged them in the exact order I’d found them and stowed them away. I smoothed out the bed. Everything looked as it should.
I darted out of the bedroom and into the lounge, turned on the television and settled into a chair, trying to look as if I’d been there for hours, in case someone should suddenly appear. But I couldn’t concentrate on the television. I was so puzzled by what I had just managed to do, I couldn’t think of anything else. As I sat there, I unzipped my jeans to look at myself. My stiffy had shrunken away and offered no clues. It wasn’t until I gained my boarding school education in all things sexual that I realised I must have had a dry orgasm, all the sensations without the ejaculation. I was totally bewildered. Even though the experience had been pleasurable, I felt awed and almost frightened by the frantic urge it had whipped up in me, the way I had humped against the bed to keep the sensation building, my desperate belief that at that moment nothing else mattered.
When in fact it did. I had been in a situation fraught with the danger of discovery. What I’d been doing was utterly nefarious, yet I had lost all sense of caution. All reason. I had completely given myself over to sensation. Now my commonsense flooded back. Guilt sank its claws into me and shook me. I began to shiver at the thought of my foolhardiness and the risk of discovery I had run.
Quickly, I put my cock away. What I had been doing was absolutely taboo. Looking at pictures of people in the nude was bad enough, but to want to look at pictures of men, instead of women, was perverse. I knew it, from the way all the other boys at school behaved and talked. It was Penthouses that should have provided my illicit thrill. That was what the daring boys at school like Arch Sampson and Peter Hammer were always bragging about, the Penthouses they had at home.
Sometimes they’d sneak some cut-out pictures to school and show them round at playtime in the privacy of the old tennis pavilion. They charged a twenty cent admission to come in for a look. But when I looked at those pictures I didn’t feel the same excitement that they seemed to generate in the other boys. My interest was curious but utterly dispassionate. The only time I felt like I’d actually gotten my twenty cents worth, was when Arch had produced some pictures with a guy in them as well. That time, I got a stiffy. Arch had a full spread of photographs, five or six pages, which told a story set in outer space.
An astronaut had crash landed on a strange planet where women frolicked naked together, kissing and slapping each other playfully. Two of these big-breasted alien women pounced upon the astronaut with mischievous delight, stripped him of his spacesuit, leered over him, teased him with their bodies and their own provocative intimacy. The spread was called ‘Lust in Space’.
I was fascinated by those pictures. I tried to buy them off Arch, but he refused. Later that afternoon, Arch seized me and pushed me up against the cloakroom pegs, threatening me with his fists if I didn’t give them back. ‘Give what back?’ I protested.
‘Those pictures. I had them hidden in the broken lining of my parka and now they’re gone.’
I felt the loss as keenly as Arch. ‘Really? Are you sure they’re not there? That’s terrible. Have you looked properly?’
Arch studied me suspiciously. He knew I had ambitions as an actor. But this was no act. I was genuinely dismayed. I had hoped to come up with a swap alluring enough to tempt Arch into parting with them. I’d even considered the cow’s tail which he’d shown an interest in a couple of months back.
‘You don’t think the teacher’s found them?’
‘Nope. If it’d been the teacher, he’d have hauled me into the staff room and given me the strap by now. Someone snitched them. You sure it wasn’t you Fatso?’
‘Nope. Cross my heart, Arch. Honest.’
I cursed myself for not thinking of doing exactly that. ‘Who else could it have been?’ Arch mumbled. ‘Maybe Roy the Freak. He’s always doing sneaky things to piss me off and pretending he didn’t do anything. It must’ve been him.’
Arch tore across the playground to where Roy was sitting, leaning against one of the rugby posts, staring out into space. I watched Arch circle him, accusing him. Roy just stared past him, ignoring Arch as if he was some pesky fly or something. If Roy had taken the pictures, I wondered if he’d consider showing them to me.
That afternoon, with the blaring television failing to distract me, I began to feel more and more alarmed. Why was it that all the other boys at school gloated and chuckled over pictures of naked women and I felt nothing, nothing but an almighty detachment from the spectacle, and from my peers? While my fascination with my mother’s Cleos was becoming more and more extreme. Every month I waited with increasing impatience, for the new issue to arrive in the mail. Once it had, I could hardly bear to wait for the next opportunity to arise when I would be alone in the house and be able to sneak a look. The anticipation was agony, yet it thrilled me to the core.
Then it occurred to me. I was being punished for coveting these pictures of naked men. It was a revelation. Suddenly, it all made sense. My physical degeneration had coincided with the blossoming of my fascination with men, wanting to see them naked and touch them. It had to be God punishing me for my evil thoughts. He’d become disgusted by what I was doing and had abandoned me to ruin.
It seemed a likely enough theory. But I wanted
to know conclusively. I wanted it to be confirmed, to read it in a book or be assured by an adult that it was so. For the first time I wondered about being Catholic. I had seen in movies how Catholics could go to confession, spill out their troubles and be forgiven their sins. But even as the thought occurred to me, I knew that even if I was Catholic, I would never be able to confess to the desires that racked me. I didn’t understand them entirely, but I knew enough to realise it was something that must be kept secret. These thoughts were shameful. No one must ever know.
My theory of punishment obsessed me. I decided to make some discreet enquiries and gather a few opinions.
I tried my mother first. She was embroiled in a spiritual quest of her own, which most of the Serpentine county considered thoroughly bizarre. She had renounced the Presbyterian church in Clayburn and was consulting clairvoyants in Dunedin and buying strange books with titles such as Cosmic Lover and Crystal Pleasure. She had also taken to practising yoga on the sundeck, much to my father’s horror. ‘Everyone can see you,’ he protested.
That wasn’t strictly true. Our nearest neighbours were two miles down the road and cars rarely drove past our house, maybe three or four a day at the most. Probably my father was concerned about the families living over the other side of the valley, with their high-powered binoculars. But my mother ignored him, and continued to entangle herself in complicated positions, frowning at the manual she had open by her side. Sometimes Babe and I joined her, but I was too fat and inflexible to mould myself into even the most basic of positions.
It was while she was out on the sundeck practising, that I approached her with my question. ‘Mum,’ I ventured. She struggled to maintain her position, gave up, collapsed and sat up looking irritated. ‘You know I don’t like being called that,’ she snapped.
My mother and Aunt Evelyn had recently decided that they would no longer be called Mum now that there was a deodorant frequently advertised on television called Mum. Of course, it had been Aunt Evelyn’s idea to boycott Mum. ‘I will not share the same name as a deodorant,’ she told my mother, who had agreed.
Lou was supposed to call Aunt Evelyn ‘mother’. It sounded so formal and cold that Lou had refused and declared that she was boycotting ‘mother’. Meanwhile, my mother insisted that she be called Reebie, which neither Babe nor I could manage to say. The upshot was that we had no name for our mothers and had to clear our throats or tap them on the arm to get their attention.
‘Um … I have a question,’ I said nervously.
‘Yes?’ said my mother.
‘How would God punish someone if he didn’t like them for some reason?’
My mother stared at me. ‘What an odd question. Do you mean, the Christian god?’
‘Isn’t He the only one?’
‘It depends what you believe.’
‘Oh,’ I said, considering this. ‘So is there a sort of choice of gods?’
‘Not in the Serpentine there isn’t,’ said my mother. ‘But certainly in a large city, there are lots of different religions with their own gods, as well as people with beliefs that aren’t governed by any religion as such.’
This answer was extremely puzzling. ‘And are some of the other gods nicer than the one we have here?’ I asked.
My mother pursed her lips. ‘There are some that aren’t so obsessed with guilt. What makes you think God is punishing you anyway?’
‘I’m not talking about me,’ I said quickly. ‘I was just wondering.’
I turned away from her, not wishing to continue the conversation. I felt too transparent. But my mother persisted. ‘If I was having a difficult time in my life,’ she said loudly, demanding my attention. ‘Rather than interpreting it as a punishment, I’d try and look at it as an experience I could learn something from, a bit like a lesson in school. Does that make sense?’
I nodded, not daring to look at her and began to walk away. ‘I have some books on this sort of philosophy if you want to read them,’ she offered.
‘Okay,’ I said, walking away as quickly as I could.
I knew her eyes were following me, trying to work out what had inspired my concern.
That night, when I went to bed, I found a couple of her new books stacked on my bedside table. Over the next few nights, I flicked through them, but found it difficult to accept them as authoritative. How could you compare a book published last year with the Bible that had been around for centuries?
I decided to ask my father for his opinion. ‘If God wanted to punish someone? He’d give them a wife like your mother and a son that can’t play rugby, that’s what He’d do.’
And my father went off to grease the tractor.
I was reluctant to try Aunt Evelyn, but my father’s answer had been so inadequate and my mother’s new ideas so dubious. As soon as I’d asked her, I wished I hadn’t. That same superior smile spread across her features, reminding me of her past betrayals. ‘Whatever you do,’ Aunt Evelyn said urgently, ‘don’t ask your mother a question like that. She’s got strange ideas on that subject and she’ll fill your head with nonsense. Come to me and I’ll set you straight.’
Aunt Evelyn claimed that God didn’t punish people, but that He might make things difficult for them so that they came to a deeper understanding of their sins. ‘But how can you be sure what’s a sin and what isn’t?’ I asked.
‘You can ask me,’ said Aunt Evelyn, waiting expectantly.
I said nothing.
The silence drew out for so long it became embarrassing. I could feel myself blushing. Even Aunt Evelyn began to look awkward, and then doubtful, as if she’d begun to change her mind. Her expression seemed to say that if my sins were so unspeakable, perhaps she didn’t want to hear them after all. Finally, I screwed up the courage to excuse myself, thanking her for her advice. I was surprised that she let me go without demanding a confession out of me. I started to run, in case she called me back.
Grampy was my last chance. He snorted at my question. ‘God,’ he spat. ‘There’s no such thing in my opinion. People are always wanting to blame their own mistakes and problems on fate or God, instead of facing up to them and doing something about them. Listen to me, boy, if you want to get on in this life, you’ll forget about God and do what has to be done.’
I was shocked by Grampy’s forthright advice. It only made everything even more confusing.
After days of wrestling with all these different theories, I finally decided to conduct an experiment. I resolved not to look at the next Cleo when it arrived. In return for this sacrifice, I expected my weight to plummet. I laid all of this out to God one night, kneeling down beside the bed, hands pressed together in the approved position for divine communication.
After the Cleo had been delivered, it took all my resolve not to peek at it. Frustratingly, there were ample opportunities for me to do exactly that. My mother was away so often that month, always finding an excuse to go to Dunedin. I seemed to be alone in the house so often, yet time and time again I resisted. I had made my pact with God and I was determined to reap my reward.
A second issue of Cleo arrived. That night, after my bath I climbed onto the scales. I hadn’t weighed myself for a month and was confident of a substantial loss. I couldn’t believe it when the needle on the scales finally registered its verdict. I had put on a quarter of a stone.
I was furious. I had resisted temptation for an entire month and that was what I got for my sacrifice. It was all the proof I needed. Grampy was right. There was no God.
Later that night, I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom when they seemed safely settled in front of the television and Babe was in the bath. This was an act fraught with risk. I had never dared to look at the Cleos unless I was sure I was completely alone in the house with no prospect of being disturbed.
My hand trembled when I reached for the magazine on the top of the pile. Already I was hard at the mere thought of what I would see. The magazine fell open at the centrefold and I spread it out. Then I reached for th
e previous month’s issue and opened that out as well. I drank in the sight of the two new centrefolds. Double the pleasure. And double the guilt.
All I could think of was the prospect of being caught in the act. Yet my cock seemed to thrive on this very fear. It had never been so hard. It ached with desire. My heartbeat resounded through me. It seemed to throb in my head. For a moment I felt dizzy. That terrified me. If I fainted, discovery would be certain. I stuffed the magazines under the bed and ran to my bedroom.
That night I dreamt of the male centrefolds. They rose up in my mind, gloriously naked, revealing everything. I knew I could touch them if I only dared and although I longed to more than anything else, I never managed to. Some circumstance in my dream would always nonsensically intervene, or I would simply fail to steel my resolve and the moment would slip away. Even my dreams were confined by my guilt.
The next morning these frustrating fantasies would haunt me. I cursed myself for not doing in the sanctuary of my dreams – where I could never be spied upon – what I was too scared to do in reality. I raged against my own restraint. I explained it to myself, over and over in my mind, trying to convince whatever was holding me back how unnecessary it was. But I couldn’t dissuade my own guilt. It was buried much too deep for that.
8
Chapter 8
Sport was the lifeblood of the Serpentine. It was a passion that was both universal and compulsory. Even if you weren’t good at any sport in particular, you played and you got good.
I was not the sporting type.
I possessed little natural inclination for it and certainly none of the ardour that sport, and rugby in particular, inspired in all the other boys. Nevertheless, I was obliged to play. I had the legacy of a father who had been the captain of his high school first fifteen to live up to. Rugby was sacred to him. It inspired a reverence and fervour nothing else could ever approach. The one time my father would actually stop work (which meant everybody else could stop too) was when the rugby was on television.
50 Ways of Saying Fabulous Book 1 20th Anniversary Edition Page 9