He really wasn’t even all that fat.
‘Yeah,’ they said, ‘you keep telling yourself that.’
He really wasn’t even all that fat. Just sort of … big. If he’d been more coordinated, he could have been a plausible rugby player, if his school ever played rugby, which it most certainly did not. But there were definitely other guys in his year who were fatter than him.
‘They wear it differently,’ his breasts said. ‘More compactly, more rounded. They look like bouncers. You look like a big fat baby.’
‘Shut up,’ he said.
‘A big fat baby girl,’ they sneered. ‘Amazing that what’s so nice on a girl is so hideous on a boy.’
Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were particularly bad when he was in class. Week after week after week.
‘Who wants to read Romeo?’ Mr Duffy asked.
‘We do! We do!’ shouted Stewart’s breasts as he sunk down into his seat, crossing his arms against them. Muffled, they still shouted. ‘Two Romeos right here!’
‘How about you, Stewart?’ Mr Duffy said, and Stewart had a flash of terror so clear, he coughed, which Mr Duffy took as a yes. ‘Grand,’ he said, setting the text on Stewart’s desk. There was some muffled laughter at this. Stewart glanced up towards Juliet, already standing at the front of the class. Niamh Connelly, beautiful, tall, now looking anywhere in the room except in Stewart’s direction.
‘You got bigger ones than her anyway,’ his breasts said.
‘Shut up,’ Stewart hissed under his breath.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Mr Duffy said, suddenly stern. ‘Up at the front, Stewart. Now.’
‘Everyone’s looking!’ his breasts wailed as Stewart dragged his way to the front of the class. ‘They’re looking at us! Hey, everyone!’
Stewart’s face went red.
‘I think Stewart might be unwell, Mr Duffy,’ Andy Jackson said from a desk as Stewart passed. ‘He’s got some horrible rash all over his head.’
‘One more word, Andy,’ Mr Duffy warned.
Why does being defended always make me go even redder? Stewart thought as he reached the front. He kept his eyes firmly on the text in his hand.
‘They’re all laughing,’ his breasts said.
‘Or getting ready to laugh,’ one of them added, in a rare solo moment.
‘This is going to be horrible!’ they said, together again, gleefully.
‘In your own time, Stewart,’ Mr Duffy said.
Stewart felt himself go even hotter, sweat dripping down the middle of his chest, making his shirt stick to his breasts. ‘Like a sauna in here!’ they said.
‘Romeo, Romeo,’ Stewart mumbled, ‘wherefore art thou, Romeo?’
The laugh from the class, both so expected but also somehow surprising, made him look up. Andy Jackson was laughing openly, and everyone else seemed to be smirking, except for Sylvie Weeks, with her flaming red hair and face full of freckles, who sat in the desk just in front of Stewart, head down, apparently concentrating on her book so hard Stewart wondered for a moment if she was trying to light it on fire with her mind.
‘Try again,’ Mr Duffy said.
Stewart didn’t know what was going on. He looked over to Niamh, who was still staring furiously away from him, but now with a foot-tapping sense of the injustice she was being put through. He looked at the text again, the words dancing across the page like ants from a kicked nest.
‘Romeo, Romeo,’ he read, ‘wherefore art thou –’
He stopped, realising his error, as the laughing of the class grew again.
‘That’s my line,’ Niamh breathed to him, angrily, too late to be of any help.
His breasts were tittering uncontrollably. ‘Curtain call for fat Juliet!’ they crowed. ‘Hey! We could play the balcony!’
‘Niamh starts,’ Mr Duffy said, also too late. ‘You’re a few lines down, Stewart.’
‘Aw, Mr Duffy,’ Andy Jackson said, ‘he’s clearly meant to be Juliet. He’s a right busty wench, isn’t he?’
‘Yellow card, Andy,’ Mr Duffy said, imposing the second highest classroom penalty on him.
But for a third time, too late to be of any use.
* * *
Stewart lay in bed, trying to calculate what kind of job he could get and how long minimum wage would take to add up to liposuction.
‘Just eat less!’ his breasts berated him. ‘Do some exercise!’
‘Hey!’ Colin or Barclay said to Barclay or Colin. ‘You trying to do us out of a job?’
‘It’s never going to happen,’ the other one said, ‘it never does.’
‘I could just cut you off myself,’ Stewart said.
‘Never going to happen,’ the breasts said again. ‘You’re way too big of a baby.’
They’re probably right, Stewart thought, and his breasts agreed noisily.
‘You’re ugly,’ they said.
‘You’re fat,’ they said.
‘No one will ever want you,’ they said.
‘You’re right,’ Stewart said. ‘You’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right.’
‘Well, there’s no need to cry about it,’ his breasts said.
The next day – and probably for eternity – he became Juliet the Busty Wench at school. Sometimes just the Busty Wench, sometimes just Juliet, but it all added up to the same thing.
‘Shut up,’ he’d mutter, not sure if he was talking to the person who’d called him the name or to his breasts for the delight they took in it.
‘Romeo, Romeo,’ they’d shout to each other in a faux girly voice, ‘wherefore art thou, Romeo?’
‘Hey, Juliet,’ Andy Jackson called to him from down the hall on his way to English class. ‘Think fast!’
He threw something. Instinctively, Stewart put his hand up to catch it, exactly one second before he realised what it was.
Too late, he was already holding it.
‘I thought maybe a C cup,’ Andy said, fake sincerely, as the boys around him laughed and laughed.
‘Outrage!’ Stewart’s breasts screamed. ‘We’re at least a D!’
Stewart said nothing, just flung the bra from himself as if it had caught fire. He turned his back on the laughter that was disappearing into the classroom. He faced the wall, his skin burning red, his fists pulled so tight he was in danger of cutting his palms with his fingernails.
‘Dude,’ his breasts said, a little warily, ‘calm down. Can’t you take a joke?’
Stewart raised his hands as if to strike them, as if to beat his chest flat, no matter how much it would hurt, no matter how impossible it was.
‘Steady on there, Stew,’ his breasts said.
‘Shut up,’ he hissed. ‘Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!’
He glanced around fast, suddenly aware of how loud he’d spoken.
But the hallway was empty. Class had started. Everyone had gone in except him. He was alone.
With himself.
English class awaited. More reading probably. More being ignored by Niamh. More not being ignored by Andy Jackson. More obliviousness from Mr Duffy.
‘Hey,’ his breasts said. ‘Where are you going?’
Because he was already walking down the hallway in the opposite direction.
* * *
There was a large, circular building out on the grounds that the school insisted on calling ‘the cricket pavilion’, despite no one having played cricket there in any recent century. Full of alcoves and shaded on one side by trees, it was a truant’s dream, but it was also a Grade II listed building: the school couldn’t do anything about it except occasionally make sweeps for the sixth formers who went there to smoke. Stewart rushed towards it, out of breath faster than he’d like to have been (‘You’re hardly Mo Farah,’ his breasts chuckled), and moved behind it, out of sight of the main school buildings, sitting down on one of the benches in the alcoves. He placed himself so he could avoid being seen by both the staff from the main office window and the groundsmen currently repaintin
g the football pitch stripes.
It was only a matter of time, though; he’d certainly be caught, but for the moment, at least it wasn’t English class.
‘We’ll still be with you when you go back in, you know,’ his breasts said. ‘There’s no way out.’
‘You tell lies,’ Stewart said to them.
‘Lies you believe,’ they said, ‘which is kind of all we need, eh?’
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Just shut up.’
To his surprise, for a moment, they did. He sighed like his mum on holiday and looked out across the green. He thought of going home, but that would mean having to give his dad a reason, as it was his day to work at home and watch Neddy. He could claim stomach illness, he thought, and there were worse ways to spend a day than watching cartoons with –
‘Shut up,’ he heard.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ he said down to his chest.
‘Neither did we,’ his breasts said.
But he heard it again. ‘Shut up.’ He stood, almost involuntarily. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up.’
There, to his left. He crept to the edge of the little alcove and looked around.
Sylvie Weeks was sitting on the next bench over.
‘Shut up,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ Stewart said. Her head snapped up, her eyes wet with furious tears. ‘I didn’t think there was anyone else here.’
He couldn’t quite read the confused expression on her face, as if she was uncertain for a moment what she was seeing as she looked at him.
Stewart said, ‘I didn’t mean to bother –’
‘He’s staring at us,’ a nasty voice said. ‘Can’t even look at your face. Just looking at us, all over your body.’
Stewart blinked in surprise. ‘Huh?’
Sylvie’s eyes grew even wider, a different kind of shock taking over her expression.
‘This girl simple-minded or something?’ Stewart’s breasts said. ‘She’d still never agree to go out with you … ’
They trailed off because Sylvie was staring at Stewart’s chest. He instinctively put up a hand and pulled his uniform jacket shut.
‘You can hear that?!’ both he and Sylvie said at exactly the same time.
‘She can hear us!’ his breasts said, delighted. ‘She’s staring right at us!’
‘He’s staring right at us!’ the other voice said, and Stewart saw Sylvie put her hand up to her neck.
‘What’s going on?’ Stewart said.
Sylvie just shook her head in disbelief. ‘But you don’t even have freckles,’ she said.
‘Freckles?’ Stewart asked.
‘Freckles?!’ his breasts said. ‘No, lass, he’s got two great big cow udders under here.’
Stewart winced, but Sylvie’s face changed. She just said, ‘Oh,’ in a way that seemed to grasp something Stewart was missing. ‘Oh.’
‘Oh, what?’ he asked.
She sighed and wiped her eyes dry, gathering herself with a kind of vulnerable primness. ‘If I were to ask you,’ she said, ‘what part of yourself you hated the most … ?’
Stewart just looked at her for a moment, then his shoulders slumped as he understood, too. ‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ she said, sadly.
‘But what’s wrong with your freckles?’ Stewart said.
He heard an outbreak of uproarious laughter from the other voice, and Sylvie blushed. Stewart blushed, too, on her behalf. ‘At least you’re not fat,’ he rushed out with.
‘Fat?’ she said, surprised. ‘You’re not fat. You’re just … big.’
‘Fat,’ his breasts said. ‘That’s what she means by big.’
‘Only a fat boy would say there’s nothing wrong with us,’ her freckles said.
‘Shut up,’ Sylvie said, closing her eyes in embarrassment.
Stewart felt like he should probably leave, that that’s what she probably wanted, privacy, a place to suffer this humiliation alone, just like he had …
But maybe not.
He was surprised a little to find himself sitting down next to her, his hand still holding his uniform jacket shut, not that it had made much difference up to now. Sylvie opened her eyes, but didn’t say anything.
She didn’t ask him to leave, though.
‘I thought it was just me,’ he finally said.
‘Everybody’s got something,’ Sylvie said.
‘Do you think that’s true?’
She looked angry for a moment. ‘It had better be.’
They sat in silence. Then Stewart realised it actually was silence. Sylvie glanced over at him. She’d noticed it, too.
‘It won’t last,’ she whispered, though there was a clear hope in it that she was wrong. ‘They’ll start back up again.’
‘Probably,’ he whispered back.
But it lingered, the silence, and they sat, still, afraid that moving might break it.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours, but what was probably only a few minutes – though everyone knows a few minutes is all it ever takes for the world to spin just a little differently – he said, almost to himself, ‘You know, I’ve always really liked freckles.’
Which was all it took to set everything talking again.
But …
His eyes met hers as the voices berated away, and as she realised it, too, she gave him a surprised smile.
He found himself giving one back.
Did his breasts ever shut up as he grew older and kept meaning to eat more vegetables and do more exercise? No. Did her freckles, no matter how many layers of sunscreen she applied in an attempt at melanin birth control? Nope, not for the entire rest of the life they were both quietly astonished to find themselves spending with each other.
But when they were together, her hand in his, and they were looking into each other’s eyes again, and the sometimes loud, sometimes ugly noise of the world surrounded them, well, then, at those moments, who could possibly have been interested in listening?
Upfront
ERIN O’CONNOR
The first time I became aware of my boobs was when I went walking with my friend’s parents. I was horrified aged eight when my friend Lorraine stripped to the waist and marched through the park with utter indifference to my mortification. As a later indication of my prudishness, I struck up a painful pros and cons conversation with her mum and dad about why I should leave my top on. They were amused and exasperated all at once – I was adamant that my très bien T-shirt would remain faithfully in place and relieved that my moral alignment had once again been restored.
It’s not that I wasn’t familiar with boobs. As a small Catholic child I saw Jesus’s boobs every day and sometimes my mother’s, admittedly when her cleverly concealing face cloth slipped during bath time. Thankfully they weren’t hairy like my dad’s, but sort of eager and buoyant with a will of their own – prompting both accelerated fear and excitement in equal measure. Ours was a prominently female household and growing up with Mum and my two sisters meant that tits and bits were unavoidable (I sigh on behalf of Dad). I remember my big sis Kel getting her first job on the underwear stall at the local indoor market and eyeballing (albeit lids half cast) the exotic paraphernalia she brought home at discount price. I didn’t waste any time trying it all on in her absence. Claire, my fellow conspirator and youngest sister, once mistook a pair of crotchless pants as a bra, with the open crotch comfortably slipping over her petit head as her arms flapped about trying to find an outlet either side. As quickly as her naivety had betrayed her, she literally sprung one spring, leaving me and my inverted nipples firmly behind.
As my first day of secondary school approached, I bought myself a new alice band to coordinate with my new uniform and a set of new vests – yes, you heard me correctly. Upon reaching that momentous day I learned quickly that boobs were tits and tits meant only one thing – bras! The protruding bow that hung over my blouse served only to expose my still child-like body, and having received what can only be described as a wedgie of the upper
carriage from a boy in the fourth year, I was sent into a blind frigid panic. You could call it a life-changing day, not least because it was to be another seven years before I went bra-less again. Not one, you understand, but two, worn one on top of the other, padded and intricately scaffolded to give the illusion of normality and inclusiveness. The indescribable physical discomfort I felt was akin to wearing a toddler’s harness with egg boxes attached – but to endure the pain of going without would have been a far greater punishment within my adolescent mind.
As Mother Nature would have it, I had to wait until my sweet sixteenth before puberty lazily stirred within. The fact that the one (OK, two) things I had wanted so desperately to arrive hadn’t, was in itself a reason for martyrdom. On top of it, I had a shnozz that apparently knew no bounds, protruding from my face to give me an air of haughty assertion that betrayed the still shy girl within. My respite came in the form of ballet, where boobs weren’t needed but body strength and determination were. My 183 cm body began gradually to unfold itself, and for the first time I felt good about my tits as they clung safely, nestled within the pre-moulded bosom of my spandex leotard. Alert, pert, proud and nipply – yes nipply! My body was responsive – or perhaps I was beginning to respond to it. Oh how malleable and ‘on demand’ they were. I began to tweak and play with them at regular intervals – they were having a regular coming-out party of their own and continue to be upstanding!
To cut a long story short, my boobs have proved to be a source of enormous discussion over the years. It’s true to say that as a teenager I thought about getting ‘them done’, but thank God I was broke as it meant that I sat quite literally with the problem. I remember early on in my modelling career, a hairdresser in LA advised me to get my nose reduced and to expand my bosoms. Now, I’m NOT infallible to my own self-criticism; however, something wonderful happened in response. I realised I had punished my lovely, hard-working, healthy body for years with feelings of inadequacy and ‘not quite right’ syndrome – how dare someone else tell me what’s wrong with me!? In that moment my stubbornness took over and with almighty gusto I told the bozo in question to do one. He was aghast and ignorant to my new-found conviction and I began to protect my body, just as it was, with all my might.
The Booby Trap and Other Bits and Boobs Page 12