Boys & Girls

by Paul Burston

  Alongside that, from the age of seven to the age of twelve I was used sexually. There were different people, but the worst was my blood cousin. He was about 30, old enough to be my dad, and he used to rape me basically. I hate him so much for using me. He took advantage of my vulnerability, and he blackmailed me and stuff like that. He told me that if I told anyone my life would be over. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. At the time, I didn’t know what sex was. We didn’t have any sex education. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t even know what gay was. I didn’t know what it was, but I used to do it because he got me into it.

  I didn’t think about until I was 17, in my first year of therapy, and we were doing sexual health. I went to see the nurse and I told her I might be at risk of an STD. She asked me why. It took me about ten minutes before I could tell her. In general I find it hard to sleep, especially in the summer. But that night I didn’t sleep all night. I felt terrible. I felt anxious. I felt guilty. I felt that my life was useless. I thought I had no value anymore because I’d been used by someone for five years. I’d never really thought about it before. I was too busy with my housing and my education. I was a very nerdy student, and very fat. People used to pick on me because I was fat and call me names.

  But one thing I must say, going through all these things has made me a strong person. I’m like a rock. If anyone kicks me, it doesn’t hurt me as much. I used to cry every night but you see me now and I’m very confident. I’m slimmer now, and I like fashion. I love Lady Gaga. I have massive poster of her in my bedroom. I’m more outgoing now.

  I’ve been seeing a counsellor for five years. And I do believe in God. I do believe in Allah. And I thank Allah for making this possible, for being who I am right now. I see life from many different aspects now. And I think life is beautiful. There is so much more to life, and so much more to do. I always wanted to be the flower who makes people smile. I appreciate life more now than I used to. I think the more you suffer in life, the more you learn and the more you grow, until you’re ready for anything.

  INDEX OF CONTRIBUTORS

  DAVID LLEWELLYN

  David Llewellyn was born in Pontypool in 1978. He is the author of five novels, including Eleven, Everything Is Sinister and Doctor Who: Night Of The Humans. He lives in Cardiff.

  JOE STOREY-SCOTT

  Joe Storey-Scott is an artist who works in photography, text, paint, film and video. He has exhibited work in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and his film Mega Low Mania has travelled to several international film festivals. He likes to keep his options open.

  twentystorey.blogspot.com

  KEITH JARRET

  Keith Jarrett lives and works in London. He is a regular on the performance poetry circuit, performing in both English and Spanish, and is the current London and UK Farrago Poetry Slam Champion. In February 2010, Keith won the Untold London ‘Write Queer’ prize for short fiction. He also facilitates a literacy project and mentors young people. Keith is now working on his first novel, set in a Pentecostal church.

  KRISTIAN JOHNS

  Kristian Johns always had a love of words; he picked up his first book at the age of two and never looked back. He is a regular contributor to QX Magazine, runs a successful blog and corrects other people’s grammar as an editor for RBI. In his spare time he enjoys rock music, drinking too much coffee and watching superhero films.

  sexdrugssausagerolls.wordpress.com

  NORTH MORGAN

  North Morgan is a suited wage-slave by day and a topless Nietzschean clubber – also by day, and night. He has received around 1,100,000 hits on his blog, which converted into four stalkers, none of whom have yet murdered him. North Morgan hides in London.

  londonpreppy.blogspot.com

  PAUL BURSTON

  His books include the critically acclaimed novels Shameless (shortlisted for the State of Britain Award 2001), Star People and Lovers & Losers (shortlisted for the Stonewall Award 2007). His latest novel is The Gay Divorcee. He also hosts ‘London’s peerless gay literary salon’ Polari and is a curator at the London Literature Festival.

  paulburston.com

  boys & GIRLS

  Edited by Paul Burston

  CONTENTS

  THE NEXT BEST THING

  KAREN MCLEOD

  JAIL BAIT

  STELLA DUFFY

  KNITTING FOR BEGINNERS, 1960

  VG LEE

  PARADISE

  JAY BERNARD

  THIS HOUSE BELIEVES

  SOPHIA BLACKWELL

  EXPENDABLE CHARACTERS

  HELEN SANDLER

  AMBER

  THE ALBERT KENNEDY TRUST

  INDEX OF CONTRIBUTORS

  THE NEXT BEST THING

  KAREN MCLEOD

  Cynthia pulls up with her bony nose.

  ‘Hello Cynthia,’ I say, crouching down to look at her clavicles. It is a thrill to say her name, all adult as if we are meeting in a discotheque. Cynthia – the name hits your tongue and melts like spray-can cream.

  Glancing out the car window, she gives me one cool look taking in my clothes, my peach earrings with matching necklace. They were good when I left the house, but standing here they are not. She stares at the hat on my head. I have worn this to hide the haircut she gave me on Thursday. The style has been named twice at school, first the acorn cup, then Joan of Arc in English. I had asked for a feathered bob.

  ‘Hello. Do you still like your hair?’ she says, holding the steering wheel with her leather driving gloves.

  ‘Lovely. I mean thank you. I bought the mousse you suggested,’ I say, pulling off the purple hat and ruffling it. I know she is thinking my face is too big, not that my hair is too small.

  ‘It always takes a while to grow into the style,’ she says.

  Flo gets out and slams the car door. She has a feathered bob that took no time to grow into the style. She walks up tight-lipped with her eye balls looking up and over in their sockets. It is one of those looks which say: I have a story for you, you won’t believe this one, what she’s done now.

  Our friendship is full of these episodes, full of Cynthia and tales of twisted punishments.

  ‘Six o’clock Florence. You know what I told you,’ Flo’s mother says.

  Her window goes up electrically and seals the car. Cynthia disappears. We see ourselves and the train station sign behind us. I can smell their family smell on Flo’s rucksack, new carpet mixed with new Dad. I kept my rucksack in my room so it didn’t absorb the deposits of moulting dog and distilled casserole. The rucksacks were bought for today. It was my idea to get them. They correspond; one canary yellow with orange trim and the other satsuma orange with yellow trim. The word Voyager is in quirky lettering on the Velcro flaps.

  Sensible is the word. Before being allowed out without an adult I had to promise to be this as Flo can’t ever be this again; not after the shoplifting incident in HMV. I am kitted out for the role: Dad’s A to Z, cartons of tropical juice, peppermints and emergency phone call change (to be kept separate in my purse).

  London Town is at the end of the train line. We call it a Town to make it smaller in our minds and less like the never-ending maze of alleys and sex, which it is. One reason for me begging to go is because Sophie with the horse teeth came back from her holidays with her school jumper flung over her shoulders and said ‘Italian girls hold hands all the time in public’. Sophie had tried to start a trend by striding like the Pied Piper round the playground holding Donna’s hand, but the fashion never became one because of jeering from the chip-shop gang. Sophie said girls holding hands was normal over there, meaning it wasn’t over here, which I found out for myself.

  In summer, London Town is full of such foreigners with their bright rucksacks and packed lunches. They even make it to the outskirts where me and Flo live. Each season they flock to the language school by the local baths like disorientated parrots. You can see them outside Woolworths – which must seem exotic to them – turning round the map of the roads, making here sound like
somewhere else with their strange pronunciations.

  There is this thing called a Capital Card they’ve brought out which costs eighty pence. You can roam as far as you like all day on the buses, tubes and trains, even go out the other side of London up north. Not that I expect we will go very far, Flo says visiting Pizza Hut and Top Shop by Charing Cross station will probably be all the London we need for one day. In her fourteen years she’s already been to Pizza Hut twice with her Dad (who we all know tries to buy her love with badges) and sampled a slice and a refillable bowl with bacon bits from the salad bar.

  The train turns out to be one of those disappearing British Rail ones with the hard to twist handles. A man reaches out and does the mechanism for us. We go far down the carriage in case the man expects something for helping. We find the closed buffet car and sit in the green bristle-velvet seats pretending to be rich ladies who pull each other’s hair on Wednesday night TV.

  An ashtray is stuck on the table between us.

  ‘So what happened?’ I say.

  ‘She found my diary again. She nearly didn’t let me come out with you,’ she says, igniting a pencil with an imaginary lighter.

  ‘Oh. Why?’ I say, smoking an invisible slim panatela.

  ‘I don’t know, because she’s a bitch? She always reads it, so, I decided to write a whole lot of lies to confuse her.’ Flo has the same expressions as her mother, critical blue eyes and a restless way of twisting her blonde hair into a tight coil round her finger.

  ‘What like? What did you write about us?’

  ‘Oh nothing about that! I just said something a bit like,’ Flo looks out the window. I follow her nose to see what she is seeing. A woman is washing her armpits with a flannel through an open bathroom window. Her shiny breasts make me look at my deck shoes. Then a woman has pegged out her lacy nightie on a whirligig and turns it to catch the breeze.

  ‘Every morning they must wait for the train to expose themselves,’ she says, ‘They must be so bored.’

  ‘What did you write then?’ I say.

  There is no one else in the buffet carriage. Flo jumps behind the bar and puts on a cockney accent and says, ‘What’s your poison, guvnor?’ She tells me to watch the door as she looks through the shelves under the bar for anything good. I want to say stop, but I stop myself instead.

  As we approach London Bridge we realise we have only ten minutes to practice our vocab. This is all part of the rucksack game, to pretend to be a foreign visitor up London Town. In order to save time we’ve divvied up the responsibilities of the Italian language: I’ve learnt where is the station? and Flo has learnt, what is the soup of the day?

  Pizza Hut isn’t open yet. Flo takes out a cigarette and lights it with a box of matches. She stands with her weight on one hip and blows into the crowds of walkers-by. Through the window a man with a red shirt and black trousers is folding napkins on the table and wiping wine glasses. I can see a tall menu standing up with pictures of bubbling cheese on pizzas and I can’t wait. I haven’t ordered from a menu by myself before as I’ve only ever been to a Carvery, which was peculiar with its thick carpet, wooden panels and undercurrents of nursing homes.

  When we come out of Top Shop Flo slips on a pair of big sunglasses.

  ‘Flo,’ I say. ‘You didn’t did you?’ and she smiles and links my arm and pulls me away fast.

  In Trafalgar Square we are in front of the lions. Children are climbing all over them. Pigeon mess is everywhere. I get out the A to Z and go to the page with the folded corner. Dad has drawn in red felt tip a one centimetre circle around the dot of Charing Cross. This is the area he said we should stick to and not go any further, especially not off the page.

  ‘The map is so small Nelson’s column isn’t even on it,’ I say.

  ‘Where?’ Flo says, looking at my finger.

  ‘Can’t you forget the bloody map?’ she says, turning away.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘We can do what we like. No one is watching us.’

  From her pocket Flo pulls out another pair of sunglasses and unfolds the arms and slots them onto my face.

  ‘There,’ she says. ‘Now we look the same.’ I see her Technicolor face, her glorious flicks.

  Beside a fountain we spot a party of dark-haired foreign looking teenagers. They have pigeons on their heads.

  ‘Do you want to feed the birds?’ I say.

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘It’s what you do when you come here. It’s bad luck if you don’t,’ I say.

  ‘It’s bad luck if they shit on your head,’ she says.

  ‘Let’s go over here. We should start speaking foreign or we won’t do it,’ I say, pointing towards a large group.

  ‘OK,’ Flo says looking around. I go and stand near the girls who are speaking something fast, I think it may be Italian, but it could be Spanish. They are all wearing rucksacks like ours but have woollen Benetton jumpers in greens and pinks and oranges. Flo makes a face like they are all spastics. I reach out to grab her hand, like Sophie talked about, but she has it in her anorak pocket. The students sense us and walk off, reforming near a fountain. The space on the floor is filled immediately with grey pecking birds. I can see we don’t appear the same as the students, even with our bags nearly identical to theirs and our sunglasses the latest model. I suddenly wish we had come as ourselves, in our jeans. The three quarter length chinos I have on are a little tight around my bottom in an English way.

  ‘Look there’s a gallery. Let’s go into the gift shop, I bet they have good badges and pencils,’ Flo says.

  ‘Alright, but we have enough money to buy something if we want it,’ I say to her back.

  We walk into the National Gallery through the revolving doors and the security man points to a table. Other people are opening their bags to reveal what’s in them. The stolen sunglasses are in mine and I open the bag as if it’s my mouth at the dentist, just a fraction. The man gets hold of my bag and has a good look which I take personally. I hold my breath until I’m arrested.

  ‘Fine,’ the man says, handing it back, beckoning two fingers at the queue behind me. I am not arrested.

  ‘Look at these.’ Flo is standing by a plastic tub full of coloured gonks; stupid fiery headed plastic monsters which fit on pencil tops.

  ‘They are nice,’ I say.

  I go over to the postcards. There is a black and white one of a woman with a hard fringe and a black shiny bob. She reminds me of Cynthia so I pick it up and examine it, then go to the desk to pay. It costs ten pence which seems a lot to spend in one go but I am pleased as I get a free paper bag with a perforated edge plus the pillars of the gallery are on the front.

  When I go back to the gonks to find Flo she isn’t there. I stand and look around at the people browsing books with naked statues on the front. It’s as quiet as a library.

  I wait by the revolving door for fifteen minutes watching people kiss each other on their cheeks hello twice.

  In the phone box I call home.

  ‘Seven seven eight Oh eight four one?’

  ‘Hello mum?’ I say.

  ‘Hold on. Yes, I said put it over by the bureau, didn’t I? Sorry about that. Are you having a nice time up there?’

  ‘Flo’s gone missing,’ I say.

  ‘What? Where are you? Where did you see her last?’ Mum says.

  ‘We were in the gift shop of the museum over there. I bought a postcard and turned around and she’d gone,’ I say.

  ‘Well. Have you looked for her?’

  ‘Of course I have. I don’t know where else she might be. I’ve stayed within the circle.’

  ‘Good, don’t go outside of Dad’s map. Well, just retrace your steps and if you can’t find her, ask a policeman,’ she says.

  ***

  I order my pizza. I sit looking out the window for Flo. The sun is ridiculous and bright drying the pavement. My head nods up every time the door opens. The umbrella is wet on the carpet splayed out like an exhausted lettuce. I look at
the map of the area in the A to Z, then the map outside the area. The maps all lead into other maps on other pages, up down left and right. I find home on page one two five. The waiter keeps coming up and asking if everything is alright and I know he wants me to leave.

  Cynthia’s black car is out the front of the station when I come down the stairs.

  ‘Where is she?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘We were in the gallery. There were so many people. I waited for four hours,’ I say, no words making up for my fault.

  ‘What did you make her do?’ she says. ‘She told me all about the Italian you’ve been practicing. I’m going home to phone the police.’

  The car pulls off. I walk home.

  When I get back I look out my bedroom window from the eleventh floor. I can see the black car is there at the top of the road, parked outside Cynthia’s house. I unpack my bag; inside are the sunglasses, the map, a pizza box with half a cheese and tomato deep pan. The grease has seeped through the box and onto the rucksack.