by Juno Dawson
For the rest of the visit, we chatted about school and gossip and the Daisy I knew returned. She lit up as I told her about Nico. I tried to play it down a little for Beasley’s benefit, but I think even he saw the effect it was having on Daisy. ‘I have got to get out of here,’ Daisy concluded. ‘I’m missing too much fun. I miss the golf course. I can’t believe you’re going without me!’
‘You are getting out of here,’ Polly said with steely-eyed determination. ‘And you’re not coming back. Ever.’
I was angry after that visit. So angry. Blisteringly angry. I got out my poetry book and wrote, as squally rain pummelled my window.
The Alphabet Diet
A is for Atkins and absent periods
B is for Best Bikini Body Bones!
C is for cotton-wool balls soaked in orange juice
D is for double chins and bingo wings
E is egg-white omelettes
F is fingers for dessert
G is for glycaemic index and garden salad
H is for hunger pangs
I is for ignoring them
J is for journalists who should know better
K is for ketosis and Kardashian
L is for LipoLite
M is for muffin top metabolic myth
N is nothing tastes as good as objectification feels
O is opening the fridge at two a.m. in private
P is for ‘proudly flaunts her curves’
Q is questioning every mouthful
R is for ribcage xylophone
S is starvation selfie
T is for thigh-gap thinspiration
U is under 500 calories a day, twice a week
V is for vomit and vocal chords
W is women watching Weight Watchers points
X is an X-ray looking fat
Y is for yo-yo yoghurt laxatives
Z is for zero. Size zero. Zero. Nothing left at all.
WINTER
Chapter Eight
Erection
Now, I appreciate you might be thinking that this is all a bit issues galore and mega emo. Well, sorry, but that was what happened. It would be neater, wouldn’t it, if this was a story about self-harm or sexuality or eating disorders or drunk mums or ridiculously hot bass players, but it’s a story about all of them. Yeah, it’s a mess. And it’s about to get messier if you’ll bear with me. That’s the way it is sometimes – nothing’s ever neat and tidy.
In fact, it’s chaos. Total fucking chaos. Crazy-toothless- homeless-man-banging-two-pan-lids-together chaos.
Daisy was out of the hospital not long after Bonfire Night, having gained sufficient weight and proven she could independently prepare and eat adequate meals. What was weird was how much healthier she looked. Although she still wrapped herself in voluminous jumpers and scarves, it was clear her cheekbones weren’t jutting through her face quite as much.
The rest of the school, it seemed, was more than used to Daisy vanishing and reappearing and no one made much of a fuss on her return.
I was part of the conversation now. It turned out that Daisy’s illness had been cleverly hidden from me in the first half-term. I finally got an insight into the problem when we sat alone together one lunchtime in the common room. Every meal and snack was clearly hard for her. Finally, I saw what the others had been dealing with for years.
Before Daisy sat a small wholemeal bread roll filled with tuna. She was staring it down like they were a pair of cowboys at dawn. ‘Do you think there’s a lot of butter on it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, suddenly uncomfortable.
‘You see, my mum made it and I’m a bit worried she might have accidentally used the full-fat mayonnaise.’
‘It looks … fine. It’s just a little tuna sandwich.’ I really wished I hadn’t said that. It was so much more than just a tuna sandwich.
‘Well, do you think I should eat all of it or have half?’
This questioning process accompanied everything she ate. The important thing, Polly assured me, was that she was eating. Polly was now working on the basis that when Daisy wasn’t talking about food was when we should really worry.
‘I think you should eat it all,’ I said and her eyes widened. ‘I know. But if you don’t the anorexia wins. If you eat the sandwich, you win.’
She took my hand across the table and squeezed it. ‘Thank you. I know. That’s just not what it feels like.’ Daisy nibbled a corner of the sandwich.
‘I’m proud of you. You can beat the shit out of that tiny little sandwich, Dais.’ I looked her dead in the eye and she swallowed triumphantly.
For the first couple of weeks after she returned, Polly became more protective than ever, almost like a lioness prowling around her cubs. If anyone said anything, or even looked funny at Daisy, she’d rip into them as if they were helpless gazelles. She confided in me as we ate leftover Halloween sweets at the golf course that she secretly feared Daisy preferred it in the hospital because she had no responsibility there, that Daisy found life was so much easier with people feeding her and scheduling every second of her day. As I listened I realised it must be very easy to live without choices.
My other worry, and I did so love to take on other people’s worries – it made up for the relative lack of my own – was Beasley. I was, as far as I knew, the only person who he knew knew he was gay. Complicated. We talked about it over a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon. It was just the two of us, which maybe made it easier. I don’t know why Beasley confided in me, perhaps it was because I was new and didn’t have the history he had with the others. He told me he was very confused, that he wanted to like girls and did like girls but that he definitely/maybe liked guys too. Nico was his first boy crush.
‘Well, maybe you’re bisexual?’ I told him as Freddy Krueger slaughtered Johnny Depp.
‘Maybe. God, I hate that word. I hate “gay” too. I hate it.’ He sighed. ‘You know, I know everyone at school thinks I’m a faggot.’ I flinched at that. ‘I’m not deaf. I hate that I’m proving them right, you know? And I’ve totally shagged loads of girls.’
‘Beasley …’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter what people say. “We don’t keep score”, remember?’
He humphed. ‘But I don’t want to be this way.’
I shrugged, feeling utterly flaccid. ‘We don’t get a choice.’
If I’d had a magic wand for Beasley and Daisy I’d have waved it vigorously, but there wasn’t a lot I could do except listen and be as peppy as any cheerleader.
Because in other ways, you see, my life was pretty damn sweet. Yes, you would be right in assuming I’m talking about Nico. Things were going swimmingly. A couple of weeks into November we were official. O.F.F.I.C.I.A.L. I knew this because he introduced me to the rest of the band as his girlfriend after a gig at The Mash Tun. I was taken along to the after-party and everything, and then the next day we made it even more official. We announced it on Facebook. There was only one small problem with this. My dad is on Facebook.
‘Do you really think now is a good time to be getting a serious boyfriend?’ My mother peered over the red wine she was cradling.
‘Yes,’ I replied. We were sitting at the dining-room table having finished a pretty good shepherd’s pie. Mum can be weird about meals. She once told me she didn’t want the house smelling of curry all the time. I don’t know why it bothers her. Dad thinks she was embarrassed by it when she was little and was the only brown girl in the village. ‘I don’t have exams until January and they’re only mocks.’
‘Victoria, there’s really no need to be so defensive all the time. Your mum asked you a perfectly reasonable question.’ My dad was tired, I could tell. He was looking old for the first time; when I wasn’t paying attention his hair had thinned to almost nothing.
‘Your results haven’t been stellar,’ Mum reminded me.
‘And Polly and I are going to revise together. I told you. My friends, that you seem to dislike for no reason other than the colour of their hair, are all bord
erline geniuses, genii, or whatever, so you don’t need to worry.’
‘Toria,’ Dad said. ‘We haven’t even met your friends, so that’s not fair. Why don’t you invite this Nico Mancini over for dinner next week?’
‘Because that would be so awful I would have to kill myself.’
‘Spare us the melodramatics, Vicky, please.’ I swear she called me Vicky to drive me crazy. ‘I think that’s a great idea. He does speak English, doesn’t he?’
I scowled at her. ‘Yeah, Mum, why not be a little bit racist too? That’s really nice.’
Mum laughed and it made me want to tip the shepherd’s pie on her head. ‘That’s not racist! It’s a foreign name!’
‘Whatever, The Woman Formally Known As Kiran Dhesi.’
‘Toria,’ Dad said again, this time firmly. ‘Indulge us. We’ll be a lot happier if we get to meet this boyfriend of yours.’
Surprisingly, although I don’t know why I was surprised given that he was so cool, Nico was actually keen on the idea. He would be; he didn’t know the full horror of my parents. I knew, on a very fundamental level, that they would talk to him about THE WEATHER and MY CHILDHOOD and possibly even CONDOMS. Mum would probably get drunk and flirt with him. It would be awful.
I spent the week in the run-up to the dinner party (which my mum infuriatingly referred to as ‘having Nico over for tea’) thinking of ways to kill my parents and get away with it. The best idea was double-poisoning-suicide-pact because it didn’t involve me burning down the house. Don’t judge me. I was terrified that they’d do or say something to put Nico off me. Around my parents I feel about three years old and that’s not sexy.
Just when you think things can’t get worse, they inevitably do. Turned out Nico’s mum wanted to meet me too. Brilliant. That was just brilliant.
I shall tackle the two evenings in the style of the A-level essays Polly was training me to pass:
Compare and contrast two evenings in which a young couple must meet their respective parents.
I’ll start with my evening, because that came first. I spent the time before Nico arrived frantically deformalising things. ‘You want him to think you’re mature don’t you?’ Mum asked as she set candles, yes candles, on the table.
‘Yeah, but I don’t want him to think you’re seducing him either.’ I put the candles away. Despite my mum’s pleas I refused to dress smart. I wore a skirt, but then I often did. There was soft classical background music playing on the kitchen speakers, which was baffling as that was something we NEVER DID EVER. It was like they were actively trying to be posher. Who did they think he was? Prince Harry? (God, I wish.)
Nico arrived and was ushered into the living room after being made to remove his shoes. We weren’t allowed the TV on because we had to talk. ‘So, Nico,’ my dad started, ‘what’s the sixth-form college in Cransford like?’
‘It’s OK. Probably not as nice as Brompton Cliffs, but it sort of feels less like school if you know what I mean.’
‘Yes. I expect they treat you more like adults – like students?’
Christ this was boring chat.
‘I think so. What is it you do?’ Nico played it beautifully – asking thoughtful questions and being interested – much as Beth had taught me, but without the added filthy bit thrown in.
Let’s compare that beginning to my arrival at Nico’s house a week later. Nico lived in one of the neat terraces just off the high street. As I arrived at the address he’d texted me I saw there was a gigantic St Bernard dog filling the downstairs bay window and there was still a Halloween skeleton hanging off the door. ‘It’s open!’ a voice yelled when I knocked.
I entered a whitewashed hall – the carpets had been taken up to reveal long pale floorboards and it felt a little like I was boarding a boat. The walls were covered with photos, fabrics and dreamcatchers. With one that big, I wasn’t surprised at how much the house smelled of dog.
An elastic-looking woman in Spandex hurried in from the kitchen at the end of the hall, almost kicking a cat out of the way in the process. ‘You must be Toria! Darling, come on in. Please excuse the mess! It’s been bananas! Bananas!’ She had a strong Italian accent and a mane of frizzy black hair down to her bottom.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Mrs Mancini.’
‘Oh don’t you dare! Call me Sofia!’ Everything she said came with exclamation marks. ‘Take a seat in the lounge. My Nico will be down in a second.’ The lounge was as chaotic as the hall and the kitchen – books and vinyl spilling off shelves. Tellingly, there was no TV. You heard right. NO TV.
Back to my house a week earlier. Let’s compare menus. My mum made a starter. Prawn cocktail. Why? As soon as we were seated the interrogation began. I was horrified that my dad was being just as full on as Mum: ‘Which uni are you thinking about?’ (Who says ‘uni’ any more, seriously); ‘What do you think you’ll study?’ ‘Music? Oh really? What do you hope to do with a music degree?’; ‘Not a lot of money in music, is there?’
They might as well have shone a lamp in his eyes.
However, an unexpected bonus of having Nico over was that Mum drank more conservatively than I had seen her do in months, like she didn’t want him to think she was a massive lush. That was A-OK with me.
And now back to Nico’s house. We had dinner around a retro Formica table in the kitchen. Nico’s two (and might I add adorable) little sisters had been fed before me, so Nico and his mum gathered for our dinner – a colourful stir-fry with everything thrown in. It was as light and airy as Sofia herself. Sofia talked mainly about herself: ‘Everyone should dance in Paris while they’re young’; ‘You don’t find Bali; Bali finds you’; ‘Yoga isn’t my job, isn’t a career – it’s what I am.’
What I found a little unsettling was her constant grooming of Nico. It was like she couldn’t keep her hands off him – brushing his hair off his face, gripping his hand or massaging his shoulder. It was a bit creepy. Between you and me, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned out Sofia had breastfed Nico well after he could ask for it, but I kept that thought to myself.
If we’re discussing differences, let’s talk about atmosphere. My dining room: dark, oppressive, stifling. Their kitchen: laughter, exuberance, spontaneity. By the time my mum plonked huge helpings of sticky toffee pudding in front of us, I was so full I could hardly move. After Sofia had finished telling us about her time on a Greenpeace vessel, she dismissed us with two spoons and a tub of Häagen-Dazs.
The real difference though was the end of the evening. It was made abundantly clear that Nico would not be seeing ‘my room’ that evening. He was even made to use the downstairs loo. Sofia, however, shooed us out of the kitchen and we went up to Nico’s room.
It didn’t occur to me how momentous this could be until I got there. OK, his mum was downstairs but what if Nico thought we were going to have the sex? I know it sounds crazy, but I still wasn’t ready to catch the train to Sexeter with Nico. I can’t explain why, but it felt so scary. I dearly hoped that when the time came I would just KNOW and want to do it. I knew I should want to; he was gorgeous. I thought about it a lot.
His room was packed full of music stuff. I had no idea he was such a polymath: not only were there two basses but there was also a guitar, a saxophone and a cello stuffed into his boxy room. It was such a squeeze that the only space left for us to sit was on his bed. I felt that was a bad idea, but there was no other choice.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
‘Of course. Are you going to play me something?’
Nico smouldered at me. I cannot smoulder, but Nico was more than capable. ‘I was thinking I could play with you for a bit?’
‘OK,’ I said, trying to hide my terror with a smile.
Nico tried to make the ice cream sexy, kissing it off my lips, but I’m not sure that very cold sticky dairy goods are that hot and horny to be honest. We abandoned the ice cream and made out the regular way. I don’t know how else to explain it except to say that he turn
ed me on. It’s like a heat inside, you know, down there. I suppose it’s biology, but while my body was saying GO, my head was saying WAIT. It also said HIS MUM IS LISTENING – EW.
No one, believe me, was more frustrated than me. Well, except perhaps Nico.
I let his hands go under my clothes. Lightly, so lightly, his fingers traced my breasts, my nipples, down my stomach. As he ran them over my hips I shivered. That felt good for me and, I sensed, for him. Nico, cute as ever, had developed a knack of poking his jean-trapped stiffy against my leg to let me know how turned on he was. That’s not as pervy as it sounds, and I was genuinely glad to know that I was turning him on too.
And yet I still wanted to wait. ‘Nico, steady.’ I grabbed his hand as it slid into my pants. ‘Don’t get carried away …’
‘I want to get carried away. Don’t you? I mean, I’m happy to wait but … am I doing something wrong?’
‘No! God no! I just … I just think I’ll know when it’s time. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It’s fine. I’m happy …’ He poked his erection against my leg again.
I brought it up with Polly at the golf course. We dangled our legs off the edge of the pirate ship. The wood was still a little damp from where it had rained earlier and my bum was both cold and numb, but I didn’t want to go inside. Polly had decided to smoke this week for some reason and, I have to admit, she wore it well. Oh come on, I think we’ve already established Polly Wolff isn’t exactly role-model material – let it go. As with all drugs, I believed that smoking would kill me and turn my lungs into blackened phlegm sacks, so I refrained.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ I said, confessing my sexual woes.
‘Don’t ******* start booing about it. It’s totally normal to be nervous. I was.’
I looked at her and readied myself. ‘Did you have sex with Nico?’
‘Honest answer?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. Not “full penetrative sexual intercourse” as Miss Foley would say.’ She used crude hand gestures to show what they had done. It was petty but I really wished they hadn’t; I suppose everyone likes to think of their boyfriends and girlfriends as unsullied and fresh out the box. However, I was grateful for her honesty.