Kiss My Name Page 13

  My Dad didn’t answer, probably because he didn’t have an answer. I did. My answer was that Luke ‘Boffin’ Booth went with our Colin to the canal, they probably had a row, Boffin pushed him in and despite Colin not being able to swim, Boffin went home and left my brother to drown. Some of Colin’s other friends were weird or a bit odd, but none of them would leave him to drown and then deny they had ever been there. Boffin would though. Boffin definitely would.

  Part Five

  Old Before Our Time

  NICKY – November 1991

  From the age of five or six, a little girl dreams of her first kiss. Once I started playing with dolls, the most glamorous, most attractive doll would always be paired up with the handsome prince. They would hold hands, they would kiss and on an almost daily basis, I would marry them off in an elaborate wedding attended by all my other dolls and often a few cuddly toys would be invited too. I wanted to become that glamorous, attractive doll and dreamt of the day my very own handsome prince would arrive and we would share our first kiss watched by adoring onlookers on the highest turret of a faraway castle.

  My dolls and my six year old self would have been horrified to discover that my first kiss did not take place in a romantic, faraway castle, but instead it happened in a damp, wooden bus shelter outside Parklands High School in Chorley. Jason McLaren and I were not surrounded by cheering members of the Royal Family of a tiny, beautiful island. I don’t think we were surrounded by anyone although it is not impossible that an old lady with a hair net or a mother pushing a pram may have passed by. The bus shelter itself was as far from romantic as penguins are from the North Pole, its walls were adorned with graffiti, with hairy penises and testicles the most popular sketch. Why teenage boys thought penises either spurting sperm or with oversized testicles were hilarious was well outside of my humour zone. I have never met a teenage girl yet, who has sneaked a Swiss Army knife into her pocket with the sole intention of carving a vagina on to the walls of a bus shelter. It must be a boy thing, even Michelangelo liked to draw penises, although to be fair to him, they looked a little different to those I remember on those bus shelter walls.

  Other than as a romantic notion when playing with toys, throughout my school years, my interest in boys had never really flourished, except in a platonic way. Outside of school, I had known and been friendly with two older boys, Joey Neill and Simon Strong for almost as long as I could remember, but I had always just treated the pair of them like brothers and at school, any friendships I had, were just with the more intelligent sex.

  Jason McLaren changed everything. Jason was School Sports Captain and fitted the handsome prince mould from my doll playing era. He was intelligent, muscular, confident and popular. Since the start of Fifth Form, Jason had let it be known, through indiscreet conversations with close friends of mine, that he wanted to go out with me. I found this flattering, but I was a little unsure how to react to his attention. Initially, to avoid embarrassment, I opted to try to keep my distance, whenever possible, from him. This however, became impossible, as Jason pursued me with great determination. He started joining after school groups that I attended like the Young Enterprise Scheme and Bible study. One dark, damp Tuesday evening in November, Jason had been the only boy at a Bible study meeting alongside at least a dozen girls. I clearly remember us reading Mark 16 that evening and afterwards discussing whether we believed in the resurrection of Christ. It was quite evident that Jason had never read a bible passage in his life but he was an eloquent speaker and the argument he put forward about the impossibility of a resurrection may have even caused the most devout Christians to leave that session with a grain of doubt. Since my mother’s death, I had clung onto Christianity as a coping mechanism, but I remember that night questioning whether Mum really had risen up to a Christian heaven after she had passed away. I certainly began exploring alternative solutions more vigorously after that session.

  After the meeting, I was last out after collecting the Bibles, but as I headed out the door, I noticed Jason lingering in the corridor, looking towards me with a huge smile and an attractive coyness that only revealed itself when I was nearby. I knew he would be waiting for me, so had volunteered to collect the Bibles up, enabling me to depart alone and not be surrounded by a group of friends. Once my friends saw Jason hovering, they were aware of how the situation was evolving and hurried away to chatter excitedly about our blossoming romance.

  “Hi Nicky!”

  “Hi Jason! Did you enjoy the meeting?”

  “Not really, to be honest.”

  “Really, why not?”

  “All that God stuff’s not for me.”

  “Then why go?”

  We both knew the answer to that question, I should have paused long enough for Jason to answer but I was scared of an uncomfortable silence, so found myself saying,

  “Did you just want to check it out?”

  “Something like that....how are you getting home, Nicky?”

  “Bus.”

  “Me too, I’ll walk you down.”

  So there we were, at the bus stop surrounded by those carved, hairy penises and hearts with arrows through. I guess girls carved the hearts. Sums things up perfectly, I suppose. Each sex carves what our brains are lead by. Jason lived in Eccleston, I lived in Euxton, which meant we were both heading in the same direction on the same bus. Intentionally, both of us had dawdled so we had conveniently just managed to miss the bus that our fellow ‘Bible Study’ attendees had caught. We were alone. We discussed Christianity, atheism, school friends and teachers until the inevitable moment arrived when the only thing left to discuss was ‘Us’.

  “Nicky, you know I like you, don’t you?”

  I smiled.

  “I had an idea! Atheists don’t normally attend ‘Bible Study’ and then unleash a diatribe against Christianity, arguing Jesus probably didn’t even exist in the first place and going on to explain that there were no Roman records indicating Pontius Pilate had executed Jesus.”

  “Do you not agree?”

  “I think Jesus Christ is either the most significant man that ever existed or completely insignificant, I don’t think there should be half measures with religion. Embrace it or ridicule it, but don’t go at it in a half-hearted fashion and just turn up for Christmas mass and pray to God when you want a new telly.”

  “Pretty deep! So you noticed I was just there for you?”

  “You hardly listened to a word Mrs.Southall said Jason and you just kept looking over towards me, trying to catch my eye!”

  “You noticed?”

  “Jason, it was impossible not to notice!”

  Jason smiled and moved towards me. I noticed his teeth were white and straight, which were both positives, yellow and crooked may well have denied him a kiss. His eyelashes were also the longest eyelashes I had ever seen on a boy. I wished I had eyelashes like that, they were wasted on him. He slipped his arms around my waist, clasping them together behind my back.

  “It’s all because I like you, Nicky. I mean. I really, really like you. Could we do something together some time out of school?”

  “Bible Study is on again next week.”

  “That’s ‘IN’ school.”

  “It’s out of school hours.”

  I mentally berated myself for saying something so stupid in the first place and then attempting to carry it on.

  “No, I didn’t mean after school, I meant a date, Nicky. Will you come to Preston with me one Saturday, just the two of us? We could go ten pin bowling and then maybe to the cinema.”

  I wanted to say that I’d love to, but that was a little too confident for me. I just grinned and said, “OK.”

  “Great.”

  With his arms still interlocked around my middle, Jason continued to shuffle his feet towards me. I knew what was coming. The kiss. My first one. I had practised on my male dolls and more recently on my pillows whilst watching music videos, but now I knew the practising was over, this was the real thing. I wanted it
to be perfect, I had waited more than ten years for this day, but sadly it wasn’t, it was awkward. One of those moments you look back on, shake your head and shudder a little inside! The kiss itself was fine, a little clumsy but as a novice I expected that. It was also sensual and minty, as we had both been sucking polos in anticipation. It was the motion of bringing our heads and our lips together that made me cringe, largely because no-one ever educates you about which way to tilt! Originally, I tilted left and Jason tilted right, so although we both began moving our mouths in a kissing motion, it was uncomfortable so to compensate, we both re-adjusted, I went right and Jason went left. It was a bit like when you are walking along a street and meet a stranger head on and keep sidestepping into each other.

  “Sorry!” said an embarrassed Jason, his cheeks now flush with a combination of passion and shame, “we both need to go to our left, I think.”

  “That may help!” I giggled, praying we did it right. We did.

  After that, our first ‘real’ date went well, with the exception of my string of gutter balls at bowling and second, third and fourth dates were hastily arranged to follow. Kisses became instinctive, then as our trust in each other grew, so did our desire. Jason was the first boy I kissed and the first man I made love to and it really did feel like making love. He was tender, he was beautiful and I loved him so, so much. Love didn’t just blossom in those early days, it thrived. There can be no doubt Jason McLaren changed my life for the better.

  It is easy for me to say now, looking back, that I have a lot to thank Jason for and I do not regret a single moment but being candid I know somewhere deep in my soul as well as love, there is resentment. Part of me still resents Jason McLaren not because of what he did, but because of what he didn’t do. At the time, I hated him, but hate is a wasted emotion, all I feel for him now is pity.

  SIMON – December 1991

  We were an odd couple of teenagers. Complete opposites. Joey had been away at Manchester Polytechnic for a little over three months, doing the weirdest Combined Studies degree that I had ever heard of, “Geography and Measurement & Instrumentation,” which sounded to me like a course that just required a compass and a ruler. After seven years of private education, Joey’s parents wanted to see some form of return from their considerable investment into his education and despite not attaining the grades to study Law, like they had both done, they encouraged Joey to go to Polytechnic. He needed some form of degree for his future, they insisted. I think Joey would have been reluctant to go to Poly if going away to Manchester had not been an option. Prior to starting Poly, Joey had thrown himself into the whole “Madchester” scene of the time. He had gone to Sixth Form at Runshaw College, Leyland and was always heading into Manchester on the train after College to see one band or another. Joey was proud of the fact that he had been to Spike Island in Widnes to see a Stone Roses gig and it wasn’t just the music he loved but the fashion too. I remember seeing him the day he headed off to his new Halls of Residence in East Didsbury, kitted out in a James t-shirt with “Come” on the front and “Home” on the back, as well as a bucket hat which he said, “was the same as Reni’s from The Roses” and a £30 pair of jeans he had bought from Afflecks Palace. I thought he looked like a bit of a tit, but you could tell from his demeanour that Joey thought he looked great.

  As for me, I had already decided at sixteen that education was not really my bag. It wasn’t that I was unintelligent, just not interested. My Dad had developed rheumatoid arthritis so wasn’t in the best of health, so wanted another pair of hands to help out on and eventually take over, his window cleaning round. So, at sixteen, my career with a friendly smile, a ladder, a bucket and a sponge began. I enjoyed it, working with the old man. We only worked when it was dry and although I wasn’t earning a fortune, some days, particularly when it was damp, Dad would not be up to going out, so I’d do the round on my own.

  Back in December 1991, when Joey had returned for Christmas, he rang one Friday evening to see if I fancied a few pints down at The Euxton Mill. I had a fair bit of cash sloshing about, as some of the ladies on the round had given me an extra fiver or tenner for Christmas, so I jumped at the chance. Joey turned up dressed like he was auditioning for the Happy Mondays or Inspiral Carpets, whilst I just wore whatever came cheap off Chorley market or the charity shops. I was never about setting trends, I was just interested in keeping warm in the winter and having enough T-shirts and shorts to keep me going through the summer. It also must be said that in his three months away, Joey Neill had transformed from having a healthy interest in sex to being a sex maniac, mentally if not physically.

  “Do you ever stop and think, that at this very moment, there are thousands and thousands of men around the world with their dicks in women’s mouths and you’re not one of them?” Joey asked as we took a seat in the lounge and the froth on the top of his pint of Skol attached itself to his upper lip creating a bubbly moustache.

  I placed my half a pint of bitter, in a pint glass, and bottle of Mann’s brown ale down on the circular wooden table and pulled up a stool, thinking as I poured the brown ale into the pint glass.

  “Can’t say that I do,” I replied honestly.

  I could tell from the way that Joey spoke in a slightly higher than normal tone that this was a subject close to his heart.

  “I do. Often. Several times a day, in fact. Every minute my dick spends in my trousers is a wasted minute. It’s not designed to be in there.”

  “It’s not designed to be in a girl’s mouth, either,” I pointed out.

  “No, but it’s designed for action, Simon and we’re not getting any. We need to do something about it! We’re almost nineteen years old. Nineteen is a male’s sexual prime, isn’t it? Our dicks should be friends with some nice looking tonsils.”

  I took another slurp of my beer. Joey was candid in his failure with women, but I thought I knew the root cause of our predicament, Joey was trying too hard and I was not trying hard enough. Not trying at all, in fact. My gun was loaded. I was just setting my sight before pulling the trigger.

  “Joey, at this moment in time, I have no interest whatsoever in having my penis in some random girl’s mouth.”

  Joey wiped the bubbles off his upper lip and gave me an incredulous look.

  “Are you gay?”

  Sometimes I felt that students never grew up. They did not see the real world. They were cocooned in their own little world and did not mix with your standard member of the public. I did speak to Joey like I was more mature than him, whilst he, mistakenly in my opinion, spoke back to me, trying to convey that he was the mature one. The worldly wise one, as he lived away in a big city.

  “No, don’t ask pathetic questions that you already know the answer to, Joey. You know I’m not gay!”

  “So, it’s Nicky then?”

  “Of course it’s Nicky.”

  Both Joey and I had known Nicky for a long time, Joey even longer than me. We were all friends, but in recent months, my feelings had changed towards her. Joey knew this, Nicky didn’t.

  “So if Nicky ends up spending the rest of her life with Jason McLaren, you’re going to remain celibate, monk like, until you die?”

  “Nicky won’t stay with Jason McLaren, they’re both only sixteen.”

  “She won’t. Nicky and I are soul mates. We are destined to be together and one day, I know, she’ll realise that.”

  Joey was drinking his pint faster than I was. Despite being friends, since he had gone to Polytechnic and I had stayed home, everything had become a mini-competition, even how much alcohol we could endure and how quickly we could consume it had become a private battle. I made the effort to catch him up, while he tried to take the moral high ground, which struck me as ironic given he had just been talking about sticking his dick into as many mouths as possible.

  “Do you know how creepy you sound, Simon? You’re making yourself sound like a stalker. You’ll be stealing Nicky’s knickers off her washing line soon. so you can sniff them
!”

  “If they are on the washing line they’ll just smell of washing powder.”

  Sometimes when you speak without thinking, you just dig yourself a bigger hole. Joey looked at me with disgust.

  “You dirty bastard!”

  “What?”

  “You’ve even thought about this, haven’t you? No point nicking the washed ones, they won’t smell of Nicky.”

  I went a little red. Not because he was right but because I felt foolish.

  “Joey, behave yourself, we both know how I feel about her,” I paused before adding, “I love her.”

  “Simon, it’s not love though, is it? It’s infatuation.”

  “It’s love,” I insisted.

  “No, Simon, it’s not. Love is a reciprocal feeling between two people. What you feel for Nicky is just a sad obsession.”

  “Nicky likes me too.”

  Joey scratched his head so hard you could see dozens of flakes of dandruff floating off it like snowflakes. Nicky was still like a little sister to him, I don’t think he had really embraced the idea that I intended to become romantically involved with her.

  “That’s right, Simon, she LIKES you.”

  I don’t think it would have been possible to emphasise the word ‘like’ any more than Joey did.

  “She could grow to love me, though. We understand each other.”

  “Simon, I’m a mate and I’m just telling you this because I am your mate....”

  Joey took a giant swig of Skol and placed his empty pint glass down on the table triumphantly, despite my best efforts I had not caught him up.

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “In a million years, I just can’t ever see there being one day that Nicky will ever want to be anything other than friends with you. I know you’re friends and I know you share a common bond, but we both know why that is.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s not just because of that.”