For I had begun to find the words in the books and comics repetitive. The fantasies they inspired were quite separate from the great Rabelaisian-Balzacian-Ovidian-Aristophanic romance I dreamed of making me famous one day, a romance in which the women were princesses or witches, and free agents. In my perverse alternative story they were completely managed by very kind or cruel men, all powerful aspects of ME. The cover of Love for Sale indicated how they could be connected in a single narrative. I was not as insatiable as some Turkish sultans. After the paper holocaust the slaves in my harem dwindled to six with two permanent favourites: Jane Russell as she appeared in The Outlaw film poster (still a popular male sex-icon in the fifties) and Sheena the Jungle Girl. The other four were continually replaced through my fortnightly excursions in search of yet another dirty bookshop. The absence of these shops today is another sign of changed times. Pornography that was prosecuted as criminal in 1950 can now be bought in almost any shop, and things once illegal in print are shown and openly advertized in video films. Only child pornography causes public outrage now, and I would be remembering this phase of my life without shame were it not for Stewart Doig.
I hated lying to my aunts about him. It is also impossible to pretend something for a long time without making it come partly true. Three times a week or more I had to share a desk with Stewart and guilt led me to reply less and less gruffly when he spoke to me. Perhaps loneliness also inclined me to want a partner in crime. One day I muttered to him, “Listen, I don’t want to be seen talking to you —” (this opening was so brutal that I hastily added) “— you or anybody else here. I don’t want to be thought pally with anyone in this school or in sight of this school, but would you like to go a walk with me Saturday afternoon?”
He stared and nodded. I said, “Meet me at the flagpole in the Botanic Gardens at two, right?”
Again he nodded, open-mouthed. I bent my face close to the jotter I was writing in and muttered, “If you say another word to me before then I won’t turn up.”
What a nasty wee bastard I was.
We met at the flagpole and I took him for a walk along the disused railway line running from the Botanic Gardens down to the Clyde by way of two or three derelict railway stations linked by short tunnels. I was bringing him to a dirty bookshop I had found in Scotstoun, near Victoria Park, and meant to prepare him for that by discussing sex. This was almost impossible. Stoory and his mother belonged to a Christian sect called The Brethren who disapproved of sex. Instead we passionately discussed Evil, which Stoory thought started in the Garden of Eden when Eve, tempted by Satan disguized as a snake, ate God’s forbidden fruit that gave knowledge of Good and Evil. I argued that God was wrong to punish Adam and Eve for eating the fruit, as they could not know they were doing evil until they had eaten it. And since God had created the Satanic serpent it must have been His agent. In such discussions every answer to an objection raises other objections. The desire of Stoory and me for the last word kept us arguing fervently until at last we reached the shop where I halted and interrupted him saying, “Change the subject! Some of this must interest you. It interests most men and certainly interests me.”
He stopped, stared and began blushing, but as long as I stood there he could not bring himself to look away. This gave me confidence. I said, “In my opinion none of that stuff is very wicked — I buy some every week. My people don’t care what I buy with my pocket money. Will I buy you some?”
He shook his head slightly, meaning no, and perhaps even whispered “No”. I kept bullying him until at last he admitted interest in a photographic publication called Health and Nudism, with a cover advertising an article inside called Eves on Skis. More boldly than I had entered such a shop before I went in and emerged with Health and Nudism and much more in my briefcase. I handed over two magazines in a quiet corner of Victoria Park. He pushed the lower half of them down his trousers and covered the top half with his jersey, saying miserably, “My mum will murder me if she sees any of this.”
“Have you a bedroom to yourself?” I asked, suddenly worried. He had. I suggested he hide them under his mattress or a carpet. He said, “Maybe they could go behind the coal bunker on the landing. But then I couldn’t get looking at them. Please take them back John!”
I said implacably, “Certainly not”.
“Alright, I’ll try the carpet.”
We resumed our theological discussion and separated before reaching a conclusion. Stewart’s last sad words, “Are we going a walk next Saturday?” were answered by a lofty, “I’ll think about it.” O I was nasty, nasty, nasty. And when the aunts later asked (as usual) about Stewart I said, “Frankly, I’m finding him a dreary soul. I can’t stand the Old Testament religion he goes on and on and on about.”
Nan sighed and said, “Yes, religion does have a dreary side.” She went on to say something about the state of Israel being founded by modern Socialists, people nothing like the old Children of Israel because centuries of persecution by Christians and others had taught the Jews tolerance, so they would eventually treat Muslims within their national boundaries as equals, despite the enmity of those outside it.
This was on Saturday evening. I was only slightly worried when Stoory Doig did not come to school on Monday morning because he was often off sick. But he joined the class after lunch break and alarmed me because I saw he was avoiding me. The subject was science which split the class into groups of four or less at separate benches. Stoory and me had always shared a bench by ourselves, but today the teacher (we called him Tojo because he looked slightly Japanese) said, “Make room for Doig here,” and put him on the far side of the room so I had a bench completely to myself. This was unprecedented and noticed by the rest of the class. A little later Tojo, passing near, murmured, “Feeling lonely, Tunnock?”, with a glance that may have been whimsical but made my blood run cold. For the rest of the afternoon I expected every moment to be summoned to the headmaster’s office and receive half a dozen strokes of his Lochgelly tawse,32 three on each hand. I had never been belted but had seen it done to others, and hoped the pain of the first stroke would make me faint. Nothing of the sort happened. As I left to go home some boys overtook me and asked what was up between Doig and me? I said, “Ask him.”
They said, “We did and he won’t tell.”
I hurried away from them saying, “Neither will I,” and one shouted after me, “Don’t worry, we’ll find out!”
I passed that evening sick with fear and dread, refusing to answer my aunts’ anxious questions but finally yelling, “I can’t tell you anything.”
I locked myself in the study, removed my paper harem from Cruden’s Concordance, masturbated furiously several times, burned all of it while drinking the final bottle and a half of grandfather’s sherry, then managed to put myself early to bed without falling down. I slept so soundly that I either outslept a hangover or was still drunk when I wakened at the usual hour, for I felt bright and cheerful. I had no memories of the previous day until halfway through dressing they recurred like an ugly dream. At breakfast with Nan and Nell I tried fooling myself into thinking the whole business might have no further consequences, especially since the aunts said nothing about my queer conduct the night before. In the 1950s an efficient General Post Office delivered letters twice daily, the first delivery before breakfast. Between porridge and boiled eggs (ours was always a two course breakfast) Nan took a letter from an envelope, read it more than once then said, “John, your headmaster asks me to visit him at eleven o’clock this morning. Do you know why?”