I crawl up the bed and offer my mouth. He kisses it too. Lets me put my arms round and find he is a bit like glass. But I want him to know I think he’s such a fine man. He won’t though. He’ll never think that. And once I’ve settled back he just carries on.
She was a bad girl too. She’d flirt mercilessly with me. I’d go so red the drunks would roar Forget it lad, she’d tear you limb from limb! But I loved that, the ordinariness, being part of a joke. I used to run back from work just to watch her peel spuds. She’d pretend to be annoyed but kiss me up against the door, then throw me back out shouting Behave yourself youngster! Before long we were getting wasted together, usually with her mates in their half-empty dorm. End up shagging away while they’d complain, chucking pillows or moaning along. The occasional glass of water thrown over us, after which there’d be screaming and chasing about. She encouraged all that and would dare us to kiss. Then I’ll-show-mine-if-you’ll-show-yours and on to the next until I ended up getting passed around between them all. I think it became their mission to teach me how to do the filthiest stuff — which I now realise they didn’t know anything about — but, after everything, you can imagine how I took to being fussed on by four pretty girls. It was all very harmless though. And I’ve done that kind of thing plenty since but it’s never the same, just drink and drugs and athletics. Fairly grim really. Not like those nights. We were only young and had all had our innocence kicked out of us. Pretending to be grown up but, really, just being friends. Nothing heavy. No demands. The confidence it gave me, I hardly knew myself. And, more importantly, because of those girls I liked women again — which could have easily gone the other way because there was so much anger — but instead they set me on my feet. Little-brothered me too. Taught me how to smoke. Made me grow my hair out. Get some decent clothes. And somehow in that room I got to decide who I wanted to be. They seemed to like this boy who was getting a little cocky, took too many drugs but had a laugh and I liked him too so I put him on. From the moment I did the tic was gone and that terrified boy got locked away. I didn’t want him any more and no one needed to know he’d ever been. And that new persona got me through the next few years. So I owe a lot to those girls and, to this very day, the sight of a pink candlewick bedspread — oh my fucking God!
What happened to them? Did you all stay friends?
We didn’t. It just petered out in the end. Someone moved away. She got a different job. I went to drama school. We met up at first. Then less. Then lost touch. Everything was like that in those days. Drifting about. No one making proper plans. Years later I did, once, see her again. She came to the stage door after a show I was in. She looked exactly the same. We couldn’t say very much though because she’d brought her son along. But she said she was glad things had worked out for me because I’d always looked like such a stray. When she was leaving she kissed me on the cheek and said how fondly she remembered that life. And I was really glad she said so because I do as well.
I press my sole to his. How come drama school then?
Working on a stage door with a mate — bit less nasty than stacking meat — then hanging round with the actors, seeing other shows they did. Don’t know why I thought I could but when someone suggested drama school, I decided to give it a go. Auditioned. Got in. Got a scholarship. And that started a really good time. Acting just seemed to offer me another life for free. A way of exploring all the things I wanted to be without trawling through all the shit you’d have to if it was real. And all that anger and confusion, the stories I could never tell, finally had a place to breathe because there has to be a logic on stage that normal life doesn’t often have. Whatever I was I was safe in the part and everyone was safe from the mess I was. Once the show was over, that was it. Like living without consequence — all of which turned out to be bullshit but that’s how I thought of it at the time. Anyway, those years I was freed from myself. Not having to check which bruises to cover up or lie to people who knew what I was. And getting wasted. And having sex. Boys. Girls. I didn’t care. It was all part of being free and imagining good things could happen for me. I worked like a dog and when it turned out I was good, people said so and that helped a lot — a little confidence is a great thing to get hold of when you’ve lived for years with none. And all this time she didn’t know where I was until I needed my birth certificate. She wrote back My Darling Son. Left messages at the school saying she’d be down and I was to call to arrange. That happened a couple of times. But I never did and she never appeared. I heard less and less and I got less scared. Then nothing at all. I left her behind and I started again.
So had you a girlfriend then? That’s the next bit, he says.
She was the year above but two years older — twenty-one to my nineteen. Nice nails. Nice dresses. Completely out of my league but once I set eyes on her that was it. I was already pretty good with women by then but she wouldn’t give an inch. When I’d ask her out — which was a lot — she’d say Where are you going to take me? Down the dogs? But after seeing me in an end-of-term play she got a lot more flirtatious suddenly. Nothing was said directly but I saw it and played along. Whenever I was about to leave a party with some other girl, I’d always go say You’ve got first call love, if you want to make a man of me. I was terrible around women I suppose — never met one I couldn’t find something to fancy about. So I had a bad reputation for that and she was very straight but I could see she got a kick out of how direct I was about it, and playing shocked. Soon she started letting me over to borrow books. As soon as I’d try to kiss her — which I always did — she’d turf me back out but then I’d catch her watching me all the way down the road. Being constantly broke meant I had to be more inventive than most. So I’d arrive to take her for midnight walks bringing bunches of roses I’d stripped from someone’s hedge. I once got arrested in St James’s Park for — while completely off my head — trying to swim out and steal her a duck egg. But it was the end-of-year party did it — reciting all of Goblin Market kneeling at her feet. It was her favourite poem and the grand gesture made her laugh, sitting there with all her friends checking each verse off. Worked though. She said Alright, you’ve earned your stripes, and took me home. We spent the next week in bed and she wasn’t so fussy about my reputation after that. So we were together then for the next three years during which every single thing that’d made her wary about getting involved I did to her, and worse.