50 Ways of Saying Fabulous Book 1 20th Anniversary Edition (10 page)

I ran up the hill to my bike. I wanted to get away from there. I jumped on and pedalled as fast as I could. Then it occurred to me that if I rode too fast, I might catch up with Roy heading home. I didn’t want to have to talk to him. I slowed my pace. Once I’d reached the school, where Roy would take the turn-off to the other side of the valley, I trod down hard on the pedals again. I wanted to get home, have a hot sterilising bath and forget the afternoon had ever happened.

But that proved not so easy to do. I might have been able to ignore Roy successfully through the week at school by not looking at him, but my cock would have none of it. Just being in the same room as him was enough to cause it to stiffen beneath my desk. Despite my resolve to have nothing to do with him, I couldn’t help sneaking the occasional glance at him. Each time Roy was staring right on back at me with an intensity that made me blush and bend my head back over my exercise book. His gaze was bold and inquisitive. I knew what Roy’s eyes were spelling out and what my stolen glances were saying in reply. I felt engulfed by that same quivering giddy sensation, that same delicious tension that had thrilled me that afternoon as I’d realised that we were alone in the gaol together, with the same thing on our minds.

Every night when I had my bath and every morning before I got dressed, I examined myself for manifestations of the disease I was terrified was going to develop. But as each day drew closer and closer to Saturday, my paranoia began to subside and a more urgent compulsion enthralled me. I could not resist what the afternoon promised. By Friday, I could think of little else but how it had felt to hold Roy’s cock in my hand.

But that Saturday had a complication which had been absent the previous weekend. Lou. She stayed Friday night as she always did, helped me Saturday morning with the feeding out and then after lunch announced an expedition to Dragonland. I always agreed to Lou’s plans. She made the decisions and I obeyed. I didn’t know how to say no to her but I tried.

‘Um … last Saturday I went for a bike ride,’ I said in what I hoped was a casual manner. ‘I … enjoyed it.’

Lou’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She began to grind her teeth, almost as though she were sharpening them. I looked down at the ground and continued the little speech I’d rehearsed the previous night. It had seemed plausible enough then, but faced with Lou all my optimism abandoned me. My voice seemed clogged. I felt flushed and short of breath. ‘Um … I was thinking … of maybe doing it again. A … bike … ride.’

I glanced up at Lou. Her expression was severe. ‘I think … it’s good for my weight to go for a long ride,’ I added nervously.

‘Boys don’t worry about their weight,’ Lou said firmly. ‘That’s a female obsession.’

I was crushed. I didn’t know what obsession meant. It was another of these words that Lou had picked up from Aunt Evelyn. But her tone was plain enough. I was teased about being girly and a sook, but neither Lou nor Babe ever acknowledged those taunts and certainly would never fling one at me themselves. This was a betrayal. I felt tears threatening to slip over the rim of my eyes.

I looked at Lou. She was staring on back at me grimly, her arms crossed over the beginnings of the breasts she denied were there. I was sure she must be regretting her remark, though she’d never own up to it. She’d made the decision years ago to be not just as tough as a boy but as tough as a grown up man, and if being tough meant being cruel, Lou would be that too. Her mouth was a tight line. No apology would be permitted to pass those stern lips. I wondered if I could make her feel bad by allowing myself to cry. But there was another emotion stirring within me, something defiant and mean rising up, something urging me to hurt her back. She became awkward as the silence between us drew out, and began to fidget with her hair, ensuring her ponytail was well and truly stuffed down the back of her tee-shirt. Suddenly I knew. I knew just as I’d known with Aunt Evelyn, exactly what to say, the words that would wound her the most viciously.

‘And what sort of girl stuffs her hair down the back of her tee-shirt and swaggers round calling herself after her dead brother?’

It was the worst thing I could ever have said.

I got scared, too scared to even look at Lou and see how she reacted. I turned and fled. Down to the garage, jumped on my bike and sailed down the driveway and out onto the road, away from her, pumping the pedals, saying over and over to myself, in time to the rhythm of my feet, ‘she deserved it, she deserved it’. But I couldn’t make myself believe it. Gradually the rhythm of the words died away and I began to cry.

I felt so guilty that I forgot about Roy and the gaol for the moment. It was only when I noticed I was passing the school that I remembered what had precipitated the whole awful clash. I was halfway to the gaol. That was the point when I might have hesitated, might have thought of turning back and seeking Lou out to apologise. But I rode on.

There was an erection straining in my pants, cramped by my posture. I raised myself off the seat and cycled harder, straining forward into the breeze. I was breathless but it wasn’t from fatigue. I realised my guilt had gone, slipped away without a fuss some miles back, like a rabbit clipped by a car, left to rot, forgotten, at the side of the road.

I dumped my bike in the same place and hurried down the hill. There was a car parked down by the bridge over the creek. I stopped. There was no sign of any people. Probably fishermen, safely out of the way, down by the river. I approached the gaol stealthily. Would Roy be there? My mind began to doubt but my cock was hard and confident. I felt a little faint as the door loomed before me. I was almost scared to look at the bolt, but sure enough, it was shot free, with the door open a fraction, as if in invitation. I looked around. There was no one in sight. Slowly the door creaked open, pulled from within, beckoning, just wide enough for me to slip inside.

I could smell Roy’s breath before I could make him out in the dark. That acrid menthol cigarette breath. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Roy materialised out of the shadows, like a pale ghost. He was already naked. His clothes in a little pile by the door. He had pulled them off as he watched me approach. I turned back to close the door firmly. There had to be absolutely no light. I didn’t want to see his face. I only wanted to feel him.

He came up behind me as I fumbled with the door. His hands made straight for my fly, popping the dome, releasing the zip, pulling my underwear down. I was relieved his hands didn’t stray over my body. I didn’t want him feeling how fat I truly was. But he was intent on playing with my cock. His own was pressed up hard against the small of my back and he began to move himself against me. Gently at first, slowly building a rhythm, until he was rocking against me with such force it took all my strength to stand my ground and not topple onto the dirt floor. He didn’t cry out like the previous time. Merely shuddered against me and moaned my name in my ear. I felt the wetness explode against my back and then slowly trickle down. Roy wiped it off me with his hanky before pulling on his clothes.

Cycling home that afternoon, I rode past Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Arthur’s house. It reinforced the fact that I had renounced Lou for what I’d just done with Roy. For a moment I forgot to pedal. It was such a gross betrayal. Lou and I had been so close, had spent so much time with each other. She had been my best friend and protector. I felt a sudden awful ache for her. I missed her. I contemplated stopping and going in to find her and apologising, but then the bike began to wobble and I had to pedal quickly before it toppled over. Too soon, the house was behind me. The moment gone. I could’ve easily turned back, but I didn’t. I resolved to apologise at school on Monday instead.

I took a bath as soon as I got home. I hated looking at those first hairs that had sprouted down there by my cock. They made me think of Roy. I wanted to be rid of them. They were dark and coarse and took a great deal of effort to pluck out. In the end I had to use my mother’s tweezers, as my fingers couldn’t get a decent grip. There were only about five of them, and I prayed that they had been a mistake, like a lamb born out of season.

In the night I awoke, pitched out of sleep by a strangely familiar sensation. I was too scared to switch on the light. I tried to turn over and go back to sleep, but that was impossible. All my senses were straining, confirming what I feared. I could feel it on my skin, slowly slithering down over my hip. Gingerly, I extended my fingers, confirming the sticky dampness splattered over my belly.

Roy had done it to me. I was convinced. I had been dreaming of him before I woke up. For the rest of the night, I didn’t sleep. I lay on my back, my knees in the air, trying to save the sheets, while the stuff dried on my stomach. With the first hint of light, I got up, stripped the bed and took my sheets to the wash-house. It was a few days before they were due to be changed, and I hoped my mother wouldn’t notice.

She must have. A few days later, when I went to bed after an evening’s television, I found a slim pamphlet on my pillow. It was called
Becoming a Teenager: The Agonies of Adolescence Explained
. The corner of one of the pages had been turned up and the little book naturally fell open there. Two subjects were explained on that page. Wet dreams and homosexuality. My mother had surely sought to reassure me with this book, and spare us both the embarrassment of a face-to-face discussion. But I had trouble sleeping that night. Much had been explained, some of my anxieties had been eased, but another fear had crept into my mind.

I was haunted by the corner of that page, creased and upturned. What did my mother suspect me of? Wet dreams or homosexuality? I was guilty of both, but did she realise that? The paragraph on homosexuality had been both alarming and reassuring. It had described it as ‘unnatural’, ‘perverse’ and ‘aberrant’ all in the same sentence. I’d had to look some of those words up in the study dictionary. However, the pamphlet had then practically given permission to do this dreadful thing. It said that it was common for adolescent boys to experiment with each other and that this was only a phase they would quickly outgrow. This seemed to excuse me fooling round with Roy.

However, my fears were revived the next time I visited my mother’s bedroom to flip through her
Cleo
magazines. There was another new book on her bedside table and I glanced at the title as I knelt down to delve under the bed.
Developing your Clairvoyant Self
. I ran out of the room, without even looking at the magazines. What was my mother doing? Was she trying to become like ‘The Tomorrow People’ reading people’s minds? Had she started practising on me?

I was careful from that point not to look her in the eyes. I didn’t want her trying to probe into my secrets. We went on in this manner for several days, until finally she came to my bedroom one night, where I was in bed reading Babe’s
Pink
. ‘Is there something you want to talk about? You seem a little nervous lately. Something you read in that book that you’d like me to explain?’

‘No.’

‘Did you read it?’ she persisted.

‘Yes.’

‘And you understood everything?’

‘Yes.’

I put the magazine aside and snuggled further under the blankets, hinting that I wanted to sleep and for her to leave me alone. ‘If you’re too embarrassed to ask me something, you can always ask your father,’ she said.

We both knew I’d never do that. ‘Or you could write me a note, leave it on your pillow and I could write the answer. That is, if you feel awkward … and embarrassed.’

My mother was sounding very awkward and embarrassed herself. I realised then and there that she couldn’t be much of a mind reader if she didn’t comprehend that I just wanted to be left alone. Finally she departed and I felt reassured by her apparent psychic incompetence.

Yet the incident left me wary. I had secrets that no one must ever learn. I turned off the bedside lamp and automat­ically my thoughts turned to Roy. After my wet dream, I’d been convinced that he’d contaminated me. I swore I’d never return to the gaol. But once the pamphlet had explained what had happened to me, I was restless to return.

The next Saturday he was there, lurking in the shadows, tossing off his clothes as I closed the door behind myself. His hands grabbed at me but there was something I wanted to bring up. ‘My mother gave me a book explaining things,’ I whispered, ‘I don’t know if we should be doing this or not.’

His hands ceased their grappling. ‘It’s alright if it’s in the dark,’ he whispered back finally. ‘You can pretend whatever you like in the dark and just enjoy it.’

I was taken aback for a moment. I wondered if Roy sus­pected that I pretended I was with Stuart. But if he did, it didn’t seem to bother him. He was intent again on pulling out my cock. Then it occurred to me for Roy to make such a comment meant he probably imagined I was someone else. I began to feel a little indignant. But Roy’s hands were stir­ring me so expertly, that feeling of affront quickly ebbed away.

I don’t know if it was reading the pamphlet and under­standing what the upshot of our manipulations should be or whether I was just ready biologically, but whatever the reason I had my first real orgasm that afternoon, shooting all over the dusty stone walls of the gaol. We didn’t try wiping it off. It seemed like a monument of sorts.

Spring came though the winter temperatures persisted. It was a time of year I dreaded. There was always so much work to be done. Bloody and dirty work, which often involved getting up before it was light. Shearing, lambing and calving, then lamb-marking, followed by hay-making from late November through January. So it was a great shock when my father asked my mother to give a hand over in the wool­shed when the shearers were due and she refused. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise. She’d been showing less and less inclination to help out since she’d developed her other interests.

‘Well, if you won’t help, then I’ll have to hire someone who will,’ my father fumed. ‘And pay them.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ my mother replied.

My father stared at her angrily. ‘You’ll have to cook meat for a worker, lots of it … and clean up after him… ‘

My father began scrambling to think of other drawbacks.

‘That’s alright. I have to do that for you anyway. One more won’t make such a difference,’ my mother responded coolly.

I admired my mother’s style. I longed to follow her example, rebel and have whole days to myself uncluttered by tiresome chores. But her defection doomed my own yearning for escape. My father relied on me more than ever. He gave me new responsibilities, acting as if they were something I should feel honoured and grateful for. I made a point of making a mess of these new chores. My father never complained outright to me about these disasters – he wanted to encourage me for the future – but his expression was eloquent enough. One day I heard him moan to my mother how ‘bloody useless’ I was.

‘You’re demanding too much of him,’ she said. ‘He’s only a boy.’

My father had to grudgingly agree and mumbled some­thing about advertising for a worker.

The prospect of a farm boy aroused mixed feelings in me. I was thrilled that he would relieve me of my new chores but I was wary that he might mock me, like the boys in Glenora had. I knew that Lou would hate the prospect of a farm boy. She’d been hoping that Uncle Jack might let her drive the hay baler that summer.

But she no longer came over to help me with my chores. We were estranged. My obligation to apologise had hung heavily upon me from the very moment of our clash, but with every passing day that I procrastinated, the more impos­sible a reconciliation began to seem.

I’d planned to apologise that first Monday at school. I saw the expectancy in her eyes when she climbed onto the school bus that morning. But there was Roy slouched in his seat, just along from her, staring at me too. The way he looked at me made me grow hard in my pants. I looked out the window, away from both of them. To apologise to Lou would’ve meant denying myself another meeting with Roy. I couldn’t have found a plausible excuse for not spending Sat­urday afternoon with her. She was suspicious and insistent by nature. She would guess that I was up to something and go out of her way to find out what it was.

I truly didn’t know what to do. It was such an impossible decision. So I did nothing at all. I avoided looking at Lou throughout that day at school – which doomed me in her eyes – but I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze. I felt so guilty. I was convinced that she would only have to look me in the eye and I would be powerless. She would wheedle the reason for my betrayal out of me.

The most awful moment of that entire day was the bus ride home. Our house was the stop before Lou’s. Babe hopped off the bus and I hurried after her, not daring to look back to see if Lou was following. The door shut behind me and Babe began to wail when she turned to discover Lou still sitting in her seat, framed by the window. Babe sprang forward and pounded on the glass, calling her name. The bus began to edge away and I had to pull Babe back, writhing and screaming. I looked up and caught a glimpse of Lou, her bewildered face looking down at me, a study of exquisite sorrow. But Lou wasn’t one to show vulnerability for long. The next day at school, her gaze was cold and unseeing. She barricaded herself from me with a brittle silence. My few timid attempts to speak to her were imperiously ignored.

There was no question of where Babe’s allegiance lay. She sat alongside Lou on the school bus, aping her disdaining attitude. The two of them looked straight through me when I got off the bus and Babe accompanied Lou home to Aunt Evelyn’s. If Lou was around, Babe would ignore me. But at home, when it was just the two of us, she would gleefully recount all the wonderful things Lou and she now did together and how they had become ‘bestest friends’.

The days turned into weeks and still Lou and I didn’t speak. The silence between us seemed insurmountable, laden with unspoken accusations.

Naturally our parents noticed and remarked upon the change. I overheard my mother discussing it with Aunt Evelyn on the telephone. Aunt Evelyn was jubilant. She had interpreted it as a sign that Lou wanted to renounce her tom­boyish ways.

My mother was unconvinced. ‘I think it’s more likely that they’ve argued over something.’

The worst part of continuing to meet Roy at the gaol was having to ride past Lou’s house to get there. Once I’d passed her house, I kept glancing back all the way there to make sure she wasn’t following.

But despite my anxiety and guilt, there was never any doubt that I would meet Roy. Especially once he’d intro­duced me to my own orgasm. I wanted him to show me how it was accomplished. I had tried at home without the same spectacular result. I wore my cow’s tail, the next time, tucked under my cap. Roy didn’t even seem to notice my ‘hair’. At least, he didn’t remark on it. But it was so dark and he was intent on other things. After a few minutes I tugged the tail out from beneath my cap and let it drop to the floor. I didn’t want him to be startled and interrupt what we’d begun if his fingers happened to brush upon it. An explanation would’ve been awkward. I was no longer sure why I’d even worn it. Suddenly it seemed a childish prank.

‘Can you do what you did to me last week?’ I whispered in his ear.

He said nothing but his hand gripped me with authority.

Afterwards, when we’d finished and he was dressed, about to walk out the door, for no reason, he turned back to face me. ‘I’m too young to shave,’ he said plaintively. ‘Thirteen is too young to shave.’

I said nothing. I didn’t want to encourage him to linger and chat, even though the topic of his facial hair was one that the entire school was obsessed by. Arch reckoned that if he didn’t start shaving soon he’d end up with whiskers like Santa Claus. The Hammer brothers were always hiding disposable razors where Roy would come across them: in his desk, in his school bag, in the pocket of his parka that hung out in the cloakroom. Yet Roy managed to ignore all these subtle hints and the more blatant enquiries and insults.

‘When you gunna shave your mo off?’ Arch had finally demanded one day.

Roy simply looked through him as if he hadn’t heard the question.

That afternoon was the first time I’d known Roy to even admit knowledge of his moustache. It was a rare moment. His hand was on the door knob as he shyly turned back towards me, mumbling a little as he spoke. His vulnerability demanded a sensitive response, but I failed to recognise that. I said nothing. I stared at the dirt floor, wishing him gone. Roy hesitated, pulled the door open and I felt a rush of relief that he was leaving. Yet he continued to linger. He stood there, framed in the doorway, his profile spotlighted by the afternoon sun. The hairs above his lip glittered in the sun. They had never seemed more prominent. A shiver of revul­sion flickered through me. It was too dark for Roy to see my expression, but he may not have needed to. For suddenly he was gone, slamming the door after himself. I was sur­prised he slammed the door. We were supposed to be discreet. Not draw attention to ourselves. Anyone could be about. Quickly I slipped my clothes back on.

Walking up to reclaim my bike, I felt a pang of guilt. It wouldn’t have cost me anything to spare him some kind words. Even if I didn’t mean them. Five minutes earlier, as we’d strained against one another, I felt as if I would’ve done anything for him. It intrigued me that my feelings towards him could sway so greatly. But then, in the dark, when we were touching one another, it wasn’t as if I was touching Roy. My mind was filled with the faces of other more handsome boys. That vivid glimpse of his face as he left cruelly reinforced the fact that it was only Roy I’d been with. Roy Schluter. Roy the freak. Roy who was far too hairy, much too young. The thought disgusted me. I told myself that I’d never come to the gaol again.

But that was a resolution I’d made and broken many times before. I always felt that way afterwards. Early in the week it was easy enough to maintain my resolve. When I saw Roy at school, the sight of him repulsed me. I felt ashamed at what we did together. But by the time Thursday and Friday came round, Roy’s blank stares had become highly sugges­tive. My resistance crumbled. I couldn’t deny myself. I would get hard on and off all day Friday, just knowing what the next day meant.

Those encounters with Roy never developed into a friendship. I told him that we should avoid each other at school, so that no one would ever suspect us, and he agreed. That was partly true. I did occasionally feel guilty about the illicit nature of what we were doing, and nervous of being found out. But those fears also added to the thrill of our meetings. It had to be managed so sneakily, so stealthily. It had the elements of an adventure about it, like the ones in my books and on television, adventures that never materialised in real life.

My real reasons for resisting a friendship with Roy were complex. He provoked such contradictory feelings in me. I found him both repellent and alluring. I loathed how adolescence was ravaging his face, yet I was fascinated by how it had transformed what he had between his legs. I found him physically unattractive, yet in the dark would do inti­mate things with him. Most telling of all, I noticed physical changes in Roy that I wished I hadn’t. Roy was a symbol of my own fate. A reminder that puberty lurked on my horizon. Inevitably, it would claim me and render a cruel metamorphosis upon me too. The awful truth, the truth I couldn’t bear to contemplate, was that I feared it had already begun.

Riding home from the gaol, these confusing feelings swirl­ing around in me, I came upon Lou and Babe, doubling on Uncle Arthur’s black mare. I stopped and dismounted from my bike, and held up my hand in greeting. But as soon as she saw me, Lou kicked the horse up into a canter and they flashed past me, without any greeting, without even a glance from up high. I ambled home half-heartedly, pushing my bike. There was nothing for me there except chores and more chores that I now had to do on my own.

That night I felt devastated. Ready to say anything, fulfil whatever penance Lou demanded of me. But the next day, everything changed.

I fell in love.

To be continued…