An Idiot in Love (a laugh out loud comedy) (9 page)

              For a thirteen year old virgin who couldn’t talk to a woman without annoying her, Olly seemed to know what he was talking about. I didn’t believe him at first but then I began to notice all the other girls in the same way I had noticed Trinity. None were as well endowed, but many were prettier.

6

Teenage Dreams Part Three: Penny

              There were a few girls on my radar in the final year of middle school, but all were minor crushes, none kept me awake at night.

              There was Andrea in the year below: Blonde hair, blue eyes, golden tan. She had a strong accent and giggled loudly after every sentence. When I first heard her I thought she was putting on a voice for comical effect, I even laughed along with her to show her that her impression of an annoying idiot was amusing, but the voice never went away. I decided to enjoy her from afar instead, putting enough distance between us so that I could at least pretend she didn’t sound like an anguished feline.

              Cherry was in Andrea’s class. She was shy and somewhat timid but she had a smile that could soften the hearts of murderers. Unfortunately it was hard to get her to speak. She greeted everything with a shy shrug and often turned away when people spoke to her.

              Ali was new to the school. She wore a burka, with only her dark eyes, like shiny black holes, on show. I think I liked her because she was different; because she was the same age and, unlike the others, I hadn’t known her since nursery. And also because she reminded me of a ninja, and I loved ninjas.

              Kelly and Penny were two girls I had known since nursery. They were fairly uninteresting throughout primary school but began to blossom aged twelve. At thirteen they were full-figured adults, at least in my eyes.

              I never asked out any of the girls I liked, shying away for fear of a repeat of the Katie or Trinity incident. I rated them regardless and found Kelly usually came out on top, with Penny hovering in second.

              That all changed one summer, and it began with the boy who had cost me my first crush at the school.

              Chris Peterson had maintained his role as the school bully over the course of the first year and into the second. Katie had broken up with him after a few short weeks and had since worked her way through the male population of the nearby high school, but he had wormed his way into the arms of other girls desperate for macho boys.

              After Katie, Chris had dated Gail Clemens. He had been her first boyfriend, but just a week later she dumped him and began to date a sixteen year old high school dropout. Then came Patty, who picked Chris up at the end of the year, was with him for a day and then immediately jumped up to dumb high school boys.

              Olly called Chris a
gateway idiot
, but never to his face. I related this joke onto another kid, and then another, keen to spread the insult around the school. I had been telling a third when Chris overheard.

              I had finished class early and was killing time near the gym, just outside the changing rooms. Chris came in from outside with a menacing glare on his chubby face. He had seen; he had heard. I was doomed.

              He bounded straight for me, his eyebrows lowered, his nose flaring like an angry bull. I knew there was no point running; he would catch up to me eventually.

              I took a step back, my hands raised defensively. ‘It’s not what you think,’ I told him.

             
He grabbed me by the throat and shoved me against the door. My spine and skull clattered against the wood, bright blue stars danced in the corners of my eyes.

              ‘Then what the fuck is it!’ he demanded.

              I mumbled something back, still a little dazed.

              “What?” he spat.

              “Depends,” I said, coughing the word out. ‘Depends on what you heard,’ I tried to smile, he didn’t seem impressed.

              ‘What the fuck did you say?’ he spat every syllable, the corners of his mouth frothing.

              I was thinking the same thing, struggling to believe that I had just tried to be smart to a kid who could crush me and currently had a hand on my throat.

              ‘Nothing,’ I replied with a strained voice.

              I tried to softly pry his hand from my throat, not wanting to apply too much exertion and indicate a desire to fight back, but keen for him to know I didn’t want it there.

              ‘I fucking heard you.’

              ‘Then why’d you ask?’

              I felt those words coming out of my mouth but I didn’t react quickly enough to stop them. I began to wonder if I was concussed, or possibly brain damaged. If not, there was a good chance I would be soon.

              I saw his eyes widen. I would have gulped if his hand wasn’t making it impossible.

              ‘What’d you just say?’

             
‘Something very
very
stupid.’ 

             
‘You bet it was stupid,’ he said slowly.

             
I could feel my face darkening through lack of oxygen, could sense my life ebbing away. It occurred to me that I was going to die pinned up against the girls changing room by a fat idiot.

              I gripped his hand with more pressure and managed to pry away his little finger.

              ‘What are you doing?’ he said, staring at my busy hands in bemusement.

              I had worked the nib of a forefinger away. ‘Trying to save my life,’ I replied without looking up. The little finger clasped back when the forefinger lifted. ‘
Shit,
’ I gurgled.

              He let go.

              I breathed deeply.

              He punched me in the stomach before the breath had time to complete.

              I coiled up instantly, my head near his groin. I thought of head-butting him like a ram, but quickly let that thought slip. If I didn’t kill or cripple him he was just going to hit me back harder.

              I expected more punches. I only hoped that he would at least have the decency to drag me outside and let me enjoy the sunshine whilst he beat the shit out of me.

              Instead he laughed, opened the door behind me, and shoved me backwards.

              I toppled into the girls’ changing rooms and hit the floor with a thud, quickly assuming the foetal position.

              Chris disappeared in a fit of hysterics. He expected me to be caught, called a pervert and shamed by a room of girls, but no one had heard; no one had seen. The door faced a walled partition which housed a number of empty footlockers and aspirational posters. The main changing room was around a corner a few feet from my head, beyond that a raised partition led to a line of showers, the noise from which had helped drowned out the crashing door.

              I crawled on the slippery floor and climbed to my feet. I checked the doorway to make sure Chris had gone, sighed with relief when I saw he had, and then straightened up my tie and collar which had tightened against my throat.

              I stopped with my hand on my top button. I sensed movement out of the corner of my eye. My heart froze, my skin prickled with goose bumps. I thought someone was sneaking up on my peripheral, someone about to expose me.

              My heart kicked into gear with a bang, beating faster than it had ever beaten before. Then it relaxed. Softened. The movement had come from a mirror, ahead and to my left, directly opposite the changing area.

              In the tall, slightly smeared glass, I could see waves of pink flesh shuffling around amongst the lockers, benches and clothes pegs.

              Instantly I felt a reaction in my pants. One very common for a thirteen year old but not acceptable in school. I ignored it. I didn’t care. I was entranced.

              In the steaming glass I saw the waddling bodies and pristine flesh of an army of girls as they conversed, laughed, giggled and dressed in the misty changing room.

              A small voice at the back of my mind was screaming at me to turn around and leave, the consequences of being caught were too big. That voice was drowned out by a million screams telling me to stay, fuck the consequences.

              I saw classmates like I had never seen them before -- all fleshy and bouncy -- as they walked to and fro, clueless to my voyeurism. I saw Kelly striding around in her underwear and Katie standing topless, her lower half obscured by an unfortunately placed bag.

              The one that caught my attention the most was Penny, she was standing near her peg, rifling through a small sports bag. She was completely naked.

              In that instant, standing next to my number one, Penny -- my former number 2 -- went straight to the top of my list. To my young, inexperienced eyes, everything about her was perfect, and she was naked, which was always a bonus.

              I watched Penny dress without blinking. Growing impatient when other girls, some naked, crossed her path and the steamed mirror’s line of reflection. When she was fully dressed and waiting for the teacher to give her permission to leave, I ducked out of the changing room, into the hallway.

              I was happy to have escaped without being seen. I had a beaming smile on my face and an erotic image burned into my mind. I had never seen a girl naked. I had caught a few glimpses of topless girls in magazines and in films, but nothing else. I was delighted to get that part of my growing-up out of the way and ecstatic that it had happened without incident.

              I was still smiling when the screaming began.

              The girls had flooded out of the changing room. Some dispersed down the corridor to their next lesson, others loitered.

              I was watching them file out one by one, thinking,
“I've seen you naked, and you, and you,”
as they emptied the changing room. A bespectacled, pale girl named Elly was the first to look at me, the first to point; the first to scream.

              They all started after that, Elly was the only one screaming but they were all pointing at me, and most of them were laughing. I followed their taunting fingers, but before my eyes lowered that far I realised what they were pointing at.

              My top was still riled up. My shirt was twisted and wrapped around my midsection. After skidding across the floor my trousers had also been pulled up by the waistband, which in turn had lowered the zip. And there, taking advantage of the gap in the top of the zip, bursting through like a new-born into the world, was an underpants-shaped bulge.

              I was so shocked I didn’t even correct it. I just stared, praying that the world would end at that exact moment or I would wake up and discover it was all some horrible nightmare (which, admittedly, had followed a fantastic dream).

              The world didn’t end, and the laughing continued. In the embarrassment the bulge was rapidly dying, but I covered what was left regardless and trotted outside, keen to get away from the taunts and the laughter.

              Word spread around school and I tried to persuade my parents to move to America, they weren’t interested. I also tried to convince them I had Leprosy and needed to take a year or two off, they weren’t buying it.

              I was a laughing stock at school, but it could have been worse. The rumour mill chewed me up blue and spat me out red, some stories said I had been caught having sex with a teacher, most seemed to say I was masturbating. The convolution meant that Chris never recounted the story of pushing me into the girls changing room because he didn’t find the connection between that and whatever version of the story he had heard.

              The girls knew of course, but it didn’t seem to cross their minds that I had been spying on them. Thankfully the story died before the year was out.

              I tried talking to Penny after I was sure the incident wouldn’t be mentioned, but every time I looked at her I saw what I saw in that mirror. I couldn’t look at her or talk to her without my brain jumping up and down like a little kid, screaming:
I’ve seen you naked, I’ve seen you naked.
I knew where those thoughts led, and was keen to not go down that road again.

7

First Love

             
A few months before my sixteenth birthday, I had my first girlfriend.