It’s Not What You Think

Here’s a little tip, whenever anyone gives you or offers you something you want, something you have longed for, something you have only ever been able to dream about before—do not—whatever you do—start your next sentence with the word…but.

It’s pointless, there is no need, it’s not heroic or grateful sounding. To be meek at these times serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. It just sounds wet and feeble, it introduces tedium into the proceedings and, above all, it’s completely and altogether stupid.

‘…but…’ (Aggggghhhhh!!! Shut up, you cock.)

‘But what?’

But nothing, you prick. Say—‘But nothing.’

(The only word that should ever really follow ‘but’ is the word ‘nothing’, then the world would be a better place and we would all get more things done and there would be less wars.) Tell her you love her and you love her smell and you always have and you always will and that you would walk over hot coals just to be able to get her back her rough book.

‘But…’ and then it came, the most ridiculous self-pitying, crap line of all time, ‘…why would you want to go out with me?’

Genius.

‘I always have, ever since we first met. I think you’re really nice and funny. I was going to ask you anyway. I just had to sort out the thing with Shit For Brains.’

‘Ha ha, that’s what I call him.’

‘Ha ha—see, we already have something in common…So what do you think?’

‘I think yeah, absolutely.’ This was more like it. Acceptance is everything in most occasions.

‘Brill, so I’ll wait for you at home time by the gates then. You can walk me back to ours.’

Wow bloody wee. She was amazing, different class, she had sealed the deal—almost.

‘Alright,’ I said, ‘I would love to do that.’

‘I would love you to do that.’

‘Great,’ I said.

‘Fab,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Well…’ she said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Aren’t you going to kiss your new girlfriend?’

Oh my goodness, this girl was the tops, the nuts, it didn’t get any better than this and if it did I didn’t want it.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I would love to do that.’

‘I would love you to do that.’

And then we kissed—briefly but softly and beautifully. We pulled apart and smiled.

‘Should we do it again?’ I asked.

‘Yehhhh,’ said Tina enthusiastically.

This time we went for it, a full-on playground snog and it was earth-shattering. Tina was totally into it, I was totally into it. Unfortunately the teacher on duty at the time was not so much into it.

‘Can you please stop that kissing, you two?’ said the master in question.

When we pulled apart I remember him being visibly shocked to see who it was. As I said before, Tina was a model pupil.

‘And Tina, you should know better.’

Without missing a beat, she replied, ‘Sorry sir, we weren’t really kissing, we were practising for later.’

And with that, the coolest girl ever to walk Planet Earth grabbed me by the tie and said, ‘Come on Chrissy, this way.’

Shit the bed, I had a girlfriend and she was the greatest woman in the world.

Top 10 Schoolboy Errors

10 Setting my pyjamas on fire whilst playing with matches. I was still in them at the time

9 Not being grateful for my first big bike one Christmas morning (I went on to love it)

8 Not going to see Queen at the Liverpool Empire (big big big mistake)

7 Smashing my toy garage up with a hammer in a make-believe bombing raid

6 Playing willy guitar and getting caught by my mum

5 Lending my Scalextric to Andy next door and never asking for it back

4 Thinking Mrs Tranter wanted to go out with me even though she was married with two children and I was only twelve

3 Thinking Jill from the chemist ever even noticed me at all

2 Listening to Mandy S. in the playground that day

1 Succumbing to the allure of the dreaded netball skirt

Tina and I were to enjoy the most idyllic of teenage courtships—sexless but beautiful. Maybe it was beautiful because it was sexless, I don’t know. Sure we messed around a bit but no more than that. What we did do, however, was love each other madly—twenty-four hours a day madly, seven days a week madly. Madly, madly, madly.

What is it about ‘first love’ that makes it so incredibly special? It should be bottleable. (And while we’re at it—why doesn’t the word bottleable exist? We need to be able to bottle more good things in life, what with all the terrible things that are going on. But how do we stand a chance, when the word that defines its very possibility is not even in our language? If things that can be negotiated are negotiable and things that can be done are doable, why can’t things that can be bottled be bottleable.)

Anyway I digress—I used to see Tina all the time. Before school, during all breaks and lunchtime, after school, every evening—usually at hers, and then every weekend. And when I wasn’t seeing her I was thinking about her. She consumed my mind, my heart, my soul, my very spirit, my whole being. I couldn’t get enough of her and she couldn’t get enough of me. We did everything together—except the rude stuff, as I’ve just mentioned but for some reason felt the need to mention again. And we kissed, boy did we kiss, we kissed all the time. We couldn’t imagine ever not kissing and ever being without each other. We were going to die together and we didn’t care if that day was tomorrow or the next, as long as we were side by side.

I remember one night Tina had to go off to Manchester to watch a play with her class as part of her English literature coursework. As I walked her to the coach, we were both in floods of tears at the thought of being parted for even just a few hours. It was as if one of us was going off to war never to return. We were inseparable yet we were being separated. Who had dared dream up this cruel fate?

Who had thought to deny us our usual evening round at ‘hers’ snogging furiously on the bean bag in her parents’ spare room, listening to Queen’s Greatest Hits and Meat Loaf ’s Bat Out of Hell as well as, for some strange reason, an old King’s Singers album! These three vinyl wonders were the soundtrack to our very own love story.

Tina was so sophisticated and clever and funny and energetic; her completeness was her beauty. And again that smile, so big and warm and welcoming. Her joy and abandon was infectious, she was naughty, too, cheeky and fruity in a way. I was sure this naughty side of her was only ever revealed to me—I used to think about that a lot, especially when we were at school and she was being the darling of the classroom. Little did they know what could also make Tina tick. They thought they knew but they didn’t—that was our secret. God, I loved her.

I loved her so much that I went above and beyond the requirements of a normal teenage romance by bestowing upon her the lofty position of becoming the subject of my first ever padded greetings card purchase.

Padded greetings cards were a mysterious but wonderful phenomenon. They could always be found sat majestically on the top shelves of the greetings cards sections in most newsagents or stationers. Maybe they still can, I don’t know. I have long since stopped looking for them. By the time I left school I was all padded out.

Ridiculously big—even the small ones—they were made of shimmery silk-like material, usually consisting of a garish floral design, though what they were actually padded with I never found out—I suspect it was highly flammable. I wonder how many house fires in the late Seventies and early Eighties were down to the accidental setting alight of a massive padded card during some kind of revelry or other. ‘Here darling, here’s a magnificent padded card, cost me an arm and a leg it did. Happy birthday and make the most of it. It could be your last if Auntie May’s fag ash gets too close to it later on.’

These great padded cards came in big flat white boxes instead of envelopes and they were expensive, like, really expensive—maybe a fiver or more! But Tina was worth it, every penny. I bought her several of the monstrosities—I wonder if she still has them. I have a feeling she might, along with a smoke alarm, I hope.

So how does such a perfect, unblemished relationship come to an end? We’d never argued, we’d never stopped wanting to be together, we were the bestest of friendly friends and we still hadn’t done the real rude stuff.

It’s simple and predictable and the answer is…

Temptation.

The Bible may be dodgy in all sorts of other areas but it’s pretty much bang on the money when it comes to explaining the evil that is temptation and the devastation it can cause.

The destruction of peoples, nations and in this case, as far as I was concerned, the most beautiful love affair the world had ever seen.

The apple is there—don’t eat the apple. But more importantly don’t even think about eating the apple. Basically, just forget apples exist and preferably as quickly as possible.

The infection with temptation is perpetuated by the dreaded ‘thought’. One spends far too much time in this life of ours thinking about what we haven’t got as opposed to enjoying what we have got. What’s that about? I’ve been doing it for years, I still do! It’s like a disease.

Temptation for me came in the form of the netball captain. Her name was Karen. Not the Karen from the junior school that took us to the park but another, more sporty, Karen—out of nowhere came Karen II.

Here’s what happened.

Tina and I were happily insulated in our bubble full of love and loveliness and then one breaktime I was left on my own in the playground as Tina had some extra work to catch up on—I was alone, I was vulnerable and as far as temptation was concerned I was the ripest cherry on the tree. The netball captain and her ridiculously short netball skirt were waiting to pounce.

One of Karen’s ‘friends’ approached me.

‘Where’s Tina?’ she said.

‘Oh she’s doing some extra work,’ I replied.

‘Oh right, so you’re still with her then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Only…you know Karen fancies you.’

‘What?’

‘Karen, captain of the netball team, she fancies you. None of us get why but she says she thinks you’re cute and if anything ever happened to you and Tina, she would definitely go out with you.’

And with that she was off.

Little did I know what had just happened: the wind of change had visited me, silently and deftly.

I was both rocked and shocked. The Karen in question—Karen II—although captain of the netball team, was actually quite modest and quiet in comparison to the rest of the female jocks in the main gang. They liked her because she was good at sport, by far and away better than anyone else. Sport was her ticket to the back seat of the bus and the big girls were more than glad to have her on board. She also had the most spectacular thighs.

This was the first sign of foreboding, I should have known. I hadn’t thought about Karen’s thighs ever before, but now the mere mention of her name instantly conjured up a snapshot of those muscly and impressive haunches, so adept at springing her forth, up and high to net another victorious goal.

I started to notice her and her thighs around more, like when you buy a car and suddenly you see them everywhere. I would smile at her and she would smile back. What was I doing? To smile at the enemy is to sleep with the enemy, you fool. And although Karen II wasn’t a bad person, she was the enemy. She threatened everything I loved, everything that brought me joy—Tina, her smell, her mouth, her mum and dad’s spare room—her mum and dad themselves, our beloved bean bag, Queen’s Greatest Hits, Bat Out of Hell and even The King’s Singers.

I was infected—the sickness had taken hold. All the symptoms I now recognise started to fall into place, lining up obediently, one behind the other, like a well-organised army getting ready to attack. I was surrounded by my inevitable doom. It was only a matter of time before I committed my first true act of betrayal—I began to compare!

I began to compare my beautiful Tina with the imposter that was Karen II, skipper of the netball team. What a lowly and despicable thing to do.

And even worse, I began to look for areas where Tina might be weak and Karen might be strong—rarely was it the other way round. When I was with Tina, I would almost wait for her to do something that suggested a chink in her armour, all the while looking for future reasons for us to split up, all the time comparing her against countless shiny images of Karen II gliding through the air in that damned navy-blue pleated PE skirt. Thinking about it now makes my stomach churn. This is not the behaviour of a decent person, a loving boyfriend, a doting partner. What a total loser! What were you thinking? Be grateful for what you’ve got, you fool. In fact, more than that, get down on your knees and thank God you’ve got the greatest girlfriend a boy could wish for. But it was not to be. I had become blind to the perfection that was our love and I was hellbent on tearing it apart.

Tina’s heart was pure and true. She had given me everything and I had never been happier, but I was completely infatuated with the thighs of another. And this is what people do: especially blokes, they see a new nest and start to create an agenda that will justify them leaving their current one, even though if they were to stop for a second, they would realise there’s no better place in the universe than where they are now.

The final act of the whole sorry tale began with a secret note and talk of, ‘If you don’t tell anyone I won’t.’ Karen II wasn’t as backwards at coming forwards as I had first imagined. Her mum and dad were going away for the weekend and she had invited me to come round and check out their living room carpet in their absence. After a whole night of rolling around on some of the finest shagpile, there was no going back.

I was now with Karen II.

I had moved on and my first true love was over.

You only get one mum and you only get one first love and the passing of the relationship I had with Tina is a thing of gargantuan sadness. What can I say? I broke her heart and to this day I wish I never had.

Tina and Chris: The Epilogue

Two days later, Karen II dumped me.

Not five, or four, or three but two! Two days!!

I suppose it could have been worse, like one or none. (I wonder if anyone has ever dumped anyone in no days.) Karen II said she’d made a dreadful mistake and that she was sorry and that she thought I should try to get back with Tina.

‘Well, thanks for that astute piece of advice, Karen, but I think you may just have ruined my life!’

For the record, I think the real reason she dumped me was more because she found me a terrible kisser.

I’m not bragging but the thing was, I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t have been because Tina and myself had been getting off and on each other’s lips with great success for the best part of the last twelve months. I think it was more the case that Karen and I together were terrible kissers, dreadful in fact—just awful.

It takes two to tango and it takes two to play tonsil tennis, but preferably two tongues on the same wavelength.

I heard a great story about wavelength once from a man sat by a swimming pool in a hotel in Los Angeles. He claimed that we are all basically electric and that we operate on varying frequencies. He said it was completely natural for someone to literally be operating on a similar or very different wavelength to someone else, and that often when we meet others and feel an instant attraction to them it’s because their wavelength is similar to, or maybe even sometimes exactly the same as, our own. Adversely, when we feel an instant uneasiness towards someone and often for no apparent reason, the opposite may be true. It’s nothing either person may have done particularly, it’s simply that we are each operating on different frequencies too far apart to gel.

Well, whatever it was, Karen II and I were never going to get it together on any front, least of all when it came to kissing. I didn’t understand her method and she didn’t understand mine. Whereas Tina had teased and nibbled and tugged her way around my face, ears and eyes for the last year, Karen II kissed in a much more industrial manner. There was no journey, there was no gear change, it was foot down, full throttle and off we go.

Overnight, I had gone from a beautiful, perfectly balanced open-topped tourer on the Côte d’Azur straight to a stripped-down dragster at the Santapod raceway, exhausts flaring, tyres smoking, just desperate to get over the finish line.

I suppose that’s the difference between the darling of the drama group and the captain of the netball team. I had gone against type, always a mistake—opposites attract, my arse.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a total dick. During the last twelve months I had been walking on air and living the kind of life that good people live, the kind of life when you know deep down inside that what you’re doing is wholesome, the very foundation of decency. The kind of life all mums and dads wish for their children. The kind of life that makes you feel like you don’t need to do the lottery.

Tina and I were never going to set the world alight but that’s probably because we would have been too busy looking after and loving each other. How many great scientists, artists, musicians and writers have been lost to such happiness? And more power to them. The most deserving audience is always at home; anyone who saves their best performance for strangers is the most suspicious of characters.

So there I was, left feeling like the man who built his own private Idaho and then in a moment of typical male ego-fuelled madness, took a match to it and razed it to the ground.

Of course I made overtures to try to win back my lost love but Tina was having none of it—her mum even less. Mrs Y. even tracked me down to tell me what an idiot I had been for throwing away the chance to be with her wonderful daughter. She was entirely right.

Tina did agree to see me several weeks later and expressed her genuine desire to get back together, but in the end she decided ultimately for her own sake that this was not the most sensible approach to take in life towards the first man she had given her heart to. She had done so sincerely and fully and I had repayed her by scarpering at the mere sniff of a new testosterone-filled adventure. Oh if only all the girls of the world were half as wise. Tina was never going to be a loser and nor was she going to allow herself to be with one. She was made of far stronger stuff than her now ex boyfriend. She owed him nothing. He had told her that he would love her for ever and yet he had not been able to love her for little more than a year. He had lied, plain and simple.

From this moment school was still school but no longer as I’d known it: it was now Tina-less, the biggest reason yet to get it over and done with once and for all.

Top 10 Things I’m Rubbish at

10 Skiing (I have been over thirty times, had lessons, the lot: complete waste of time)

9 Snowboarding (even worse—if that’s possible)

8 Football (even though I have played at Wembley 12 times—a crime for such a bad footballer)*

7 Rugby (truly awful)

6 Motor mechanics (I don’t have the finger strength required)

5 Looking after money (more about that later)

4 Staying away from the wrong kind of people

3 Sleeping

2 Crying

1 Fighting

I have never been good at fighting but for years I was happy to get stuck in regardless. That is, until over time, I gradually came to realise that fighting was not a prerequisite for either getting on in life or being a man particularly—in short, it was neither big nor clever. It was also becoming patently obvious, due to the number of pastings I continually found myself on the receiving end of, that I was in fact rubbish at it.

Fighting is just one of the many things I am not cut out to do. I have little strength, never have had, my bones are thin and brittle and I also bruise easily.

So let’s face it, if you hit me I’m pretty much guaranteed to break and if I do manage to hit you back—well, don’t worry about having to call the medic as I was also at the back of the queue on the day God was dishing out the manly hands.

My hands are ridiculously little for a guy of my height, stature and weight. It’s almost as if The Lord was trying to tell me not to fight. I would have had no problem with this if he’d thought to make up for his ‘handy’ oversight in other areas of my physicality but alas no, there’s little to get excited about anywhere else either, I regret to say. Little hands mean little…knuckles and in my case they also meant smooth and round knuckles—almost completely useless for fighting with. Put them next to a half-decent man-sized set of ugly, gnarled, knobbly destroyers and it’s the equivalent of putting your grandma in the ring with Mike Tyson.

But fights were going to come and fights were going to go so I had to have a plan, which I did. It was a plan that basically consisted of me getting the first punch in hard and fast after which I would whip my glasses off, close my eyes and hope for the best.

This is what had happened on the morning of the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia. I had become involved in a playground altercation with another kid. Having received the aforementioned Evans first and only punch, he had to my astonishment gone down as a result—also with such apparent force it didn’t look like he would be getting up any time soon! I was more shocked than he was. My plans thus far had not allowed for any such an occurrence. I had to revise my strategy and quickly. Having already opened my eyes, I decided to replace my glasses and make a run for it, which is exactly what I did.

I was safe, for now at least. However, when my adversary did come round, I was more than aware he was bound to want revenge. I was reliably informed he had been declaring as much shortly after coming to. To put it more precisely, he had vowed that come home-time he was going to kill me outside the school gates.

Suffice to say, upon hearing this I had been peeing my pants ever since.

The news of my forthcoming assassination had been eagerly telegrammed to me several times—more than I needed to hear but of course this was the usual guaranteed scenario. There was never a shortage of gleeful messengers around when there was an after-school duel to be advertised and the more likely you were to lose, the more desperate the messengers were to let you know the exact details of when and where you were going to get your head kicked in.

These messenger kids are the worst. Destined to become wasters of perfectly good oxygen as they grow older, they are the child apprentices of the kind of adults that take pleasure in the art of spreading bad news, the kind of people who need bad news to use as a currency to make themselves briefly more interesting. You know, the kind of people who take part in and watch those terrible daytime talk shows and trash each other live on national television.