Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny

He was funny as fuck. Full of patter. He was confident, kind of grown up, but always up for a laugh. He was always up for doing all the things I wanted to do, like going on all the adventures I used to go on myself, and I was up for whatever he was up for. We got on really well, considering how different we were.

I lived in my head a bit and he was outgoing, I was a bit stupid when it came to certain social things, and he was full of common sense. But he was bad at reading and writing and general knowledge. He’d read stuff all slowly. He got diagnosed as dyslexic years later as an adult, but back in the 80s he was just thought of as stupid. So there was all this stuff I’d tell him about that he didn’t know, and all this stuff he’d tell me about that I didn’t know. For example, lassies.

He’d tell me about lassies, and laugh at how much I had fanny fright. He’d say I was ‘scared of the baird’, baird meaning beard, meaning a woman’s beard, meaning her pubes, therefore her fanny. He’d never take the piss out of me in a bad way, but in a pally way. We’d hang about in Carnwadric, and I’d see him with lassies, see him getting off with one, and I’d wonder how he did it, where you started, how you learned.

I hadn’t got off with anybody before. I was in second year in secondary school and I still hadn’t got off with anybody, whereas everybody else seemed to be doing it.

My mate took me aside one night, and asked me if I knew how to get off with a lassie.

I said aye, but I didn’t really.

He laughed and said, ‘How then? Go.’ He didn’t want me to kiss him, he just wanted me to show him what I did with my mouth.

I got embarrassed and said that I fucking knew how to get off with a lassie, fuck off.

But he said, ‘Look, you just do this,’ then he started to show me, by pretending to get off with this invisible lassie. I wanted to walk away, but instead I watched him, because I wanted to know. He had his mouth open, with his tongue sticking out a bit, and he moved his chin in a circular motion. He said, ‘That’s all you do. You just move your chin in a circle like that.’

It looked easy. It looked daft, but it looked easy.

Not long after that, he told me that this lassie wanted to get off with me.

It was a fat lassie called Julie that we hung about with. She always hung about with this other lassie that was skinnier than her, and my mate would sometimes sing this song to them: ‘Fatty and skinny went tae bed. Fatty rolled over and skinny was dead.’ Julie would chase him about for singing it, then batter him. But they’d all still be pals. I think he even got off with her sometimes, her and her mate.

I was terrified, but I said alright.

It was night-time, and she took me round the corner, then got off with me.

I just stood there, doing that thing that my mate told me to do. I just stood there taking no pleasure in it, just getting through it like it was an initiation. Which it was, in a way.

Then we stopped, and walked back. I went to talk to my mate and I told him how excited I was, and he congratulated me.

It was like Footloose or something. The funny thing is, d’you remember that lassie Helen that wanted to get off with me in Millport, and that song ‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy’ was playing? That’s the song playing in the film Footloose when Kevin Bacon’s character is teaching his mate how to dance. And there was my mate teaching me how to get off with somebody.

He then wanted to move me on to the next stage of the training course.

Poking.

No, no. I said I didn’t want to do all that. I was only in fucking second year, for fuck’s sake.

He said it was good. He said you put your finger in the lassie’s fanny, and you could walk about later with your finger to your nose, smelling it.

No, no, no. No. That was Footloose, except Kevin Bacon’s character then offers his mate a pill. ‘Take it. Go on, take it. Don’t be a shitebag, take it.’

Too much, too soon.

I was happy that I’d got off with somebody and it was over and done with. It bumped up my confidence a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. I went into school, and word got out. It’s not that everybody was interested, but, you know, a few folk heard about it. There was a group of lassies, and one of them said, ‘I heard you got off with Julie.’ Julie wasn’t in our school, so I didn’t know how this lassie knew Julie’s name, but she knew.

I said aye, a wee bit nervous, but a wee bit proud.

Then this lassie impersonated the way I got off with Julie.

It didn’t look good.

She pursed her lips tightly, like an arsehole, and squeezed her tongue through it, like the arsehole was doing a shite. Then she moved the tongue up and down, moving the mouth with it. It looked like somebody licking an ice lolly with their mouth closed, if you know what I mean. It looked fucking hideous. And they all laughed.

It was like Footloose, except imagine the bit at the end where Kevin Bacon’s pal finally does his big dance at the disco and everybody’s amazed, but instead of that, imagine everybody points and laughs and goes, ‘Hahahaha, check the fucking state!’

Bullied

Earlier in the book, you asked me the question, ‘Limmy, did your mum give you enough cuddles?’

Now I hear you ask, ‘Limmy, were you bullied in school?’

No, I wasn’t. Not really.

There were a couple of boys that bullied me for a few weeks whenever I was in art, in first year. They noised me up, slagging off my trampy clothes and my hair. Then they pushed it a bit further. We were making these puppets, making the heads out of papier-mâché, and one of these boys tested to see if it was hard yet by whacking it over my head. It was fucking sore. That’s when I snapped and went ‘Fuck off!’ and pushed one of them away. And they didn’t bug me again.

Other than that, I didn’t get hassled in school. I certainly didn’t get hassled by any older boys, because of my brother.

You remember me saying that my brother got a reputation as somebody that you didn’t want to fuck with. I’ll tell you what he was like. When I first got to secondary school and the teachers were reading out the names to see who was who, they’d all say, ‘Brian … Limond. Limond? Any relation to David Limond? You’re his brother? I see. Then we’ll have to keep our eyes on you then, won’t we?’ He was like that. I’d be having to prove to the teachers that I was a good boy. I wanted to do well, I was into my computers and that. It was a wee bit embarrassing to begin with, but the pros outweighed the cons when it came to an older boy having a go.

I was in third or fourth year, by which point David had left school. And I was waiting at the bus stop after school, along with everybody else. There was some older boy that had just joined the school, because he’d been expelled from another. I’d see him in the morning, at the bus stop to go to school. He was a shady wee hard guy that would always wear a grey tartan scarf around his mouth, and I’d wonder who he was.

Anyway, at this bus stop after school, he hooked my jaw. He took a dislike to me, an argument started, then he hooked my jaw. He knew I wasn’t hard. He hooked it in front of everybody, and I just left the bus stop and walked home.

I told David about it, I grassed the guy right up. I said he had a grey tartan scarf, and David knew exactly who he was.

The next morning, when I was at the bus stop to go to school, I saw the guy. His face was done in. He didn’t look like he needed the hospital or anything, but it was more than a black eye.

He knew I was there, but he didn’t say anything. I didn’t rub it in. I was a bit embarrassed. But, you know, it was good.

So to answer your question, no, I wasn’t bullied in school, not really. I didn’t get into fights either. I avoided them. I was a bit of a shitebag, really. There was a hard boy in my class who once offered to fight me, and I just said naw. A few months later, he offered to fight this other boy, the biggest in our year, one of these boys that was more like a man. The man-boy accepted, and the hard boy knocked his two front teeth out.

I was a shitebag, and I’m glad.

My First Wank

As I mentioned, I was a wee bit of a tramp in secondary school, to begin with. My trousers were too short, I had the wrong type of trainers, plus my hair was all flat and shite. I didn’t know what to do about it. I wanted to look good, but I didn’t want to get slagged off for it. I didn’t want anybody to look at me and say, ‘Who are you trying to be?’

That’s what it felt like. It felt like any attempt to look good would look like I was faking it. It would look like I was trying to be one of the normal boys, the ones that played football and talked about what birds they wanted to pump. And I wasn’t normal. I didn’t feel it, anyway.

Until I had my first wank.

And it changed everything.

Maybe everybody’s first wank was important to them in some way, but I don’t think so. To other people, I can imagine it was nothing more than a very good feeling, a new feeling. But to me it was something extra. I think it’s to do with the fact I’m circumcised. I’d got it into my head that I couldn’t have a wank because I didn’t have a foreskin.

Where I grew up, pretty much nobody was circumcised. Nobody was Jewish or Muslim, and nobody was circumcised just for the hell of it, like they do in America. The reason why I was circumcised was because there was something up with my cock. That’s what my mum told me when I was older. My foreskin was too tight, or something like that. So I had to get circumcised.

I noticed my cock was different from everybody else’s. I’d see the occasional cock on the telly, and it would look different to mine. Or I’d see a wee boy’s cock as he was in a paddling pool. Or I’d see my dad’s cock. I saw my dad’s cock when we went swimming once. He was in the changing room next to mine, and I looked through a wee hole, which happened to be at cock height. And there it was. I don’t know why I did it, but there it was, my dad’s cock, and it didn’t look like mine. It had this big bit of skin covering the end, whereas mine didn’t. Mine looked like a mushroom at the end.

I really noticed the difference in secondary school, at gym, when I first had to get my clothes off in front of all these other boys. I had a look at their cocks, and pretty much all of them had foreskins. It makes you feel different, and not in a good way. But nobody pointed it out. You’d think that other boys would point out your difference, but it didn’t happen. Maybe because nobody would want to admit that they were looking at your cock.

Anyway, I had it in my head that it meant I couldn’t have a wank. I maybe also couldn’t cum. I was born with undescended testicles, which I had to get fixed. And I thought that maybe that had fucked things up for me. I was maybe some sort of freak.

You want to be normal.

You want to be doing what all the other boys are doing, or at least have the choice of doing it. I was normal in all the other ways. I got hard-ons, I fancied lassies, I was ‘normal’ like that. But when it came to wanking and spunking, I had a feeling that it was the end of the line for me.

I was so confused about it all, so ignorant. I remember doing a pish in the school urinal one day. I was in there myself, and I had a hard-on. I was looking at the bubbles caused by the impact of the pish against the water, and I was wondering if the bubbles were spunk. That’s how ignorant I was. A confused and naive wee boy, feeling left behind.

But that all changed with this first wank.

My best pal, that one I was telling you about, he had this older sister. I wasn’t particularly interested in her, she was about four or five years older than me, practically a grown woman, and she’d pace about his house in denims and a jumper. Nothing that turned my head.

But then, one day, she wore leggings.

And I saw her arse.

A sticky-outy arse.

She had these long legs, these wide hips, and this sticky-outy arse. Like an athlete.

I think my jaw hit the ground. I probably reached for a cushion to cover my hard-on, I imagine.

I thought about her all the time, I’d get hard-ons thinking about her. Thinking about her arse. I’d fantasise about touching her arse, my hand on her arse, squeezing her arse, cuddling her with my hands on her arse.

I’d go over to my pal’s, looking forward to seeing her. Sometimes she wasn’t wearing leggings, but I’d know that under whatever she was wearing was her arse. Then on other days she’d be wearing her leggings again. Sometimes she’d bend over to pick things up, bend all the way over with her legs straight.

One day she was in the hall, ironing, and I had to squeeze past her, and she had those leggings on. The front of me brushed against her arse. And I think that’s what led me to having the wank. That was it.

I stayed over at his, in this wee spare room to myself. Everybody was sleeping, and I was lying there in the dark with my hard-on. I’d hold it and grab it and just think about my pal’s sister, think about her arse. I’d think about me squeezing past her, and how she didn’t move away to let me past, and I’d wonder if she knew I fancied her. I started imagining different scenarios where she’d say and do things to me, a bit like my first computer program. I imagined her pushing her big arse up against me and not letting me past, with her saying, ‘Do you like that?’

I started having a wank.

I don’t know if I knew what to do or how long for. I might have picked it up from people talking about it or people doing wanking hand gestures. I probably picked it up from my mate talking about it. Well, here you go, mate.

I started moving it about, then, after a while, it felt like things were going somewhere. It didn’t feel like I was just playing with my cock, but that I was doing something. It felt better as I kept on doing it. And all the time I was thinking about my pal’s sister, her pushing back against me, grinding her arse into me, her maybe taking me into her room and making me do things to her. Making me do things with her arse.

And then I started getting this feeling. A feeling like maybe my hard-on was getting even harder, even though it was hard already. There was a warm feeling in my face, and in my chest. I started breathing dead fast, like I was hyperventilating.

Then I came.

My cock took on a life of its own, and it started shooting this stuff out that had never come out before. I could feel these spasms, and a liquid hitting my belly and my chest.

I just lay there for a second, not doing anything, not knowing what had happened exactly, not knowing how much of it there was or where it all went. I couldn’t see very well in the dark, but I could see some of it on my belly, shining.

I touched it. It didn’t feel like pish. It was thick.

Oh my God. Was this …?

I put my fingers to my nose and smelled it, and it smelled like nothing that had come from my body before.

It was spunk!

Well, of course it was, but … I just didn’t think that I’d ever …

Oh my God, I’d just spunked!

I’d just had a wank, and I’d just spunked. I can spunk! I can spunk, I can spunk! I can spunk like other guys!

I’m normal!

That was the feeling. That was the big feeling. That was the big moment, the big realisation. I’m normal!

I’m a man. I’m a fucking man. I could actually have weans, if I wanted. I’m normal! The circumcision thing, the undescended balls thing, forget all about it now, forget all about it. Because this here, this stuff on my belly here, this is spunk! Hahahahaha!

It honestly changed everything.

I told my mum that my clothes didn’t fit me any more, that they were wee boy’s clothes, all the other boys had better clothes than me. So she gave me some money and I went straight to Concept Man to get myself an upgrade.

Because I can spunk!

Millport: Rebooted

Things just kept on getting better.

When I was about 14, I went back down to Millport with my mum. I don’t know why, there was nobody there, and I had pals back in Glasgow. I probably fancied going to the arcades to play some games. In Millport, they didn’t chuck you out for being under 18 like they did back home.

I went out for a walk, I turned a corner, and walking towards me was one of my pals from Glasgow. An actual guy I hung about with. That was a first. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I was like, ‘No fucking way. What are you doing here?’

He was like, ‘What are you doing here? Since when did you come to Millport?’

I asked him the same thing. We stood there astonished. I was delighted to see him. He wasn’t one of my best mates, but he was one of the crowd of folk I hung about with.

I asked him what he was up to, and he told me he was on his way to meet up with some folk he knew, and I should come along.

Too fucking right.

I went along, and there was a big squad of people, hanging about. About 20 guys and lassies, having a carry-out, having a laugh. All pals. I got introduced to them all, and they all seemed decent, all welcoming, mostly working class but with a few posher voices, from around Glasgow or Paisley or Greenock or somewhere nearby. It was fucking excellent.

There was a lassie I fancied, and we got chatting. And I got off with her that very night. The next night, the lassie got off with somebody else, and I was disappointed. But then the night after, I got off with somebody else as well.

It felt like the swinging 60s to me.

Then more people came to Millport, and I’d get introduced to them. Then more. More lassies, more guys. And it would be me doing the introducing. I came right out my fucking shell, so I did.

I mean, I’d already come out my shell from primary school, and I had pals back in Glasgow, but this was different. This wasn’t a wee crowd of five or six of us floating about, like back home. In Millport there were dozens of us, and everybody was nice, or funny, or cool, or laid back. Everybody was brand new, everybody was on holiday, everybody was in the mood for a laugh. We’d all be coming out with patter, telling stories, or saying out-of-order stuff, it was fucking magic.

I came down again and again for years, during the summer holidays and every other holiday available. In summer I’d be there for eight weeks or something, and it felt like the sun was shining every day, and it felt like every night was a Saturday.

Tons of fucking pals, tons of decent people, no shady cunts. And tons of lassies. You know how there were boys in school that used to lie about what they got up to on holiday, they’d talk about these lassies they were with, or a girlfriend they had up at their granny’s bit? It was like that, except it was actually happening.

It was a brilliant fucking time. I used to look back on it and miss it, how carefree it was. I even made a sketch about it in Limmy’s Show.

So see all that stuff I was saying about the primary school years, about being alone, and those boys that said, ‘We don’t want to play with you any more’?

Forget it.

First Drink

It was in Millport that I had my first drink. I was only 14, but that’s quite late compared to the other folk that were around me.

When I first met all these people in Millport, I was the only one that didn’t drink. I didn’t like the state people got in when they were drunk back in Glasgow. They were a mess. They flopped about, they were half asleep, whereas I was hyperactive. I was like a fucking puppy, full of energy and excitement, and I wanted to keep it that way. I’d tell people that I didn’t have to have a drink to have a good time. I was full of that patter.

Then, one night, I decided to have one.

There was usually a big crowd of us, but all I remember from this time was that there were just the four of us. There was me, this lassie I knew, her boyfriend, and her cousin, who was this new lassie I’d just met. I was getting off with this lassie, the cousin. She was a nice person, with braces in her teeth. I think she was having a drink, and that’s maybe why I decided to have one, because if this nice person is having one, maybe I should have one as well.

I asked them what I should get, because I didn’t want to be flopping about, I didn’t want to get in that state. So they recommended three cans of Bud. That was my first drink. Three cans of Bud.

I drank them, and I liked them. I liked the taste. They were like cans of shandy you could get in a shop, not too strong.

I waited to feel something.

Then I started to feel it.

This glow.

I started to feel this happiness.

I remember the four of us sitting in the Ritz Cafe, with me smiling from ear to ear, telling them that it was the best feeling I’d ever felt. I honestly couldn’t stop smiling. I had this big smile and a sense of well-being. The other three were laughing at how much I was going on about it.

We went back to a house, where we just sat in the living room. Me and the cousin would get off with each other now and then, and the other lassie and her boyfriend would get off with each other on another seat. It’s funny how we’d all do that when we were young, get off with folk in the same room as other folk.

I think the cousin left Millport the next day, and it was time for me to head home as well. We didn’t swap numbers or addresses or anything, and I didn’t see her back in Millport again.

The next time I saw her was in Glasgow, about five years later. I was in George Square. And I was fucking steaming.

I was waiting for the late-night bus on a Saturday night. The place was busy with people trying to get home after being in the pubs and clubs and student unions, and I was by myself, drunk, and probably being all bitter. Then I saw her in the distance. She was with pals, pointing to a bus or taxi, smiling. She looked nice. She looked like a nice person, just like she did before. She was too far away for me to run over and say hello to, but I knew anyway what state I was in. Even in that state, I knew what state I was in. I’d be a slurring, slabbering monster. Remember me? Remember they three cans of Bud? Look at me now. Ta-da!

About five years after that, I was sitting in work with a hangover, the worst hangover of my life. A hangover that lasted the whole week. And it just so happened to be caused by a weekend trip to Millport.

I’d went fucking daft. I was steaming on the Friday, I was drinking all day Saturday, all day Sunday, I had the Monday off work so I drank all day Monday as well. Tequilas, the lot. Wrecked.

I was still drunk when I went in on the Tuesday, happy as Larry, in my golden hour. But by midday I was a mess. I had ‘the horrors’, as my dad called it. I was sitting in the office toilet, paranoid, thinking everybody was talking about me while I was in there. I had to get out of the toilet in a hurry, because I was starting to get the urge to just stay in there all day.

There was a new guy that had started, over from Belfast. He was about my age, and he was into a drink and going to clubs. He was a chilled-out sort of guy. I could tell he was one of the good guys. And I asked him to accompany me to the pub, because I needed a fucking drink. So he came along, and I told him all about my weekend. He told me I’d be alright.

That night when I got home, I don’t know what was happening to my body, but I thought I was going to die. Genuinely. One of my arms went all numb, for no reason. I wasn’t lying on it or anything. The eyesight in one of my eyes conked out for a few seconds. My insides were making all these sounds that I hadn’t heard before. It was like my body was saying, ‘Nope. Fuck this. Bye.’