50 Ways of Saying Fabulous Book 1 20th Anniversary Edition (8 page)

An astronaut had crash landed on a strange planet where women frolicked naked together, kissing and slapping each other playfully. Two of these big-breasted alien women pounced upon the astronaut with   mischievous delight, stripped him of his spacesuit, leered over him, teased him with their bodies and their own provocative intimacy. The spread was called ‘Lust in Space’.

I was fascinated by those pictures. I tried to buy them off Arch, but he refused. Later that afternoon, Arch seized me and pushed me up against the cloakroom pegs, threatening me with his fists if I didn’t give them back. ‘Give what back?’ I protested.

‘Those pictures. I had them hidden in the broken lining of my parka and now they’re gone.’

I felt the loss as keenly as Arch. ‘Really? Are you sure they’re not there? That’s terrible. Have you looked properly?’

Arch studied me suspiciously. He knew I had ambitions as an actor. But this was no act. I was genuinely dismayed. I had hoped to come up with a swap alluring enough to tempt Arch into parting with them. I’d even considered the cow’s tail which he’d shown an interest in a couple of months back.

‘You don’t think the teacher’s found them?’

‘Nope. If it’d been the teacher, he’d have hauled me into the staff room and given me the strap by now. Someone snitched them. You sure it wasn’t you Fatso?’

‘Nope. Cross my heart, Arch. Honest.’

I cursed myself for not thinking of doing exactly that. ‘Who else could it have been?’ Arch mumbled. ‘Maybe Roy the Freak. He’s always doing sneaky things to piss me off and pretending he didn’t do anything. It must’ve been him.’

Arch tore across the playground to where Roy was sitting, leaning against one of the rugby posts, staring out into space. I watched Arch circle him, accusing him. Roy just stared past him, ignoring Arch as if he was some pesky fly or something. If Roy had taken the pictures, I wondered if he’d consider showing them to me.

That afternoon, with the blaring television failing to dis­tract me, I began to feel more and more alarmed. Why was it that all the other boys at school gloated and chuckled over pictures of naked women and I felt nothing,
nothing
but an almighty detachment from the spectacle, and from my peers? While my fascination with my mother’s
Cleos
was becoming more and more extreme. Every month I waited with increas­ing impatience, for the new issue to arrive in the mail. Once it had, I could hardly bear to wait for the next opportunity to arise when I would be alone in the house and be able to sneak a look. The anticipation was agony, yet it thrilled me to the core.

Then it occurred to me. I was being punished for coveting these pictures of naked men. It was a revelation. Suddenly, it all made sense. My physical degeneration had coincided with the blossoming of my fascination with men, wanting to see them naked and touch them. It had to be God punishing me for my evil thoughts. He’d become disgusted by what I was doing and had abandoned me to ruin.

It seemed a likely enough theory. But I wanted to know conclusively. I wanted it to be confirmed, to read it in a book or be assured by an adult that it was so. For the first time I wondered about being Catholic. I had seen in movies how Catholics could go to confession, spill out their troubles and be forgiven their sins. But even as the thought occurred to me, I knew that even if I was Catholic, I would never be able to confess to the desires that racked me. I didn’t under­stand them entirely, but I knew enough to realise it was something that must be kept secret. These thoughts were shameful. No one must ever know.

My theory of punishment obsessed me. I decided to make some discreet enquiries and gather a few opinions.

I tried my mother first. She was embroiled in a spiritual quest of her own, which most of the Serpentine county considered thoroughly bizarre. She had renounced the Presbyterian church in Clayburn and was consulting clairvoyants in Dunedin and buying strange books with titles such as
Cosmic Lover
and
Crystal Pleasure
. She had also taken to practising yoga on the sundeck, much to my father’s horror. ‘Everyone can see you,’ he protested.

That wasn’t strictly true. Our nearest neighbours were two miles down the road and cars rarely drove past our house, maybe three or four a day at the most. Probably my father was concerned about the families living over the other side of the valley, with their high-powered binoculars. But my mother ignored him, and continued to entangle herself in complicated positions, frowning at the manual she had open by her side. Sometimes Babe and I joined her, but I was too fat and inflexible to mould myself into even the most basic of positions.

It was while she was out on the sundeck practising, that I approached her with my question. ‘Mum,’ I ventured. She struggled to maintain her position, gave up, collapsed and sat up looking irritated. ‘You know I don’t like being called that,’ she snapped.

My mother and Aunt Evelyn had recently decided that they would no longer be called Mum now that there was a deodorant frequently advertised on television called Mum. Of course, it had been Aunt Evelyn’s idea to boycott Mum. ‘I will not share the same name as a deodorant,’ she told my mother, who had agreed.

Lou was supposed to call Aunt Evelyn ‘mother’. It sounded so formal and cold that Lou had refused and declared that she was boycotting ‘mother’. Meanwhile, my mother insisted that she be called Reebie, which neither Babe nor I could manage to say. The upshot was that we had no name for our mothers and had to clear our throats or tap them on the arm to get their attention.

‘Um … I have a question,’ I said nervously.

‘Yes?’ said my mother.

‘How would God punish someone if he didn’t like them for some reason?’

My mother stared at me. ‘What an odd question. Do you mean, the Christian god?’

‘Isn’t He the only one?’

‘It depends what you believe.’

‘Oh,’ I said, considering this. ‘So is there a sort of choice of gods?’

‘Not in the Serpentine there isn’t,’ said my mother. ‘But certainly in a large city, there are lots of different religions with their own gods, as well as people with beliefs that aren’t governed by any religion as such.’

This answer was extremely puzzling. ‘And are some of the other gods nicer than the one we have here?’ I asked.

My mother pursed her lips. ‘There are some that aren’t so obsessed with guilt. What makes you think God is punishing you anyway?’

‘I’m not talking about me,’ I said quickly. ‘I was just wondering.’

I turned away from her, not wishing to continue the con­versation. I felt too transparent. But my mother persisted. ‘If I was having a difficult time in my life,’ she said loudly, demanding my attention. ‘Rather than interpreting it as a punishment, I’d try and look at it as an experience I could learn something from, a bit like a lesson in school. Does that make sense?’

I nodded, not daring to look at her and began to walk away. ‘I have some books on this sort of philosophy if you want to read them,’ she offered.

‘Okay,’ I said, walking away as quickly as I could.

I knew her eyes were following me, trying to work out what had inspired my concern.

That night, when I went to bed, I found a couple of her new books stacked on my bedside table. Over the next few nights, I flicked through them, but found it difficult to accept them as authoritative. How could you compare a book published last year with the Bible that had been around for cen­turies?

I decided to ask my father for his opinion. ‘If God wanted to punish someone? He’d give them a wife like your mother and a son that can’t play rugby, that’s what He’d do.’

And my father went off to grease the tractor.

I was reluctant to try Aunt Evelyn, but my father’s answer had been so inadequate and my mother’s new ideas so dubious. As soon as I’d asked her, I wished I hadn’t. That same superior smile spread across her   features, reminding me of her past betrayals. ‘Whatever you do,’ Aunt Evelyn said urgently, ‘don’t ask your mother a question like that. She’s got strange ideas on that subject and she’ll fill your head with nonsense. Come to me and I’ll set you straight.’

Aunt Evelyn claimed that God didn’t punish people, but that He might make things difficult for them so that they came to a deeper understanding of their sins. ‘But how can you be sure what’s a sin and what isn’t?’ I asked.

‘You can ask me,’ said Aunt Evelyn, waiting expectantly.

I said nothing.

The silence drew out for so long it became embarrassing. I could feel myself blushing. Even Aunt Evelyn began to look awkward, and then doubtful, as if she’d begun to change her mind. Her expression seemed to say that if my sins were so unspeakable, perhaps she didn’t want to hear them after all. Finally, I screwed up the courage to excuse myself, thanking her for her advice. I was surprised that she let me go without demanding a confession out of me. I started to run, in case she called me back.

Grampy was my last chance. He snorted at my question. ‘God,’ he spat. ‘There’s no such thing in my opinion. People are always wanting to blame their own mistakes and problems on fate or God, instead of facing up to them and doing something about them. Listen to me, boy, if you want to get on in this life, you’ll forget about God and do what has to be done.’

I was shocked by Grampy’s forthright advice. It only made everything even more confusing.

After days of wrestling with all these different theories, I finally decided to conduct an experiment. I resolved not to look at the next
Cleo
when it arrived. In return for this sac­rifice, I expected my weight to plummet. I laid all of this out to God one night, kneeling down beside the bed, hands pressed together in   the approved position for divine communication.

After the
Cleo
had been delivered, it took all my resolve not to peek at it. Frustratingly, there were ample opportu­nities for me to do exactly that. My mother was away so often that month, always finding an excuse to go to Dunedin. I seemed to be alone in the house so often, yet time and time again I resisted. I had made my pact with God and I was determined to reap my reward.

A second issue of
Cleo
arrived. That night, after my bath I climbed onto the scales. I hadn’t weighed myself for a month and was confident of a substantial loss. I couldn’t believe it when the needle on the scales finally registered its verdict. I had put on a quarter of a stone.

I was furious. I had resisted temptation for an entire month and that was what I got for my sacrifice. It was all the proof I needed. Grampy was right. There was no God.

Later that night, I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom when they seemed safely settled in front of the television and Babe was in the bath. This was an act fraught with risk. I had never dared to look at the
Cleos
unless I was sure I was completely alone in the house with no prospect of being disturbed.

My hand trembled when I reached for the magazine on the top of the pile. Already I was hard at the mere thought of what I would see. The magazine fell open at the centrefold and I spread it out. Then I reached for the previous month’s issue and opened that out as well. I drank in the sight of the two new centrefolds. Double the pleasure. And double the guilt.

All I could think of was the prospect of being caught in the act. Yet my cock seemed to thrive on this very fear. It had never been so hard. It ached with desire. My heartbeat resounded through me. It seemed to throb in my head. For a moment I felt dizzy. That terrified me. If I fainted, discovery would be certain. I stuffed the magazines under the bed and ran to my bedroom.

That night I dreamt of the male centrefolds. They rose up in my mind, gloriously naked, revealing everything. I knew I could touch them if I only dared and although I longed to more than anything else, I never managed to. Some circumstance in my dream would always nonsensically intervene, or I would simply fail to steel my resolve and the moment would slip away. Even my dreams were confined by my guilt.

The next morning these frustrating fantasies would haunt me. I cursed myself for not doing in the sanctuary of my dreams – where I could never be spied upon – what I was too scared to do in reality. I raged against my own restraint. I explained it to myself, over and over in my mind, trying to convince whatever was holding me back how unnecessary it was. But I couldn’t dissuade my own guilt. It was buried much too deep for that.

Sport was the lifeblood of the Serpentine. It was a passion that was both universal and compulsory. Even if you weren’t good at any sport in particular, you played and you got good.

I was not the sporting type.

I possessed little natural inclination for it and certainly none of the ardour that sport, and rugby in particular, inspired in all the other boys. Nevertheless, I was obliged to play. I had the legacy of a father who had been the captain of his high school first fifteen to live up to. Rugby was sacred to him. It inspired a reverence and fervour nothing else could ever approach. The one time my father would actually stop work (which meant everybody else could stop too) was when the rugby was on television.

He would even get up in the middle of the night to watch rugby, when the All Blacks played overseas test matches against the Lions or the French. I would be rudely roused awake to watch it with him, though I’d never expressed an interest in rugby at any hour of the day or night. He’d switch my light on and gleefully crow, ‘Footie’s about to start.’

It was another of the trials I suffered for being born a boy.

He always gave me rugby books for my birthday and at Christmas. It was the only time he ever bought anyone a present. I probably should have felt privileged. My mother bought the birthday and Christmas presents for the rest of the family. She chose. He paid. Yet he insisted on buying those books for me. Biographies of All Black greats. Grant Batty. Bryan Williams. Graham Meads. ‘Hardbacks are expensive Billy-Boy,’ he’d say, ‘but they’re worth it for the ambition they inspire.’

I didn’t even pretend to read them. I’d unwrap the book and hand it straight to him, mumbling that I’d read it after him. When he gave it back, I’d look to see if there were any photographs of those sporting heroes semi-nude in the changing rooms. Usually there was one or two.

It was never my decision whether or not I played rugby. It was my father’s. Watching me play rekindled all the glo­rious memories of his own triumphs on the field. There was nothing he adored more than dissecting a game I’d just played, in the car on the way home afterwards. Telling me how he would have played it and won. He got very excited when he realised how much weight I’d gained over the past year. He began plotting possible position changes for me on the team. ‘Pull you in off that wing. Get you in the forwards. Maybe lock. Or prop. Somewhere right in the thick of it.’

I had no desire to be promoted into the thick of it. I decided I quite liked playing wing, once he’d recited off these other possibilities. At least out on the wing, the odds were strong that the ball would get dropped or the boy in possession of it tackled, before it made its way out to me on the end of the line. That was why I’d been put there in the first place. So I was out of the way. But my father rang up Mr McTaggart, the rugby coach, and told him to put me in the forwards. He described me as if I was one of his cows he was trying to sell. ‘Bob, he’s beefing up at a helluva rate. He’s carrying a lot of weight. He’ll be an asset to you in the forwards.’

Mr McTaggart then had the gall to enquire as to my weight and my father was insensitive enough to answer truthfully.

‘Christ, he must be gettin’ onto ten stone. He’s a whopper, I’m telling you. You won’t know him from last season.’

I couldn’t believe it. Could not believe what my father had just said over the phone. He might as well have had it announced over the radio. People were always listening in on the telephone party line. Everyone in Mawera had to share a line with three or four other families. Evenings were a particularly popular time for eavesdropping entertainment. Our neighbours would lift the phone to see if it was busy and then if something interesting was being said, they’d only pretend to put it down again. How much I weighed would be all over school the next day for certain.

I dreaded the rugby season. I schemed to come up with an excuse good enough to avoid it. But I knew unless some­thing really major (and very painful) befell me, like a cow charging me and battering me half to death or falling off my bike and breaking my leg, there was no escape. I wasn’t prepared to suffer physical agony to escape rugby. So I developed strategies to avoid playing, even when I was obliged to be in the middle of a game.

I was extremely unfit. For most of a game, I’d be loping a good twenty yards behind the action. My aim was to never touch the ball during a match, though my father would thwart these plans by yelling insistently from the sideline for other boys to pass it to me. Sometimes they would. They were used to obeying adults. I always dropped it smartly, so I didn’t get tackled. I loathed being tackled.

I also had the excuse of having to take my glasses off to play. This meant I spent the entire game in a hazy state of not being able to see properly. I always made out that I was more visually impaired than I actually was, in the vain hope that someone would declare me useless and order me off the field. Sometimes, I’d wander off of my own accord, pre­tending not to know where I was. But my father always kept a very close eye on me and would rush over and push me back in the direction of the ball. ‘Seize the ball, son, seize it and make a run for it,’ he’d instruct me. ‘For my sake.’ I had no intention of seizing the ball, although I would have liked to have seized Stuart Hale.

Stuart Hale. Thirteen years old, the county sprint star, tall, dark and leggy, with a smile that
Pink
would have described as ‘dreamy’.

Unfortunately, being the county sprint star, he was also very fast around the field. He was the one person I would have been prepared to tackle and risk the mud and potential damage, but there was no way I could ever catch him. Occasionally I’d amble after him earnestly, and my father would urge me on ecstatically from the sideline, but it was hopeless. Stuart was too fast, too elusive, swerving, darting and dashing about, which made him all the more desirable to me.

I eventually realised that even though I couldn’t see or keep up with the ball, there would be no getting out of playing. There were barely enough players for a team. We had to combine with the Crayburn school to make up the numbers. No matter how inept I contrived to be, they would still make me play because they had to have fifteen players on the team.

At the start of the season my father bribed me, offering me a dollar for every try I scored. It encouraged me for about ten minutes into our first match. I actually kept up with the ball and received a pass, only to be tackled immediately and thrown down into the mud. That experience quelled any desire to touch the ball again that season.

The changing room meant further tortures. I was torn two ways. I was curious to see the other boys naked under the shower, but I was reluctant to allow them to see me. I was self-conscious about my size and the fact that instead of a chest, I had a bosom. I knew my breasts would provoke unprecedented ridicule if they were noticed. So I always dawdled off the field, and let everyone else get there ahead of me. Once they’d all been through, I’d slink into the showers with my arms firmly crossed over my chest, so nothing could be seen. If I did end up in the shower next to someone else, I’d ignore them (though I was dying to peek) and pretend to be washing my hair. Keeping my hands above my head made things look more streamlined.

I was lucky that at our first tournament game that season there was a distraction in the changing room. Roy Schluter. Arch was determined to prove to everyone what Roy had between his legs. Everyone formed a circle around Roy, waiting for him to get undressed. Roy just sat there on the bench, staring at the concrete floor, saying nothing. Meantime, I enjoyed the luxury of a hot, solitary shower. I was out and dried off with my shirt back on, when Arch finally tried to pull Roy’s shorts off. Roy gave an awful sounding scream and punched out wildly at Arch. The next thing, Arch was crouching on the floor with a bleeding nose. Roy refused to get in the shower. When Mr McTaggart questioned him about it, he said he’d forgotten to bring a towel.

Roy neglected to bring a towel to rugby for the next few weeks. Arch tried a new tack, taunting Roy that he was dirty and that he stank. He even complained to Mr McTaggart about Roy, hoping that he’d order him to have a shower like everyone else. Mr McTaggart did have a quiet word with him, but Roy must have had a good excuse, because he wasn’t made to shower. He stopped coming into the chang­ing room after practice or games. He’d sit outside on the bench, until it was time to go home.

I was disappointed that Roy never came back in the chang­ing room. Not that I wanted him to be humiliated in front of everyone, but I would’ve liked to get another peek at his cock. I often thought of that evening, when we’d been huddled up in the hedge together, and I’d reached out to find it hard and swollen. Just the memory of the moment was enough to make me feel the way I’d felt that night: as though my heart was beating in my head and as if I might faint and as if I should go to the toilet, all at the same time. It was a muddle of all sorts of sensations with fear and guilt churning round in there too. I got hard myself remembering that evening.

Not that I ever thought about Roy the way I did about Stuart Hale. Physically, Roy repulsed me. I wondered if he’d been better looking before adolescence started in on him. Not that I was great looking myself, but because that fact was only reinforced when I made the mistake of looking in a mirror, I tended to forget it. In my own mind, I was Judy with her beautiful blonde hair and slinky spacesuits. I was ravishing.

I was fairly sure that if the circumstances were right, Roy would permit me another squeeze. The fact that he’d cracked a stiffy last time seemed to indicate he’d enjoyed it. We hadn’t spoken since that evening. Our eyes had met on a number of occasions and we’d stared uncertainly at one another. Roy was so difficult to read. I couldn’t tell if he was angry over what had happened or whether he was just shy and loath to smile.

I tried to avoid him at school. Arch had been suspicious of me ever since I’d lied to protect Roy the night of the party. I didn’t want to attract his attention any more than I already did. He’d single-handedly established my identity as Fatty. Occasionally he came up with inspired variations on that name, such as Billy-Boy Bunter and Tubby Titanic. They were bad enough. Allying myself with Roy would have tainted me with the same label as him: the Freak. If there was one name that was worse than Fatty, that was it. What’s more, Fatty and the Freak had a certain resonance when said together aloud, which I didn’t want anyone else to discover.

Roy was a loner. Everyone reckoned he was weird and it wasn’t just that he looked different. He never really spoke unless he was asked a question. He didn’t seem to understand the natural order of things either. He was the oldest boy in the school and by rights, should have been the natural leader and voice of authority. But he never showed any ini­tiative in that direction. He would meekly do what just about anyone told him, with the exception of Arch, who he com­pletely ignored.

I kept my distance from Roy and wondered.

When we played rugby I couldn’t avoid him. We were forced to get as physically close as two guys usually ever get. Mr McTaggart had taken one look at me and declared me a prop. This was in the front row of the scrum. There was no use protesting. I would only have been sent to run around the field three times for presuming to know better than him. Roy, he decided, would be a lock because of his height. Every time we went down for a scrum, he was there, slotted in against my hip, his hand up between my legs, gripping the hem of my jersey.

My father was delighted with my new position. ‘Go into the mauls hard Billy-Boy,’ he’d say, his eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘Just like Big Ken Grey. Show no mercy.’

I was more inclined to stand off to the side and watch the mauls, though Arch as halfback often gave me a mali­cious shove into the thick of it. Yet, for all my reluctance, everyone seemed to consider me a great   asset to the team because of my superior weight. Mr McTaggart told me I was a certainty for the county representative side, the over­weights division. I was horrified. Firstly, to actually be playing in a grade called the overweights and secondly, that it would mean even
more
games of rugby against bigger, fiercer boys.

There were two teams in representative rugby. The under­weights (under six stone seven) and the overweights (over six stone seven). At the trials, I knew the showdown would come. I would be weighed in front of all the other boys. Everyone was going to learn exactly how much I weighed. I couldn’t see any way of avoiding it.

Naturally, Mr McTaggart mentioned his ambitions for me to my father, who became terribly excited and insisted that I begin a training program in readiness for the trials. He started giving me jobs to do across on the other side of the farm and told me to run there and back, carrying a spade or a sledgehammer. He claimed this was how Colin Meads trained. ‘He used to run up the hill on his farm with stacks of waratahs balanced on his shoulders. Maybe in time you’ll be doing that too. Run up the hill to that hide-out you’ve got up there.’

There was no way I was ever going to do anything other than stagger there, but I said nothing. The fence up the hill was shot and my father knew it. I didn’t want to be sent up there lugging replacement standards.

When the day of the trials came I felt sick through. But it wasn’t vomiting sick – a visible excuse to stay at home – I was sick with dread. I tried to get my father to leave early, so that we would arrive at the grounds first, and I could get on the scales before anyone else arrived. But of course, he had little jobs for both of us to do first. We ended up leaving late. It was a typical winter’s day. Hard frost and a weak sun. The ground was frozen solid. It would feel like rock if I got tackled. In the car, my mind raced with avoidance tactics. If I went last and dawdled, maybe I could avoid everyone else hearing. Or perhaps I could simply whisper my weight to Mr McTaggart and avoid getting on the scales at all. I had little faith in either plan. I felt doomed for further humiliation.

When we arrived at Glenora, everyone was milling around Mr McTaggart and Cracker Watt, the Glenora coach. Cracker had been a trialist for the All Blacks twenty years ago and had earned his nickname because he tackled his opponents so ferociously that on several occasions, he left them with broken bones. My father parked and walked me over to join the others. My reluctance must have been obvious as he put his hand on my neck to guide me forward. The scales were positioned on the frosty grass between Cracker and Mr McTaggart. One by one, the boys were getting on. To my enormous relief, Mr McTaggart wasn’t actually calling out the weights. He simply said ‘over’ or ‘under’, then sent the boy to join the appropriate team. I was so relieved. I noticed with pleasure that Stuart Hale had been assigned into the overweight division.