Being a Boy (17 page)

Authors: James Dawson

BOOK: Being a Boy

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Professional sportspeople have dragged themselves out of bed at 5am to train every day since they were young kids. Actors, dancers and singers passed hanging out at the local bus shelter to rehearse. Writers and novelists write because they love it, not because they have JK Rowling’s bank balance.

This message is oddly missing from school. Teachers give you work, but don’t tell you why. The truth is this, teachers make you work at school because anything worth having in life will take WORK.

Sadly, crap reality TV has led you to believe that anyone can be rich and famous overnight. This is a lie. I know some of the people who make reality TV shows and those ‘accidentally’ famous people are also getting up at 5am to film. Basically, there is no such thing as an easy path to fortune. You have to WORK. It’s worth it though. It’ll take some time and a crushing lack of sleep most likely, but eventually, if you can identify what you love doing in life, adulthood can be fantastic.

Another thing you rarely hear is: do what you want. You might not make any money doing it, but don’t let that stop you. If you want to paint, paint. Yeah, you might have to work in a paperclip factory during the day, but you can ALWAYS paint in the evening. This applies to anything. If it’s something you love, you’ll find a way.

It’s not only your time you have to make choices with. As an adult you have choices with your relationships too. As a child you were ‘put’ with your peers and often ‘told’ who your friends are. As you edge towards adulthood, you’ll realise that you have more in common with some people than others. You’ll phase some friends out as you make new, like-minded chums.

Your ideas, opinions, politics and beliefs will solidify. You might find that these are very different to those of your family and friends. Sometimes it feels a little like the blinkers have been removed and you’re finally seeing the world with your own eyes.

I believe there are three stages of awareness:

Realising your friends can be dicks.
Realising your parents can be dicks.
Realising that you can be a dick.

The slow realisation that your parents or carers aren’t superheroes but are, in fact as messed up as the rest of the world, can be disheartening. That is, until you reach stage three and realise everyone is struggling with the real world. The only reason you may not have struggled is because your adults were protecting you. Now you’re on your own.

These choices also extend to your sexual relationships. Once you’ve got all those first kisses and first sexual experiences out of the way, bigger questions such as, ‘do I want to spend my life with this person?’, will start to enter your head. You may eventually start to think about marriage and children, even if it’s to rule them out. You guessed it, there are infinite choices to be made.

Do you want kids? Do you even LIKE kids? The idea that we all HAVE to get married and have kids is considered deeply old fashioned now.

World travel isn’t as exotic as it once was – are you the sort of person who wants to explore the world? Some people never put down roots. Some people can’t wait to. You don’t have to follow the path your parents, carers, friends, brothers or sisters took.

Not long ago, pretty much EVERYONE went to university. It was becoming the done thing. That’s changing, with hideous student debts and no guarantee of a career post study, people are looking for alternative paths into the workplace. Do what feels right for you.

You get to CHOOSE what sort of man you want to be. Do you want to be the sort of man that treats people badly? Do you want to be the sort of man who sees people’s differences before he sees the similarities? Do you want to be a man people respect, or a man people are scared of?

Remember this. Every time you interact with someone, even for the briefest of moments, every shopkeeper, every passer-by, you leave a fingerprint. You make an impression everywhere you go. What do you want that impression to be? Kind, friendly, approachable? Aloof, dismissive, frosty? Warm, funny, charming? Loutish, obnoxious, noisy? Everywhere you go, every person you meet …

Sometimes it’s exhausting. It’s early in the morning and you just want your effing hazelnut latte and the coffee person is all, ‘Cheer up, love, it might never happen’. It’s easier to give them the stink eye but that barista will quite rightly assume you are a massive, massive wanker. The next time you go in, she will think, ‘brilliant, it’s that wanker’. Everywhere you go, everyone you meet …

On the top deck of a bus, you are with five friends so you feel invincible. You’re playing music out of your phone knowing full well it’s going to annoy the other commuters. Guess what? It’s intimidating and annoying. In that moment you’re representing every young person and adding to the myth that ALL young adults are noisy and loutish, which just isn’t true. Everywhere you go, everyone you meet …

A girl chats to you ‘in da club’ and you’re rude and dismissive. She will talk to her friends, who will talk to their friends. Everywhere you go, everyone you meet …

The man you become is a collage of people’s opinions of you but the good news is you get to decide what people think of you. Send the right messages about yourself and the world will see that man.

I do hope this book hasn’t terrified you. However many books you read, however much advice you seek, none of us can hold back time. Like it or not, we’re all getting older and constantly changing. At puberty the change is self-evident but the truth is you’ll never, ever stop. The man you are at 20 will be different to the one you are at 30. To adopt a much-overused cliché: It really is a journey. I like to think of us as modelling clay, constantly being moulded and squished by our experiences.

Change is inevitable, so we might as well welcome it. Ask yourself every day, ‘Am I having fun?’ Being a man should be fun – life goes a LOT faster than you think. Enjoy.

THE SCHOOL DICTIONARY

A
s if school isn’t hard enough, there is NOTHING worse than not knowing what everyone’s talking about. What’s worse, what if people are making up plausible sounding terms and asking if you like them?

‘Hey, are you into doinking?’ What do you say? Is doinking a great thing that ALL the cool kids are doing or is it filthy and disgusting? OH GOD, KILL ME NOW.

Help is at hand. There now follows a glossary of vaguely sexual terms you might overhear. Obviously there’s a new one every week so if in doubt, just make a semi-vague face of aloofness and say, ‘Uh. No. Lame.’ Even if it’s a cool thing, you can pretend it’s SO LAST WEEK. We talked about this earlier – I reckon about 90 per cent of what you hear at school is total bollocks, but some of the things in the list can be fun in a CONSENSUAL relationship.

Blow job

Oral sex, note involves no actual blowing

Bondage/S&M

The kinky art of tying up/restraining a willing sexual partner

Crabs

A marine crustacean OR another term for pubic lice

Crywank

A sad wank

Cock

A penis or a male chicken

Cunniligus

Oral sex on a woman

Cum

Informal term for semen/sperm

Dick

A word to describe a penis OR someone called Richard

Dildo

A sex toy to insert in the front-bum OR bum-bum

DILF

Dad I’d like to f
^*ck

Douching

Washing out a body cavity such as the vagina or anus

Double penetration – two willies one hole OR simultaneous penetration of vagina and anus. ONLY in porn.

Eating out

Cunnilingus. Actually means eating IN if you think about it

Face Handies

A blow-job

Flaps

Unflattering term for a woman’s labia minora

Flick the bean

Female masturbation, notably stimulation of the clitoris

Golden Shower

Weeing on a consenting partner or allowing them to wee on you

Handies

A more charming way of describing masturbation

Jizz

Another word for cum (semen)

Meat Curtains

Another unflattering term for a woman’s labia minora

MILF

Mum I’d like to f
^*ck

Motorboating

Making an engine noise between a woman’s breasts

One-Night Stand / NSA.

No-strings-attached OR one-night-stand sex

Pussy

A slang term for a woman’s bits

Rimming

A term that means licking your partner’s (clean) anus

Scat

Eating poop (sad face)

Spooge

Another word for cum (semen)

Spooning

Cuddling (or having sex) with one partner lying behind the other

Spunk

Another word for cum (semen)

Titwank

A handie administered between breasts

V-Card

‘Membership card’ to the ‘VIRGINITY CLUB’

Vibrator

Vibrating sex toy

Windmilling

When a woman swooshes her breasts in a circular motion

When writing Being A Boy I called on other ‘PSAs’ (Puberty Surviving Adults) as well as focus groups in schools. These interviews were conducted in the summer of 2012.

SYNONYMS FOR ‘PENIS’