Secret Girls' Stuff (8 page)
Read Secret Girls' Stuff Online
Authors: Margaret Clark
But then, as my granny always said, ‘Things have a way of working out’.
Dear Diary
,
I don’t think I’m going steady with Anton Bowler any more. Ally said she saw him in the library with Roma Virgona and they had their heads together giggling at naked pygmies in
National Geographic
magazines. How juvenile. We did that in Year Seven for God’s sake. Roma’s actually shorter than Anton, but then the pygmies are shorter than both of THEM which probably makes them feel BIG. Roma’s also reasonably rich because her parents own a fruit shop. They make a good pear. (Joke: diary, fruit shop, pear.) Because I don’t want Anton myself but I don’t want him to go out with other girls, either
.
Have you ever felt like that? You don’t want your
ex back, but you get really pissed off when he starts going out with someone else and he looks
happy
! Grrrrr. This is an extract from Chloe’s letter . She’s fifteen:
I keep thinking of things to make my ex sit up and take notice. Like, he dumped me and I think I was getting sick of him anyway, so I don’t want him back, but I want him to think I’m so cool that he shouldn’t have broken up with me. Is this making sense? I sound like a moron. Like, I want him to think when he sees me looking fantastic that I’m just the same as I’ve always been, you know, but I want to be better so he’ll sort of think ‘look what I missed out on. Like, I’m fairly happy with myself. I’m 175 cm and weigh 52.4 kgs. Is that fat? Maybe he dumped me because I’m fat! I need to be less sarcastic and train myself that food is not a cure for boredom and get a bigger gap between my thighs, like a Gap Factor of 7 would be cool. Okay so why am I writing all of the
above? Ugh. I dunno about myself sometimes
…
As my granny always said, ‘The grass looks greener on the other side of the fence.’ You go with someone, you become the dumper or the dumpee, you go out with someone else, then perversely you wish you had the ex back again only deep down you know it won’t work out. The grass is always going to look greener on the other side of the fence unless you are really in love. Otherwise you’ll always be peering over the boy’s shoulder with your eyes wide open and your antennae quivering, looking for the right guy, Mr Perfect, on the other side of that mythical fence.
But that’s okay. It’s fun looking. And as I said, the more experiences you have the better you become at judging a boy’s true character. Like, imagine if I’d actually married Anton Bowler! He would have been having affairs behind my back! Disaster!
Dear Diary,
Now I can go to Flora’s party because I’m definitely NOT going with Anton Bowler. Roma Virgona told everyone he was two-timing me and I was an idiot and he’s been going steady with her for ages. First I knew about it. Personally I think she’s got shit on the liver, as granny says, because he really likes me better than her. Well, he can stuff BANDSTAND up his jumper. I wouldn’t go out again with him if he PAID ME!
Have you ever got into trouble because of boys doing dumb things?
Sometimes I wonder about boys and brains. They seem to think first and act later even though they are supposed to be naturally more rational and logical than girls. I think that when their hormones kick in, logic goes out the window. As my granny always said, ‘A man’s brains are in his thing.’ (She wouldn’t say words like cock or dick and we never even
knew
it was called a penis back then.)
Dear Diary
,
Ally and I were baby-sitting for the Bryants after dinner. They live across the road from her house. Ally had told these two really cute guys that we were baby-sitting, just casually in conversation, and they came round. At first we weren’t going to let them in. But then we did. And we started pashing on the couch. Ally had Damien and I had Patrick. They go to St Joey’s and they’re Catholics. Our fathers would KILL us if they knew we were kissing Catholic boys. We are Protestants and strict Scots Presbyterians and we’re not allowed to go out with Catholics. Catholic boys aren’t supposed to go with us, either
.
Horrors. Mrs Bryant came home early and we got sprung bad. She phoned our parents and now we’re both grounded for a week and Dad said if I ever kiss a Catholic boy again he will disown me!
I remember feeling mad at the boys and blaming them for being dumb enough to turn up when we were supposed to be babysitting. Mind you, we could have shut the door in their faces, couldn’t we? It was as much our fault and we were acting just as dumb. Parents can be very strict about who you go out with. I think it was much stricter when I was a teenager.
I wasn’t allowed to go out with boys from different religions, different cultural backgrounds, different ethnic groups, older men, and Mum and Dad had to meet them first before I was allowed out. How embarrassing!
If I went out with boys from the ‘poor’ side of town I was slumming and if I went out with rich boys from the other side of town who owned MG cars, I was ‘getting above my station in life’.
I don’t know if you girls have some of these problems. I know I went out behind my parents’ backs with ‘undesirables’ as they called them, with my girlfriends sworn to secrecy.
Out of defiance for the grounding Ally and I started going with Patrick and Damien, behind our parents’ backs. (Don’t tell my mum, she’s
eighty now and the shock could kill her.)
I’d say I was going to Ally’s to sleep over and she’d say she was going to my place to sleep over. Luckily for us, our parents trusted us and didn’t check up.
Dear Diary
,
I’ve started going steady with Damien O’Brien. I swapped Patrick with Ally because Damien has teeth braces and Ally has teeth braces and they kept getting stuck together. And Patrick likes Ally better and Damien likes me better. He’s a Catholic but he’s really nice. He’s got these gorgeous brown eyes, dark curly hair with sideburns, and really tanned face and he smells nice, of Old Spice I think. He said he shaves every day! I have to tell Mum I’m at Ally’s all the time. At least I’m ungrounded for Flora McDonald’s party because Mum had bought the present. Flora gave everybody her Dad’s Scotch whisky in some coke and everyone got smashed. She took all her
clothes off and did the splits
.
It was disgusting. We thought she was so posh. Lucky Damien and Pat weren’t there or they’d think Ally and I are cheap. Catholics couldn’t set foot in Flora McDonald’s or they’d be SHOT on SIGHT. And if Mum and Dad find out I’m going steady with Damien they’ll KILL me and I’ll be grounded for LIFE
.
The other day when I was reading Ally some of this stuff out of my diary, she said, ‘Do you remember the time I went to the midnight drive-in with Nev? I told Mum I was going to your place and I stood out the front of my place in the dark. Then Nev picked me up, we went to the drive-in, then at 4am I crept down the side of your house, climbed in your bedroom window, and slept top to toe in your bed.’
I’d forgotten this secret till she reminded me. We often slept top to toe, with her feet up my end and my feet in her face. It was what girls did in the olden days if there was only one bed.
Well, Damien lasted six weeks which was big
time. Then I broke it off with him because:
Dear Diary
,
Damien gave me a friendship ring. Out of the blue, just like that. It’s gold with a little red ruby. So I’m really going super steady with Damien! I showed my parents the ring at dinner. I did this because Menzel is always saying I’m ugly and I’d never get a boyfriend. So I wanted to stick it up his nose. I didn’t say Damien was a Catholic, in fact I sort of changed his name to Dan because everyone knows that boys called Damien are Catholics. And now I love Damien I thought I’d break Dad in gently and get him used to the idea that I’m going to marry Dan, I mean Damien, when I’m eighteen
.
Dad dropped the ring on his bread and butter plate and said it sounded tinny. Then Menzel came to my house that afternoon grinning like an idiot with an IDENTICAL RING he’d bought attached
to a peppermint stick he’d bought at the milkbar for a shilling
.
So I laughed and pretended that I’d known the ring was a fake and was just having them on, but deep down I was really really HURT. And when I asked Damien he just laughed and said it was a joke
.
I was hoping he’d say it was in lieu of a real ring, like a token until he could buy me a proper ruby ring. Now I HATE Damien. What on earth did I see in him? And anyway Jan said he’s been seen out with Sandra Weymouth. I wish that stupid dog would LEAVE TOWN. Ally reckons she’s letting boys feel her up and that’s the only way she can get them
.
Boys are tricky. I suspect if you’ve got some brothers you know how their minds work. But then maybe you don’t. Like, I was working in a primary school doing an author talk and there was this crowd of ten-year-old boys in a corner of the yard so I strolled over out of curiosity. As I got near I saw a boy in the middle of the group quickly
stuffing a pair of red lacy knickers in his pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
