The Life of Lee (10 page)

‘Piss off, Evans, you pervert!’ they would shout. Even though the glasses didn’t work, I made out they did, by saying stuff back to them like, ‘Oooooh! I see …’

They would all jump from the monkey bars and run to the teacher on playground duty, and tell on me. ‘Miss, Miss, Lee Evans can see our underwear!’

Word got round that Lee Evans had X-ray glasses and could see girls’ knickers. At every break, I would aimlessly stroll around the playground, then suddenly pop up somewhere and put the glasses on in front of as many people as possible. Then I’d point randomly at them and begin laughing and saying, ‘I can see what you’re wearing, you know!’

All of a sudden, I was the most in-demand boy at the school. Overnight, I’d gone from loser to lord of all I surveyed. Other lads would sidle up to me and whisper, ‘Evans, gissa go on your glasses.’

‘No,’ I’d respond authoritatively. ‘If these land up in the wrong hands, God help us!’

That just made them want the specs more. I found myself in the desperate situation of for once being the kid all the other boys wanted to talk to, but for something that I knew didn’t really exist. As I was a prize twit and not used to this kind of pressure, I soon buckled.

One morning, I was in the playground at break time
with a crowd of excited boys, all wanting a go on my X-ray specs and to look at the girls. I made some futile attempts at lying – I said that I’d buried them far away because the responsibility was too great a burden, and even that the government had come and taken them away to test them for possible use by our armed forces.

But it was no good. I quickly gave in to Big Chris Blake, the school bully. ‘Listen, Evans,’ he snarled as he gripped the lapel of my blazer. ‘I need those glasses. I want to see some crumpet.’ I duly took them from my inside pocket and gave them to him. He grabbed them and, projecting spit into my face, spat out the word ‘Tosser’ before running off, followed by a cackling crowd of equally Neanderthal boys.

It was over.

I’d had my moment of popularity, shallow though it was. Just as I was thinking how empty it felt being a mere mortal, bereft of any superpowers, the crowd of boys came rushing back towards me. ‘Wait,’ I thought, ‘maybe the glasses worked. Perhaps they are coming back to lift me on to their shoulders with shouts of appreciation.’ Er, no.

They stopped in front of me. Chris Blake pushed his way through the crowd. Even though he was still wearing the glasses and his eyes were covered in red spirals, I could tell he wasn’t happy. He came right up to my face and slowly took off the glasses, revealing red, angry eyes. His head looked like a geyser about to blow. He threw the glasses to the floor and, without saying a word, punched me full in the face. Was I still part of the in-crowd?

Back to the drawing board.

That feeling of being a perpetual misfit ran throughout my school days. I could do nothing right. The more I tried to be in, the more I was pushed out. The only time I ever felt at ease was when I was allowed to daydream. For example, I could lose myself in art. Every year a charity would hang up on all our front doors clear plastic bags containing colouring books and crayons. For some reason, the charity must have thought drawing the dot-to-dot pictures in those books would stop us from scribbling on the walls. But the crayons just gave us the ammo to do so.

I would spend hours sitting, colouring and drawing. Ever since I can remember, entering the world of writing or painting has been a great escape. To me, it is the place I feel the safest. It’s where I feel total freedom to express myself any way I want, without prejudice or worry.

I experienced a similar feeling of belonging when it came to music. At the Christmas Steps on that same day with Dad, I went into Trevor’s music shop and suddenly I was surrounded by all types of drums and cymbals. It was difficult to take it all in. There seemed to be no gaps anywhere. You couldn’t see the wall – every available space was filled with equipment: bass drums, kettle drums, gongs, all sorts of gleaming chrome stands that held cymbals, and entire drum kits hanging from the ceiling.

Trevor, Dad’s old bandmate behind the counter, was a short man with dark features. I thought he looked like a skinny version of Engelbert Humperdinck. He and Dad were both enthusiastically slapping each other’s backs, obviously two friends who hadn’t seen each other for a while. When he broke off from hugging Dad, Trevor looked down at me, smiling. ‘This your boy, Dave?’

‘Yep, that’s the younger one. The older one’s at home. I’ll tell you what, Trev, the older one can sing, you know. He’s very good, he is.’

‘What’s he do?’ Trevor enquired about me.

‘Nothing. I think he’s a bit shy, this one. He don’t say much,’ answered Dad.

Trevor turned round and grabbed something from behind him. Then he walked around the counter and knelt down next to me. ‘I’ll tell you what, have a go with these, young Lee,’ he said, producing two drumsticks from behind his back and handing them to me. I held them in my hand, lost in awe at my brand-new possessions.

The words ‘Trevor’s Drum Store’ were written in blue along the two sticks. They seemed to have a mind of their own, as if they were obliging me to bang something with them. It was the first time I’d ever felt any sort of urge to be musical.

From that day, I never wanted to put those sticks down. Every chance I got, I would slide off into my bedroom and construct a drum kit, setting up a rolled-up blanket to act as a bass drum, two pillows as tom-toms and a book in the middle as a snare. I tapped away for hours. I’d always liked my own company because it allowed my imagination to wander. I’m still the same today. I love nothing better than locking myself away for hours on end, doing something creative. Wait a minute – that’s prison, isn’t it?

When I played on my bed back then, it was like to imagine I was in a band. I would put on the old record player in my room and try to drum along to whatever was
playing. They were mostly records Wayne had bought: T-Rex, Sweet, Gary Glitter. The one record I had bought was Cosy Powell’s ‘Dance with the Devil’. I would practise playing along to it so much, I had blisters in between my fingers. I reckoned I had found my instrument.

I was never any good at school. I always seemed to be someplace different from the rest of the class, always marooned in the world of my own imagination. Mentally, I would cut myself off. But when I got home and played with the drumsticks, my whole body would just relax, I was in my own eleven-year-old comfort zone. This was it. I sat drumming on a book, some pillows and rolled-up blankets, but in my mind I was playing in front of thousands at Wembley Stadium. I was a performer.

Thanks, Trevor.

9. The Wish List

It was slowly becoming clear that the one place where I felt at ease was as a performer. Experiences such as my humiliation by Mrs Taylor had demonstrated as much. As yet, however, I had no idea that I could parlay clowning in the classroom into a career.

I was still very much regarded as the odd one out by people on the estate and at school. From a very young age, I always knew that I was not the same as everyone else, and there were lots of things about me which I wished were different.

That continues to this day. I’m still haunted by a ‘wish list’ of things I long to do better. I wish, for instance, that I didn’t think so much, but I can’t help it – I’ve always had a very vivid imagination. It’s a place I can go to, my own little world where I find the most solace. It’s the spot I can hide in, where no one can find me. It’s a sort of defence mechanism. My imagination takes over whenever I find it difficult to cope with the real world.

I am completely satisfied with my own company. When I was a college student, I might suddenly decide that – for that day – I was going to be from a different country. It was no specific country. I just adopted a fictitious language, and any time anyone spoke to me, I would really believe I couldn’t understand them. I’d shake my head
and hold out my hands, trying to explain to them in a ridiculous made-up foreign tongue: ‘Eye aammmmaaa no frum eerrre. I know not?’

It was just the same when I was a young kid. I’d lose myself for hours, painting, reading or dressing up and acting out stuff. To anyone watching, I looked like a simple boy, but to me I was right there in the midst of my imaginative world.

I could spend hours alone in my bedroom either imagining I was somewhere else or acting out being someone else from a film or TV show I might have watched. I always yearned to be someone much better than me – better looking, more decisive and confident, stronger-willed.

So, as a young kid, I might spend days pretending to be in a car. I would commandeer one of Mum’s dinner plates, hold it out in front of me like a steering wheel and, while making a car noise, walk around our flat. I’d only respond if someone called me, as you might a taxi. If I was asked to sit at the table, I’d drive there. When Mum shouted at me to sit down, I’d spend ages meticulously parking my imaginary car, opening the door and saying, ‘Sorry, Mum, did you say something? I couldn’t hear you in my car.’ Or sometimes I’d lie under my bed refusing to come out, explaining it would be impossible as I was a trapped miner who had somehow managed to find a small air pocket.

With my mum on a day out while Dad was away.

At various times, I was also both Batman and Robin, and Steve Austin,
The Six Million Dollar Man
. I once stood for an hour at the bottom of our block of flats, clasping hold of the corner brickwork, literally believing I was the Bionic Man. I would warn anyone who passed by in a sort
of strained American accent to ‘Step … back … I … really … don’t know … if … I … can … hold it … up … much … longer.’

All the girls loved Donny Osmond, so I enjoyed pretending to be him, too. I once become so convinced that I was Donny, I went to the sheds at the back of the flats, climbed on top of the rickety corrugated roof as if it were a stage and sang ‘Crazy Horses!’ to thousands of imaginary screaming girls at the top of my voice. I beckoned the crowd to join in. What I didn’t realize is that, having got up there, I was unable to get down and had to call for help. Our next-door neighbour tried to help me down, but in doing so he fell off the roof and broke his leg. He told me that he hated Donny Osmond after that and could never listen to him again.

On another occasion, I held a beaten-up old umbrella and dived off the garages because I really thought the umbrella would suddenly pick up the wind, take flight and lift me high into the sky. Of course, I plummeted like a rock, landing in a bone-shattering heap on the floor below, with the umbrella turned inside out.

Whenever a crash-test dummy was needed, I would always be the first kid to volunteer my services – anything to please the crowd. But I’d have volunteered anyway for no other reason than my naive and foolish optimism. Basically, I was an idiot with the brain cells equivalent to an amoeba. Stupidity was my speciality. Some people might frown at that, but I was good at it and it was all I had.

My visions became more and more powerful. I pictured things so vividly, I had to take a look around me to
see if others had seen them too. For example, when I was at school, the teacher might enter the room at the start of a lesson and, in my mind’s eye, he might randomly turn into, say, a giant bear or a gorilla. Or, while seated at his desk, the teacher would without warning transform into a frog or a rabbit, particularly when the class had been ordered to be silent and told to copy something from the blackboard. At that moment, I would look up from my book and suddenly inanimate objects – desks, coat stands, chairs, an apple on the teacher’s desk – would all start talking. And I wasn’t even on tablets!

School was really a place where I just went through the motions. It never really meant anything to me as it never had the things I wanted. I found it boring, unexciting. The school wanted to teach me things I never wanted to learn, and the things I did learn I haven’t ever used since leaving school. Somehow I have always been out of synch with everybody else, either because my family travelled around a lot and I never really had time to settle in any one school and grasp the curriculum, or because I was just plain stupid. I’m not sure, although the latter now sounds more convincing! So, as a young boy, the ability to lose myself within my own mind gave me the escapism I so badly needed.

All the same, I wish I were more educated. It was so frustrating feeling such a complete simpleton all the way through school. In the classroom, I would mostly sit like some spaced-out lobotomy patient, dribbling and staring into the ether, my small pea-like brain working overtime just to keep my vital organs going, wandering off into the land of dim. Whenever a teacher began talking or writing
anything on the blackboard, I would gawp at it from the back of the class like a Neanderthal muttonhead.

Even worse for everyone and much to the annoyance of the teacher, I would sit there with my hair sticking out in all directions making the sorts of eeks, burps, honks, zip, zap and frigging zoop noises to myself that a highly medicated psychiatric patient might when the brightly coloured toys come out of the play-box. The other kids literally thought I was retarded.