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Shifting uncomfortably, he gave me and the offending CD a nervous side-eye before gluing his eyes back on the road. “Um… yeah, I think it’s one of hers.”
Alex Valentine was such a bad liar. Grinning, I opened the glove box. Three CDs spilled out.
“Wet, Wet, WetLive at the Apollo Theatre? Celine fucking Dion? Oh my god,Take That and Party?”
To be fair, I scoffed at that one only to spare my own blushes. I’d pretty much worn out the rewind button wanking to Tara’s videos of Take That dance routines. Little Mark shaking his tush to ‘Could It Be Magic’ was a particular highlight. Their music was still shite, though.
“Hey, mate.” I tittered. “If I turn on the radio, what’s the betting I’ll get a blast of the Jimmy Young show?”
Jimmy Young: aRadio Two,Home of Easy ListeningDJ since Marconi had worked out how to transmit a signal. Every other song the old geezer played was either Cliff Richard or Kenny Rogers, served with a large helping of cheese. Alex Valentine reddened and fumbled his gear change. The car jolted.
“No, because I don’t listen to Radio Two. And his programme happens at lunchtime, anyway.”
My fingers hovered teasingly over the knob. “So what are you tuned to? Or do you gently ease yourself into the day with some light Celine, then chill with Boyz To Men all the way home?”
My needling had begun to piss him off. “Look, I can listen to whatever the hell I like, because this is my car.”
“And your sister’s,” I taunted. “Don’t forget that. Is she fit?”
He ignored me. “For your information, not that it’sanyof your business, the radio is actually tuned to Radio Four, because I like to keep up-to-date with the news and current affairs.”
Bloody hell. Eighteen going on eighty. He swiped down on the indicator and we slowed to turn left by the hospital. “If that makes me dull and uncool and too…too…bourgeoisfor you, then…tough titties and get the hell out of my car.”
Tough titties? Oh my God, this guy was something else. To accentuate his point, he knocked my hand away from the radio knob then jabbed it himself. The car filled with the cultured tenor of some posh twat of a journalist discussing European agricultural subsidies. Alex Valentine stared straight ahead, his lips a thin line.
“You can let me out here,” I offered, pointing to a layby up ahead. No way would I let him see where I lived, even if it meant I had to sprint another half mile in the relentless downpour. He didn’t reply, but he must have clocked we weren’t outside my house, because the only buildings were the back of the hospital, council offices facing onto a carpark, and an unlit, creepy locked graveyard. He stopped the car anyhow, glad to be rid of me, and I opened the door. A pair of clear blue eyes studied me unhappily, willing me to fuck off. With one foot in the car and one foot on the pavement, I retrieved my ciggie from behind my ear, placed it between my lips, and lit up. Puffing a long stream of smoke back into the car, I grinned around it, praying the soggy fag wouldn’t fall out. I hadn’t yet perfected the art of smilingandsmoking. Funnily enough, my new buddy didn’t grin back.
Alex bloody Valentine. As square as a cream cracker and as straight as a pencil. That didn’t stop me wanting to reach across and plant a fat smacker on those disapproving, pursed lips. Instead, I settled for a wink.
“See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.”
Childish,moi?
WELCOME TO THE CHEAP SEATS
(THE WONDERSTUFF)
A skint Saturday night found Brenner and me parked in front of the telly over at his place, babysitting his kid sister so his mum could work her shift at the chippy. Phil was out, trying to get into his new bird Alison’s knickers by spoiling her with a trip to the cinema beforehand. Not sure I’d have chosenReturn of The Living Dead 3as foreplay, but what the fuck did I know about girls? Nowhere near as much as Phil chick-magnet Cantor, that was for sure. Though I probably knew more than Brenner, even if I did prefer dick. But not Brenner’s dick.
The fancying boys and not girls thing had been around a while—forever actually. And it was fucking annoying, on a number of levels. Keeping my spidey senses on permanent high alert, for example. Having to nurture the mantle of a laddish charade, forever petrified I’d slip up and reveal my true leanings. Over the last couple of years, grooming my blokey persona had become as natural as breathing. Even more upsetting was the absolute certainty my life as a homosexual was destined to be a lonely, wretched, miserable, and hopeless one. As I saw it, my options were to die a decrepit, seething mass of frustration after a lifetime of denial, or meet someone as queer as me, fuck their brains out, then succumb to a hideous, knob-eating disease. My ravaged, raddled body would waste away, culminating in an agonising, undignified premature death.
Hella depressing. I tried not to dwell on it too much. Being skint, seventeen and a pouf in the West Midlands in 1995 really sucked.
At least I had Brenner. I reckoned I’d always have Brenner. The girlies weren’t exactly flocking to his door either; he often reminded me why.
“Blimey, imagine sticking your nose in between those beauties and goingpbbbt.” He blew a noise like a wet fart.
Those beautieswere a pair of spacehopper breasts, crammed into a teeny-tiny sports vest. The unfeasibly large mammaries in question belonged to Jet, a high-kicking, cartwheeling Gladiator on the perviest, yet most family-friendly TV show ever invented. In our dingy corner of England,Gladiatorswas pretty much the pinnacle of a wet and windy Saturday evening’s entertainment. It had something for everyone, not least me, because I could nod and perve to my little gay heart’s content alongside Brenner. With a strategically placed cushion stuffed into my lap, gawping at the outline of Hunter’s cock in his wrestling leotard contraption had me almost coming in my boxers. Jet’s tits had zero to do with it.
The housing estate Brenner and I had the misfortune to call home was rough.
Not an edgy, slightly thrilling, might-get-stabbed-by-a-psychotic-skinhead-in-a-dark alley kind of rough, more of a cheap, post-war, pre-fab housing-that-time-forgot kind of rough. Brenner’s mum’s dismal flat was an anonymous box on the top floor of a low-storey block. Rows of hard-up, drab pensioners filled the other flats, their miserable existence shrunk to afternoon horseracing on the telly, own brand teabags, and a two-bar gas fire heating a ten-foot room. I had the misfortune to reside in a marginally bigger council flat opposite.
On a scale of poshness, (and all things were relative) Phil ranked highest. He lived in a three-bed semi, beyond the edge of the council estate, two streets down from Brenner and me. Phil’s house boasted a square patch of garden. His dad wore a shirt and tie to his office job, and the family went on holiday to Marbella once a year. His mum smiled a lot and had nice hair. She wore pretty dresses, even if she wasn’t going anywhere.
Like a rabid dog, Brenner slavered at the telly, his moist, fleshy mouth slack.
“I’m not sure girls go for having their tits blown,” I replied diplomatically. “Not nice girls like that Jessica Parker you fancy, anyhow. Or Sarah Coxon in your geography class.”
