"I'm getting ready for the heart aches to come¦all alone I am destined to be with misery, my only company SSL Four Tops
I sit quietly watching her, I sit with a damp plastic cone of chips in my hand, the writing upon the carton is French, I can not decipher it although my juvenile mind presumes it must say something like 'Give me frogs' or 'Do you like my new beret' I sit cross legged upon a sea spray damp plastic orange chair, it is in a row of eight, with a further eight behind, and more in front, we are out on the high deck. The morning is fine, I am wet but happy, I am in truth the captain of a ferocious pirate vessel, and she is my wench, they call me 'Crazy Curls' and the French and English lords want me to marry their daughters but I refuse on account of my dog. She turns suddenly, and catches me waving a sword-less hand in the salty air; I ignore her and command One Eyed One Legged Old Roger to cut the throats of all the prisoners below, especially the pretty maidens and princesses. I spy her out of the corner of my good eye, she smiles at me, in that odd way which I grew to loathe. It was the smile of a hundred football games whether I scored or not, it was the smile of every tatty piece of glued wood and painted paper that never in fact resembled a fort or much else, the smile returned if I fell and cried, when I woke up late on Sundays, yawning into the kitchen, curly hair scruff demanding tea and toast like father would. I miss now, what I hated then. I stick a finger up my nose, she shakes her head, still smiling, and sticks a finger up her nose; I laugh until my belly aches and snot gushes down my lips, I lick it off without a care in the world. She had the most lustrous black hair of any women known to man, blacker even than the night, because the night has stars. She had the greenest eyes, which someone else must have found for mine are grey-blue. I remember once seeing her dry herself down straight from the bath, I do not remember why I was at the door, she was dancing to 'Standing in the Shadows of Love' by a band called The Four Tops, I had never seen a women's body before and I wanted to touch it. I stood there perplexed but infinitely curious; something in my eye must have leaked out; for she suddenly stopped, frowned curiously and closed the door. Shouting through the half stripped paint skin of the wood¦
-The baby sitter will be here soon, so get ready for bed will you!
The ocean is really a massive eyeball, and the galaxy is the face of a great ogre, somewhere on another planet there is another ocean and this is the second eyeball, I drew a picture once but lost it in the rain whilst running home. A thin women, with friendly eyes; now I know all those good games we played then, were really madness, horror, and loneliness, this makes people angry and behave unkind. My legs are cold but I have always liked that. I do not feel unwell, although strangers keep on scuffing my curly hair and commenting on how unwell I look, usually this is followed with.
-First time on a ferry young fella?
I silently and truthfully shake my head which seems to evoke more sympathy from them; I got four ice creams this way that day. I sit on that perilous edge that afflicts all young men, in between boredom and mischief. Only fathers know how to deal with this duality in a young boy, mothers despair and call it naughty. Fathers smile and begin reflecting on what they were like as a young boy. Mothers make daughters and fathers make sons, I believed this for many years, thanks in large to David Weston, he had it from his eldest brother a pillar of wisdom. It was only much later that I discovered Mothers make boys and girls, which I found strange for what do fathers do? Because boys are so unlike girls, and men are very different to women, speaking different curses and reading different things from a silent face. At first I was told girls are weak, physically and mentally and that men are strong. I played sports and solved mathematical puzzles and I knew this had to be true. I learnt girls were unstable emotionally and had things called 'period' which made them naughty, easy to get to bed and dirty. To this day, I can not say whether this is true or not. So it was at high School I learnt that men make women wet and this makes babies; which put an immovable fear into me. I once had a nightmare about women pouring buckets of water onto a man, I cried that night in silence, imagining some feral claw and tooth thing gorging itself upon the agony flesh of a man writhing in unnatural birth spasms, and I have always distrusted women. So it was up until my fifteenth year I avoided water fights by the lake with an almost zealous intensity that beguiled my friends. But later, much later, not so long after my first sexual encounter; I learnt boys are only strong in muscle and mouth, it is girls that would seem to be made of sterner internal strengths. I thought this was a new truth, and I accepted it. However today, I know sadly that one rule of thought or taught, can not magically apply to an entire gender. I have met women both strong and sensitive, I have met men both weak and loveable, and I have met deeply stupid women and men.
I do not recall the precise hour when people began appearing to me in guileless transparent lumps; mother and father were always deeply strange, horrible and unknowable, but there came a change so swiftly I missed it. With this immediate eye contact knowledge of people I learnt to manipulate them; both to diabolical and good ends, especially girls, especially shy lonely girls, who read and dream in their pretty bedrooms. I tell you father if your daughter is intelligent, camouflaged pretty and shy like a willow-the-wisp keep her from me, dash my brains out with a rock if you see me in her arms, I know fathers will understand, for mothers do not see the danger and merely endeavour to mother me. I have always had a macabre way of making girls, which to my cost and ceaseless ardour I have found is both unnecessary and lonely. Yet People have always remained odd really; when I was a boy they would say¦
-He is ever so small Kathleen, do you feed him cabbage?
-For a boy, his hair is a little too long Kathleen, has he been eating crusts?
-He has a rather rude way of looking right into your eyes Kathleen, I should correct him, it is quite rude you know, do you let him drink fizzy pop?
-He has a great many freckles for a boy, does he eat beetroot?
I was unsure as to what all these things meant, I presumed that if you put cabbage crusts and fizzy beetroot into a cauldron and boiled it, one would have a cure for almost everything, mood swings, bad breath and old boots, and however nothing can cure bone idleness, but a slap round the ears. When I became a young man they would say¦
-Don't mention his parents; oh yes I know, cancer and suicide, poor dear lad, he is so lost, poor dear lad!
-Oh that one was never any good, look at his hair, a true ne'er do well if ever there was one!
-He drinks you know, oh yes he does, just like his fath- (Deliberate polite society cough) well you know who I mean?
I learnt there are two ways to behave; how others expect you to, and the way you really want to. Both may bring you to ruin, no man can grow wiser than his last folly. I have very few memories of Lawrence, but I learnt words form him. For instance if a woman hits a man, this is called 'adultery' but if a man hits a woman, this is called 'divorce'. I am unlike my mother, I am unlike my father, and I am estranged from the long line of my ancestors dropping away in a dark line back to the beginning. I am unlike my dearest friends and my closest enemies, I am dissimilar to the girl I had loved and to the girls I made love to. Only recently did it occur to me that I am not the only soul to perceive this tragedy of isolation. Many millions know it to be true also, so I am like but a few individuals upon the earth who know that they are seen as peculiar to even the peculiar and especially so to the banal majority. There is no succour here, or community, simply a waning mob of history afflicted memories. What young boys learn on the ocean they forget on the land!
I sit in the spray of a wind salted sea, spying on bum pinching couples and mother by the railings; so it is with the naïve magic only children possess in active quantities I pick a damp soggy chip from the cone and pretend it is a whale.
-Oh no, please do not eat me!
-Sorry old chap it must be this way!
-Oh giant of the universe, I am but a lowly whale. Shrieks the Whale pathetically.
-No can do Mr Whale, you insulted my pet dog, and are a gnat in my eye, you have to be punished, ha!
-But master of the seas, he bit my sister on the (I think arse but say bum with a guilty glance in her direction, she has her back to me, but from experience I know this means nothing) bit my sister on the bum.
-Well I did not know this.
-Oh kindly master, be merciful, let me go and fetch you gold from the sea bed.
-Gold you say?
-Yes, lots of the stuff dropped by Spanish ships that those English ships sunk in Jesus' time.
-The dog says no, for gold is for fools! (Gulp)
I eat the whale quickly, pretending that it is furiously struggling in the wet grime of my galactic throat; food tastes better with a little theatre. I always thought her powerful, always partially ignored her, given that she seemed to have this ability or power to always be there; immediately no matter when or why, a constant warm flannel in hand, or batman glove in mouth whilst trying to tie my laces as I kick and mutter a thousand new learnt facts about bra's, caterpillars and earwigs, some kind of indestructible creature that had some peculiar attachment to me. I see her once more approaching in that white blouse, and that familiar curiosity from within.
I sit and spy a young couple, they bump heads and laugh at dull remarks, and they nervously go spying four elderly folk across the deck. To my young eyes the four people have the undeniable look of caring, conscientious parents. For when their backs are turned the young couple pinch each others bums continually, and then seriously tell the other off, but continue regardless with the occasional giggle, I remember thinking 'So that is boyfriend and girlfriend love?'. This struck me as quite wonderful, and my first ever girlfriend found it quite unreasonable. I recall eating the last of my whale chips and glancing at her, and thinking 'she is silent today' and at first I thought I had done something wrong, like wet the bed or said something impolite to a elderly person, mother was always keen that I should speak kindly to the elderly. But I knew then as I do now that I had been unusually good that day. I recall how she gracefully turned and began walking toward me, I remember looking at her white blouse and seeing her hard nipples from the chill sea air; I can not say it was sensual, but I desired to touch and play with those dark half hidden things, I felt neither shame nor lust, for she was a beautiful women. The inquisitive mind of a son is akin to that of a daughter who sees her father's penis for the first time. To some I dare say this is deeply arousing and sexual, for me it was sheer undaunted intimacy. She sat beside me, grabbing me in her arms as if I were some precious thing soon to be lost.
-Soon you will hate me doing this!
-I hate you doing it now!
-Oh don't be ridiculous, I'm cold!
-I am not; anyhow it will upset the other men if the first mate hugs the captain!
-I thought sailors liked hugging other men! (She said with a careless sudden burst of laughter, I remember staring blankly at her. She ruffled my hair as all strangers used to do, and she looked away into the ocean) you are a very beautiful young boy, do you know that?
-Only girls are beautiful! Disgust and horror, for I am man not girl.
-Oh your father puts some idiocy into your head, boys can be just as beautiful as girls, and you will learn this.
-But I am a real boy, boys can't be beautiful!
-I won't ever see you as a man (sudden half gulp and tear) won't ever get to see the type of women you marry, this is all I get from you, and it is not nearly enough, my beautiful boy! I did not notice the pale face, the sickly sweat, or the sudden terrifying manner in which she held on tight as if for dear life. I saw and sensed nothing, but simply heard that abysmal word 'beautiful' and I whined horribly, struggling to break free of her, I never understand that sudden revulsion of her then, and I care not to analyse it now. But she smiled and held me tight; remember there was once a time when all mothers were stronger than their sons. Yet something warned me to be on my best behaviour, and I obeyed. This is the decorum of sensitivity that takes young girls but a year to master and young men a lifetime.
