Title: One of THEM!

Author: Peter Wells

In: Sport 7: Winter 1991

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, July 1991, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 7: Winter 1991

in the middle of nowhere

in the middle of nowhere

'Why bother?'Lemmy takes up his favourite theme, rolling over onto his back, looking up at the sky.

We're at school and it's a warmwool day, this day, the clouds are all light page 115 puffs running across the sky, chasing themselves. Even the earth is breathing. I rub my body into the grass and don't say anything. A worm slithers succulently round a blade of grass, its rings all concertina-ing in as it disappears. I am hot, sweating.

'Dontyouevenknowyourleftfromyourright'comes out in one long screamed sentence.

We're lying on a grass bank low enough for nobody else to see us.

Lemmy has got me out of military service by getting me into the medical unit where all we do is wind bandages and smoke cigarettes, as, natch, there are no casualties (unless you count, as Lemmy says straight-faced, everyone out there on the field).

I hear Lemmy let out this hollow laugh.

'Which twin wears the Toni,' he murmurs.

Lemmy and I are only at school because I've persuaded him we have to turn up sometimes. We write each other's exeat notes about once a week now, go off on day-trips, things like that. Last week we took the train up to Wellsford, this hellhole tinpot town at the end of the line. Lemmy shoplifted up one side of the street while I did the other. It was a competition to see who got the most. I did, by one can of hairspray. We only take important things like deodorants, hairsprays, cigarettes, bath perfumes: things that'll come in useful. On the way back we sort of went mad and sprayed each other with the shaving foam and perfume and everything then threw it all out the windows. It was fun.

'Why?' says Lemmy, his voice almost dramatic. Because things are changing in our lives now. Things are getting different.

This is what has happened.

I told you how I was the fastest boy in all the fourth form. This is not a small thing, at this school. It sort of protected me, being an Audrey Hepburn kind of boy, from being bashed up. But then things went really wrong when I fell out of favour with our French teacher.

It was after the word went round that Freckles'll bum you for free, and some boys said that made him into a homo, and then everyone argued because, up till that time, nobody had connected bumming, which was just boys having fun with each other's bums, with being a homo. That connection had not been made. But someone in outclass said the connection was there, pure and simple, and it was wrong

I can remember this moment, very clearly.

page 116

We were all standing outside the gym, waiting for Shitalot to start his performance, he was late for some reason. It was a cool day, it was about to rain. And the word rippled up and down the line we were in, about Freckles Friggs being a homo. And our French class was next. And Ken Johnston, in front of everyone, asked me if I was a homo. I said No!, because of course I am not. But it frightened me, because I am still not sure what being a homo means, apart from being in Truth and having to commit suicide in the bath with blood running everywhere in ribbons from your wrists so someone you love finds you and is haunted for life.

I am confused, really confused. I mean, I feel this sort of hot uncontrollable feeling overtake me at the sight of the hairylegs, hairychests—hair anywhere—it just makes me feel I can't hardly breathe at all, yet suddenly my whole body's breathing for me, it's like my whole fleshy form is just this one big breath shimmering soundlessly, almost crying with the want of it, the fear of it, I just don't understand.

I even look at a library in town covered with virginia creeper and when the leaves fall off I sort of look at the way all the whiskery veins connect and feel their hairy tendrils out from a central nobbly root and this strikes me dumb because it's so like that little tickle, tiny twists of hair, lying softly against each other as they weave themselves a rope-ladder up over that long taut muscle all the sports boys have, at the back of their thighs: I keep seeing the hairs riding up, climbing up under the black serge, at the very back of their shorts.

Yet. Yet. When I found I had hair down there, I did the strangest thing, I can't even explain it to myself, except I had to do it, I was driven to it (this is what I mean by wrong but necessary) I got home early from school, went into the bathroom and got Dad's razor and, alone in the white room, sun shining in the opaque window, I lathered up some soap and pulled my trousers down. I looked down at that thing, sitting there, all very carefully snuggled up, innocent ... and carefully, very carefully, I razored all the hair away. Then I carefully washed out Dad's razor. This is the truth. I don't want it to happen to me. I don't.

Our French teacher, Freckles Frigg, is a small wrinkled man who, Lemmy pointed out to me, likes to get the boys lined up writing on the blackboard then he walks up and down with a ruler, whacking it smackily on his palm while he looks with glistening eye at the boys' rumps. He gives free French lessons to promising pupils, at home. They even get to stay the page 117 weekend. And he liked me because, as he said, I wasn't rough like the other boys. I had a nice soft voice.

Normally at French I sat down the front, almost his pet. But this time, as we came in, I ran down the back, me with my shaved downthere, being called a homo, I ran down the back, just dying, and when Freckles asked me, of all the boys who were cowering down the very end of the class, rubbing their hands all over their legs and in between them, breathless with excitement, with the thought of the danger of it, why I wasn't sitting up the front as usual, I said I just wouldn't ever sit up the front again, not me. I would just die if I had to.

It somehow didn't matter too much about being the best runner in the whole fourth form after that.

Each time in French, Freckles got me to read out loud and my voice would falter and the boys would laugh and then Freckles would say: Listen boys to how soft Caughey's voice is and suddenly, as if for the first time, everyone heard how soft my voice was and now everyone wanted to hear my voice, as if it'd never been heard before, and each time I spoke, they would scream, and laugh, and imitate it as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

I began to realise I could never raise my voice again.

Lemmy was the only person I could talk with, after that.

'So why bother?'says Lemmy now, lying on his back, blowing out a cigarette ring while, out in the sun, all the casualties carrying heavy rifles round on their shoulders get yelled at.

I know what he's talking about. Because Alan Blender, the biggest boy in our class, has come to me and asked me—rather, told me—as if it was a big favour, that I was going to be allowed to be the last runner in the fourth form relay at the end-of-year school sports. I could represent our class.

What it really meant was, if they were lagging behind in the other three parts, they could rely on my speed to get them out of trouble. Being so fast. Eh Caugheyboy, says Alan Blender as he runs his hand up my back, then punches me companionably.

'Why bother even turning up?'

Lemmy says this in a voice which has so little emphasis in it I suddenly page 118 realise how easy it might be, not to turn up. It's as if it doesn't mean anything at all, any more.

I lie there, not touching Lemmy—we never touch. I think about it all and as I think about it I just start laughing; this laugh sort of forces its way up my chest, like a big bubble of air coming up from the deep ocean floor, it rises upwards towards the surface and it pops.

'But where'll we go?' I say tentatively, not letting Lemmy know I've suddenly crossed that bridge too, almost too quickly, I'm in such a hurry to get away from Blender and Dawson and all their voices always asking to hear my voice so they can laugh. Yet now they seem as far away—no, further—than their voices carrying in the slight soft wind.

Down below Ajax Murphy is being wrapped in bandages then dipped slowly into the school creek. We do not listen to his muffled screams.

'Go?'says Lemmy, as if there is a question. He looks at me in the eyes. 'Why don't we just stick around and watch the fun develop?'

We both laugh then, as if gasping for air, we really need the air to breathe, but suddenly it's as if we're laughing so hard we can't get the air into our bodies.

It didn't matter even being bashed up after that. I decided then if I was going to be hated I might as well give them something to hate me for. And it was worth it for that moment, sitting beside Lemmy up in the back of the school grandstand, watching them run that race and get to where I was meant to be—and I just wasn't there. I thought to myself. I'll never be there again. I'll be with Lemmy. And I was glad.