Doing It (21 page)

‘What’s all this?’ he said waving the letter at me. ‘Maths,’ he said.

‘What about Maths?’

He handed the letter over. It was from my maths teacher, Mr McGrath. Apparently I’d been falling behind. He was concerned. He suggested that I should stay in after school on Thursday to do extra maths and catch up in the areas I seemed to be having trouble with.

Since when have I been behind in maths? No one had said anything to me about it. But it was right. School notepaper, everything.

‘But he got an A for his GCSE,’ pointed out my mother. ‘How come you got so far behind?’

‘Mr McGrath didn’t say anything about this to me.’

And then it clicked.

‘This is …’ I began; and then I stopped. What could I say? That it was a forgery?

‘Ah … It’s probably a mistake. Actually, I know what it is, it’s a circular. The class in general has been falling behind, he wants us all to stay back. You know how they get …’ I shrugged. ‘League tables.’

‘Wood End is very good on maths,’ said Dad.

‘Yeah, and they want to stay there. I’ll talk to him about it. He may not mean me.’ It was so stupid. Why pick maths, she knows I’m strong on maths. That’s why I’m doing A-level, for God’s sake.

I collared her in the corridor at lunch time.

‘Maths tuition,’ I said.

‘Clever, eh?’ she chortled. ‘I’d love to have seen your face!’

‘What if they checked up?’

‘I’m sure you’re equal to that, Ben, you’re a born liar.’ She raised her eyebrows and smiled. ‘See you then, sweetie.’ And she was off before I could say another word.

She’s the liar. All this secrecy and plotting – I hate it. I think that’s what she gets out of it. Maybe she actually wants to get caught, the risks she takes. Perhaps it turns her on, or something. She picked maths exactly because it’s my strongest subject. More risk.

What about that business behind the curtains? Risky or what? She’s always trying to get me into dodgy situations like that. She doesn’t care, she likes it, but it does my head in. She made me shag her in the props cupboard last week. Sounds great? Don’t you believe it. It felt like the whole school was listening outside the door. And then she gets really pissy when I try to stop her.

‘What’s up with you?’ she hisses.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Yes you do, you’re as stiff as a rolling pin. Here …’

‘No!’

‘Why?’

‘Someone might come in.’

‘There’s no reason for anyone to come in.’

‘They might not need a reason.’

She put a broom under the door handle.

‘There.’ And so she got what she wanted, as usual. I ought to just say no, but somehow … I mean, she’s Miss, you know what I mean?

‘I’d get expelled,’ I told her.

‘It’s worse for me. No one would ever give me another job in teaching. That’d be it. Career, income, gone. I’d be practically a paedophile. I don’t know what you’re making a fuss about.’

Another thing. I’ve had four detentions in the past two weeks. Everyone sees how odd it is, they’re always on about it, teasing me about shagging her. If only they knew! In one of them she even made me sit down and write lines. Lines! So what’s that about then?

This. Has got. To stop.

Apart from it getting a lot too much, there’s another reason. I mean, girls my own age. You know? Someone I can talk to. Someone I could really fall for. I mean, the sex with Ali is great but it’s not like the real thing, is it? It’s just porn with a pulse. I want to … you know. Well. I want to fall in love.

Does that sound stupid? Maybe that’s asking a bit much. It’s just that I can’t be myself with Ali. It’s like a big game. It’s not real.

OK, to be honest, there is this one girl I really fancy, which is a bit stupid because I’ve not even spoken to her that much. She’s called Marianne and I do actually think I fell in love with her, or I started to anyway. I can remember the exact moment. She was going out with this lad from our year, Toby. He was there too. He’s a big tall lad – I’m quite short, and I thought they looked a bit mis-matched because she’s quite short too, and he looked all over-sized and awkward standing next to her.

Anyway, we were all standing around talking, me and a few of the other lads and a couple of girls, and she was there with Toby, standing next to him and talking to someone opposite her. There was something about the way she stood there, close to Toby but listening to this other person. It was something about the way she was listening. She was holding some books up against her chest and she had her head to one side. I must have been staring at her because I saw her glance at me, and I smiled, and she gave me a little smile back.

Funny. She wasn’t doing anything at all. I might even be making up all that stuff about her listening and standing protectively next to Toby to explain it, but I was really attracted to her. She’s nice, that’s all. And good-looking. Not in the usual way, like Jackie, but really pretty and neat.

I got embarrassed after that and I couldn’t speak to her, but I watched her whenever I saw her. She can be quite chatty and lively, but I think she does listen well. You quite often see her listening to people. I know how to listen too. A lot of people don’t do that, you know?

She’s pretty ordinary really – maybe that’s what I want after Ali. Actually, thinking about it, I noticed her even before that during a gymnastics competition. That’s pretty cheesy, isn’t it? She was doing the dance on a mat – you know that thing they do. I think she came second or third, so she’s fairly good at it. I thought she should have come first. She looked really good. She was flipping herself all over the place and running about, but she managed to look really serene and calm, as if it was no effort at all. It was only afterwards that she went red and sweaty, like she could hold it off until she wanted to, and I thought that was so great. I mean, that she was such a nice person and had such a great body as well.

That was last year. I mentioned it to Dino and Jon in the end.

‘Ask her to go out with you,’ said Dino.

‘What if she says no?’

‘Better than living in fear,’ said Jonathon, as if you could miss out on something and ruin your life. It was a bit of cheek him saying that, because Jonathon would never dare ask a girl anything, but it made me think. So after a bit, I went and asked her. I got Jon and Dino to go along with me to her classroom for moral support, went in and asked her. She was very good about it. She said I was very nice and she was very flattered but she was going out with Toby at the time, and so she couldn’t. I couldn’t work out if it was an excuse or not. And you know what? I was broken-hearted. But only for a bit, so it probably wasn’t falling in love at all really.

I haven’t had much to do with her since then, although we’re at the same school. I was a bit shy of her, I suppose. Toby left and went to a sixth form college, but as far as I knew she was still seeing him. But the other day I came up behind her in the corridor. She was talking to some friends, and as I went past she gave me this big smile. It caught me unaware and I smiled back and went on. But I think it meant something, you know. Anyway, I asked around and apparently she and Toby stopped seeing each other a while ago. So maybe, I mean, under other circumstances, I could ask her again.

The lads are always on at me to get a girlfriend, they can’t understand why I don’t go out with someone. Dino was on about it the other day – did I still fancy Marianne? – and I had to say I didn’t fancy her all that much any more.

I don’t dare do anything about it. For one thing, I bet Ali would make Marianne’s life a misery. I bet she would. She’s doing drama for GCSE. Which shows that I don’t think all that much of Miss, you know, because that would be a really shit thing to do. You know what I think? I think she’ll do anything she can to get what she wants. I was thinking that the other day. About a year ago, I’d have given almost anything to have done all the things I’ve done with Miss Young. And I have to say, it was great, but it was only great because I wanted to do all those things so much. It didn’t really have anything to do with who I was doing them with. And some of it, I don’t think I actually wanted to do with anyone. All that risky places stuff – that’s not my thing. I’m more straightforward, I think.

If I ever manage to get rid of her and go out with Marianne, I’ll go ever so slowly. I wouldn’t try to sleep with her on the first dates. I’ll try to kiss her and I may try to slip my hands under her top, but if she didn’t want it, that’d be OK. And I’d keep it dead quiet, but not in the same way I keep it quiet about Ali. That’s a secret because it’s dirty and dangerous; this’d be a secret because it would be private. Some of my mates are really horrible, the way they go on about their girlfriends. Dino’s the worst. He’s always going on about Jackie – well, he used to anyway. I reckon I know as much about Jackie’s body as he does. I know what size and shape her tits are, I know what colour her nipples are, how she plucks out the hairs around them with a pair of tweezers and goes yip! when she tugs them out. I know she hisses and whimpers when she comes. I even know that Dino can fit three fingers up her fanny but she doesn’t like it much. That’s personal stuff, man! You shouldn’t say that stuff to anyone, not even your best friend! I bet poor Jackie would be pretty pissed off, I don’t suppose she imagines that’s going round the school. But then maybe she does, she’s not an idiot.

Jonathon’s different again. He’s filthy, he’s always been filthy, but it’s just a show. I mean, he never says a word about him and Debs. Not a word. He’s very discreet really. They’re very different people, but I envy both of them because, at the end of it, I’d rather be kissing a girl and having her tell me to keep out of her pants, than spending hours and hours rolling around the floor with Miss, watching her trying to imagine new ways of doing the same thing over and over again. In school uniform. On the table. Over the sofa. It’s like being trapped in a porn movie. I ought to grow a moustache. I ought to get rid of her. But I don’t know how.

So – onwards and upwards. And inwards. Deborah has Found an Opportunity. Her parents are going away the weekend after next. This is it. I get to lose my cherry.

Only it’s not a cherry – it’s a big, fat, juicy plum. I have it right here in my hand.

‘Ho ho ho!’ says Mr Knobby Knobster. ‘This is what you’ve been after the whole time, isn’t it, you filthy little stalk of gristle and engorged flesh?’

‘Yep.’

So Mr Knobby is happy. He thinks, Right up to me ankles in hot meat. He thinks he’s gonna have a good time. Well, don’t say a word but there are things that Mr Knobby doesn’t know. Secrets a knob would do better without. Hush! I’d hate him to get
worried
, you see. You understand me? Exactly. A worried knob is a limp knob.

Mr Knobby Knobster says: ‘You fuck this up for me and I’ll never forgive you.’

I have reason to believe that Mr Knobby is going to be very good at sex. You see, he
likes
it so much. Whenever there’s a spare minute, there he is, asking for a hand. And since he’s my best friend I’m always only too happy to oblige. In the bath, in bed. In front of the computer screen. I live in terror of the computer going wrong and someone sending it in to be fixed.

‘Mr Green? Your computer. Upon delving into the hard drive we found a collection of filth which, quite apart from reflecting seriously on your morals also happens to be illegal. I realise that a great many of those women were doing those things to themselves – we expect to prosecute them as well. Your son, you say? You hardly ever use the computer? It’s news to you? Ah. Now you understand why he kicked up such a fuss when you insisted on taking it in to get it fixed? Right, let’s make that public knowledge as soon as possible …’

It will happen. I know it.

I’d like to put it on the record that a great deal of the porn I look at is only looked at for the sake of curiosity. The sight of someone chained up with a set of nipple clamps and a pregnant dog is not sexy to me. It just amazes me that it’s out there and can be seen by perverts like me while they’re looking for wholesome babes to drool over.

Oh, my God.

Hush! Mr Knobby Knobster is fast asleep. Lean closer. I can reveal that …

No. Not yet.

Secrets! I have thousands of them milling about in the black hole of my psyche, although nothing as awful as the one Mr Knobby must never know. For instance, this is an interesting one, I bet loads of people have this one but never dare admit it. When I was fourteen and going out with my first girlfriend, I couldn’t find her fanny. How about that? I know, I know – how is it possible to miss something like that? I mean, it’s about two-foot long, when you get up close. Impossible to miss, you’d think. But I did. Her name was Lucy Small, in the same year as me, and she picked me up – the only thing I ever pick is my nose – on a school geology trip to Wales. Your first girlfriend and you met her in Wales – that’s humiliating enough, surely? We went for a walk to post some letters, and then went to hide ourselves among the trees by the roadside for some Heavy Petting. She’d been after me for a while, but I was too shy. She’d been out with Alan Noble the night before, and he came back into the cabin and made us all sniff his finger to show that he’d been there. She only did it to make me jealous. So. I felt her tits – see, I’m not a complete goof, I knew where they were – and then she undid the button to her jeans, and I put my hand down and … it wasn’t there. Nothing. I was amazed! What was going on? Was she deformed? Had I been unlucky enough to get a girlfriend with
no fanny
? Should I say something sympathetic – oh dear, no fanny, that’s a stroke of bad luck. Or was I making some sort of mistake? That seemed the most likely, so I scratched about her bush, up down, all around, but there was no doubt about it: no fanny. Amazing.

That was obviously cobblers, even I could see that. What about Alan Noble’s finger? Perhaps I’d found it already but it was completely different from what I had thought. Perhaps there was some secret way of opening it up. Open sesame! You know. Or a button or a flap or something. Whatever. There
had
to be some explanation.