Chapter 1
Football. Soccer. Whatever word is used, the meaning is comprehensible to all. Except if you’re a girl or, a woman. All they saw were men’s legs running around chasing a ball. Kicking it. Passing it. Heading it. Throwing it in. And, heaven’s forbid, handballing it. The referee, a man of some importance, didn’t like that at all. The audience, a crowd, the fans, all men, roar with crescendo cheers every time there is a goal. The Scorer. The man of the match. A hero!
‘There he stood,’ thought Colin, ‘captain of the bleeding school football team. Giving a pep talk to his boys. All of whom were in the same bloody class. It could have waited until training. But no. We have to listen to this shit as he reads out this crap as an example of a good essay.’
Colin, the school gay, neither acted nor dressed the part. He wore his school uniform just the same as everyone else. Well, except the girls of course. He’d have been sent home to shave his legs if he’d turned up in a pleated grey skirt, the drama teacher once gesticulated. Needless to say, Colin was concerned for him. An ordinary boy, a little skinny perhaps; but plenty of time to spread out.
It had to be said, despite his predecessor leaving school in the summer before he started in the autumn; it was just bad luck. Of course, the teacher who chose the title for him was quite correct in his assumption, he was gay, it was just unfortunate the teacher concerned observed him first. He wasn’t camp. He didn’t do the dance. He hated drama. However, the thing he was most passionate about was football. He loved playing it. Immersed into teamwork. He adored the feeling of being in a team at primary school. So, he missed being a part of this team. He was as lost as a bad joke. This team’s sloppy captain had decided, no queers were allowed.
When you’re the only gay in the school, you become a loner. Learning how to listen to others talk about everyone else. Never voicing your own opinion but being forced to listen to others have their say. You’re not special. You’re not unique. You’re, on your own. Even so, these kids didn’t half talk a load of shit at times.
If he could have played the world’s smallest violin for some of them, he would have done. Not for himself, but for the crap this team captain poured over them like a religious man shower over his faithful. How inebriated in the faith of the pitch they were once he’d concluded his sermon. If he were a famous speaker, they’d have all chanted his name. ‘Monty. Monty, Monty, there’s only one Monty!’ Instead, a gentlemanly cheer and a polite round of applause. Still, it was their own fault. They had lost their last match. Three nil. Ah, the shame.
The two girls who sat behind Colin were awoken from their daydreams of a better life once this rowdiness subsided.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Mandy. A pleasant girl who looked quite normal once she’d washed the slap from her face in the morning. She wasn’t a slut, of sorts, but she did enjoy making herself look older. A subject she never tired of discussing with her best friend sat next to her. Claire, a policeman’s daughter made it her life’s goal to break every known law. Oh, outside school hours of course.
Of late, they had become devoted followers of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Since their appearance on The Peel Show for BBC radio and an interview in New Music Express, it was all they could talk about. Well, that, and, how women would be equal or something. With, careers for a lifetime and, so on. This all sounded like something from a science fiction horror movie to Colin. It even gave him the willies and made the hairs on the back of neck rise. They both agreed, homosexuality would still only be legal for the over twenty-ones between two consenting men who had sex on the moon.
The English teacher. Some sixties University wonder with a degree in something and a teacher’s certificate with a bad taste in gents’ suits, cream shirts, awful ties and imitation brown suede shoes too showed his applause for the literary masterpiece that had been read.
‘Brilliant! Bloody brilliant Monty,’ he bellowed forth in a bass line that bounced off the walls. His cheery disposition displayed a favourable smile as the boy retook his seat. The rest of the class just sat and waited for him to flick his long flowing jet-black hair back. Some of the girls often wondered why he didn’t braid it. At least according to one, ‘it would have looked neater.’
‘So then,’ he said as he peered at the class through his beady hazel eyes, ‘who wants to read next?’
No one of course. Who wanted to read to this lot of reprobates?
‘Colin?’ the teacher said, ‘you did something different to the others. Didn’t you?’
The teacher’s giggle was infectious. It was deeply insecure and driven by an obsessive passion to imitate pure unadulterated filth. If any of the boys had imitated this giggle, they would have been caned by the headmaster on the spot for nothing short of dropping their trousers and displaying what was on the inside.
‘Mr Souter, sir,’ began Colin and then added, ‘oh sod it. I’ll read it.’
In walking to the front of the class the school football team couldn’t resist singing, ‘By the rivers of Nottingham, he gave good head. Ah, ah, ah, ah, then he came in bed.’
Colin felt for Boney M. First, the Barron Knights who performed a brilliant mockery of the song and now, these twats. Where it came from was a mystery but since that record had gone to number one, one of the little shits had rewritten those lyrics just for him. Secretly though, to have all the boys from the school football team singing to you was almost flattery. It was a shame that none of them would ever get a blowjob for their trouble.
‘Quiet,’ Colin growled as he glared at the tribe of herbs before him. ’A poem, by Colin Gray.
It is nothing at all.
It would never count.
Now slowing to a crawl,
Is its total amount.
Called by familiar name.
It’s what you know.
How? Who? What is to blame?
In a familiar tone.
Laugh like we always laugh.
Think of me, pray for me.
Once gone there’s a drought.
At last, I’ll be free.
Out of mind, out of sight.
Once, I was around.
Will any of us see the light?
Buried six feet beneath the ground.’
The two girls were the only ones to applaud. Mr Souter gave a wry smile for deep down; he was disappointed by the other boys’ overall reaction. One of utter disbelief that creativity had been bowled to them and the ball of poetic justice had rolled right over their heads.
‘That’s heavy man,’ said Mr Souter in his most reassuring voice. It was a shame because it was his creepiest voice at the same time. If anything made a child cringe into the back of their chair, it had to be that. ‘OK Colin, take a seat dude.’
Dude? What fuck was this ‘DUDE’ business? ‘Cheers sir,’ Colin said as he made his way back to his desk. The eyes of the football team gazed upon him. He was sure if any of them had a camera they would have taken his picture. Pleased they hadn’t, he was somehow reassured that this notion would never catch on.
Stood by his blackboard with chalk in hand, Mr Souter addressed the class for their attention before writing the day’s date on the board. In looking at everyone in the class, he smiled.
‘OK class, what is today’s date?’
‘Fifth of January nineteen seventy-eight sir,’ the most vocal of the boys said aloud. A cheeky scarab by the name of shit-stirrer. For reasons which he well understood, and enjoyed, his nickname was the most appropriate. Despite this, Colin quite liked him. He could wind him up for hours on end. He loved a boy who bit.
‘Yes,’ said the teacher, ‘it is nineteen seventy-eight. So, when you write the date on your next piece of homework, please get the year right!’
The end of the lesson bell sounded and as the teacher put his hands behind his back, stuck out his chest he bellowed, ‘until next time dear class. Be gone.’
Still wondering who the hell this Siouxsie woman was as Colin followed the two girls from the classroom as they sang something about a Hong Kong Garden, he could only surmise it was a passing fashion and very little would become of her and these Banshees.
