All Growed Up Page 9

  I was jolted back by the realisation that I had no means of transport or communication, intergalactic or otherwise, and consequently I had no alternative but to walk and walk beside a long road that in some places didn’t even have a footpath. It was freezing and murky and bucketing down as I began the long trek back to Coleraine. The rain quickly flattened my carefully constructed hairstyle, washing the gel right out of my hair, and the hailstones were stinging my cheeks. It was as if the sky was taunting me – ‘Gormless wee crater from up the Shankill thinks he’s something, but he’s not!’ I was completely scundered. It seemed very unfair that I was being punished so severely for the relatively minor offense of paying too much attention to a Spandau Ballet song. It was as if the universe was hackling on me.

  I stuck out my thumb but not one car stopped to offer me a lift. I felt lost and alone in a strange and threatening environment. I was like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, struggling alone against all the odds on an unforgiving post-apocalyptic earth. Some of the passing motorists sped through large puddles at the side of the road and splashed me. I was sure I could hear laughter after each drive-by soaking. After an eternity of plodding through puddles, I finally got back to the warmth of Mrs Flood’s hearth in Portstewart. My suede ankle boots developed a white scum-mark as they dried out in front of the fire, and my leg warmers had to be wrung out like your trunks at the swimmers.

  I struggled to acquire the vital skill of thumbing a lift. All day, every day, there was a queue of students outside the university sticking out their thumbs in the hope that a passing motorist would stop and provide a lift free of charge into Portstewart. This saved money on bus fares for more important expenses such as books, baked beans and the bar. I had never hitched a lift in my life because in Belfast everyone knew that such an activity carried the risk of being killed and dumped in a ditch for being Catholic or Protestant in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most people at university reassured me that it was safe to thumb a lift there, though the female students tended to hitch in pairs to avoid perverts. Unlike in Castlerock, the motorists of Coleraine were very generous and someone usually picked you up after about ten minutes. During the short journey they usually had a friendly chat with you about what course you were doing and where you were from and if you had asked the Lord Jesus Christ to be your own and personal Saviour. I had one rather disturbing experience when a souped-up XR3 with extra headlights and spoilers offered me a lift after a long, late-night session in the library on the use of propaganda in Soviet films. Within minutes of sitting down next to the furry dice hanging from the rear-view mirror I realised I had made an error of judgement. The driver introduced himself as ‘Wee Davey from Ballymena’ and explained that he was on his way to the disco in the basement of the Strand Hotel in Portstewart to ‘eye up the talent, hey.’ Wee Davey said he was young free and single but he looked about forty-something and I could see a bald patch through his attempted mullet. He was wearing a dated wide tie and an off-white shirt that didn’t quite button at the neck, and he had clearly overdone it with Brut, an old-fashioned aftershave that brought back some painful adolescent memories for me. During the course of the short journey his speedometer reached 80 miles per hour while he explained to me the best way to ‘pick up a wee bit of stuff’ at the disco. As a newly-educated feminist I was tempted to start an argument with him regarding the derogatory terms he was using to describe women, but due to the speed we were travelling at I decided not to distract him. The faster he drove the more aware I was that I was clenching my buttocks against the sticky, red faux-leather upholstery and instinctively pressing my right foot to the floor.

  ‘Hey, boy, that there brake pedal doesn’t work, so it doesn’t, hey,’ he laughed.

  When Wee Davey Knievel finally released me into the safety of the night, I was feeling nauseous from the combination of exhaust fumes, motion sickness and the details he had shared of an intimate encounter with ‘a big blonde biddy from Ballymena’ in the car park of the Strand Hotel.

  Unlike Wee Davey, I had yet to achieve a proper intimate encounter with anybody. Yes, I had enjoyed many satisfactory snogs with a variety of girls from Glengormley to Millisle, and by all accounts I was a good kisser, but I was still a virgin like Cliff Richard and Queen Elizabeth I. The nearest I had ever come to sex was a particularly enthusiastic snog with Lorraine Dobson up an entry after the Westy Disco. It was the first night of our relationship, which had begun just an hour before during a slow dance to ‘After the Love Has Gone’ by Earth, Wind and Fire. I was shocked by the sudden passion of her kisses. Before I could even run my fingers through her hair and tell her she was very special, so she was, she started to eat the face off me. It was clear that Lorraine was much more experienced than me, and after a few minutes of the Frenchest kissing I had ever known I realised that if she didn’t slow down there would be a stirring in the region of the jimmy joe, which could lead to great shame for a wee good livin’ fella and an unplanned pregnancy for Lorraine. I knew such a disaster would give new meaning to the words, ‘Don’t you want me, baby?’ My attempts to dampen her passion did not go down well. She became quite angry in a sexually-frustrated sort of way when I unlocked tongues and asked her if she thought The Empire Strikes Back was better than the original Star Wars. Lusty Lorraine chucked me within twenty-four hours, telling everybody that I was ‘too quiet for her’. It was remarkable how quickly our relationship had moved to ‘After the Love Has Gone’.

  I definitely wasn’t too quiet for the lovely girls in the Christian Union. The CU was good for meeting girls, but it was difficult to get to know them very well while praying for fellow students to get saved or clapping along to ‘Our God Reigns’. Well, not everyone clapped – some members of the CU thought physical movement during praise songs was an inappropriate way of worshipping the Creator of the universe because you also moved your body during sex. I couldn’t understand why sex was a sin, because if humans didn’t do it we would all die out and God wouldn’t like that. Several members of the CU also refused to sing ‘Our God Reigns’ because Catholics sang it when the Pope came to Ireland.

  ‘I’ll not be singin’ “Our Pope Reigns”,’ Hamilton Johnston said with all the certainty of a Free Presbyterian.

  Apart from these theological battle lines the CU was one big happy family, and it wasn’t long before Aaron Ward and I were being invited to the Halls of Residence for supper with some of the lovely girls. The Heathers from Portadown made us nice cups of tea in Tweetie Pie mugs and Lesley from up the country made us toasted Veda and cheese and shared some of her mother’s delicious tray bakes. We chatted about music and TV and who fancied who in the CU. Now and again we engaged in deep religious and philosophical debate about whether girls should wear hats in church and if Jesus would come again in the Rapture and leave all the unrepentant sinners on earth while we all got beamed up to heaven like when Mr Spock rescued Captain Kirk from the surface of an exploding planet controlled by an evil alien entity in Star Trek. When it became clear that I was the only truly committed socialist in the gang I felt compelled to challenge our sense of harmony, and I did this by interjecting with my most devastating put-down – ‘That’s just so middle class!’ One evening, as we were tucking into the remains of a mountainous strawberry pavlova baked by a Heather’s mummy, I became irritated with Aaron’s enthusiasm for sport. After ten insufferable minutes of tales of rugger glory he began to enthuse about golf, and I remembered my father saying – ‘No son of mine will ever be playing no middle-class golf.’

  ‘Oh no, please no, not golf! Sometimes you are just so middle class,’ I interrupted.

  The group was supposed to bow to my socialist analysis, but on this occasion the lovely Lesley from up the country intervened, in a manner that suggested she fancied Aaron.

  ‘You’re obsessed with working class and middle class. It’s all “class this and class that” with you. There’s no such thing as class,’ she asserted.

  How dare she challenge my political
analysis? I thought.

  ‘But that’s just a typical middle-class attitude,’ I continued, but to my surprise, she didn’t back down.

  ‘Up the country we don’t bother with class. I never heard of class until you boys from Belfast started chitterin’ on about it.’

  I had never been accused of chittering on about anything in my life. Although I was a feminist now and believed that girls were allowed to talk just as much as boys, this was going too far! I drew breath, preparing a detailed retaliation on how bourgeois elites fear class politics because it threatens their power, when Lesley decided she had clearly heard enough of my socialism and abruptly changed the subject.

  ‘Anyway, enough of all that oul nonsense. Mummy’s taking me to Anderson & McAuley’s in Belfast on Saturday to buy me a new designer track-suit.’

  Anderson & McAuley’s was a swanky department store in Royal Avenue. It had an escalator and you could buy expensive perfume there from posh ladies wearing too much make-up.

  ‘No way!’ enthused a Heather from Portadown, and immediately the conversation veered away from politics to fashion. Aaron noticed this and chuckled as I huffed over my pavlova.

  Most of the time, though, there was little discord in our gatherings. We told silly jokes and discussed whether Boy George was male or female or both and I did impersonations of Orville the Duck. The craic was mighty, and sometimes we laughed so much that we cried. On one occasion we went out at midnight looking for a telephone box to see how many of us could fit inside. Ten of us crammed in, giving the impression that it had TARDIS-like proportions, but an old woman came out in her slippers and gave off that we were noisy, lazy, good-for-nothing students and threatened to report us to British Telecom and the RUC. My social life was in sharp contrast with many of my peers. Before early morning lectures, Marty Mullen complained about his hangover and boasted about how many pints he had swallowed the night before and joked that he couldn’t remember half of the hilarious antics he got up to while intoxicated. Everyone patted him on the back and said he was ‘a wile boy’ and ‘some handlin’, but I found all this talk very boring. I didn’t dare to admit that I had been eating caramel squares with nice girls from the Christian Union, though, or my already questionable ideological and social credibility would have been irreparably damaged.

  In spite of making good friends with lots of lovely girls from the CU, I found it difficult to secure an actual girlfriend. Praying and laughing and eating tray bakes together was all very well, but I was a man now and I had physical needs like Clint Eastwood on a late film on BBC2. Through an intermediary, I asked one of the girls from Portadown who wasn’t called Heather to go out with me, but she turned me down with a ‘no’ as firm as any spoken by Rev. Ian Paisley. After that, I briefly pursued Martha from Gilnahirk who spoke in tongues and laid her hands on you to heal you. Unfortunately Jesus told her that, although I was nice enough, I was not the man for her. It was clear that Martha didn’t want to lay a single finger on me. After a while, I started to worry that I had lost my touch. How could the same sex symbol that got fourteen – yes, fourteen – Valentine cards only a year earlier at Belfast Royal Academy have become so repulsive? I had never had a problem attracting girlfriends before. If I’d had looser morals I could have turned the Westy Disco into my personal harem, like Yul Brynner in The King and I, but with Belfast accents and more chewing gum. These months spent in the romantic wilderness required serious reflection, so I took my woes to the beach. As I walked along the sandy shore, praying for guidance and wondering what I should do, I decided that perhaps it was time for me to give up women for a while. I thought it would be unfair to the female sex for me to withdraw entirely, even for a short time, but that perhaps I should keep myself for a special relationship like Bobby and Pammy Ewing. I had bought a book at the Christian Union bookstall called Growing Into Love by Joyce Huggett. The book was all about a Christian approach to relationships and marriage and the benefits of waiting until you were married before having sex. I read it from cover to cover, though I read the chapter on sex first, and it all made good sense to me, because the more women JR had sex with in Dallas the less happy they all seemed to become. For many in the CU this became the handbook on how not to have sex. Growing Into Love was a sort of a reverse Kama Sutra. The book contained practical advice, such as always leaving the door open when you were alone in a room with your girlfriend so others could keep an eye on you and stop you getting up to something. Everyone thought it was hilarious that the author’s name was Huggett, though not everyone approved when I joked that she should have been called Joyce Don’t-Hug-It instead. I could tell that I had enjoyed more Carry On movies than most of the other members of the CU. When I called the book Groping Into Love I received a few disapproving tuts from some of the holier girls, who explained that vulgar humour was ‘not a very good witness’. I resisted the temptation to rename the author Joyce Suck-It, as I suspected that a reference to oral sex would scupper any chance I had of one day becoming president of the Christian Union. Only Aaron and Lesley from up the country found my sarcasm hilarious. Of course, sex before marriage was a sin, but this was irrelevant, as I hadn’t found anyone who wanted to have sex with me before, during or after marriage. It wasn’t as if I was sexually frustrated or anything. In arguments about the morality of sex before marriage, Byron Drake accused me of ‘repressing my animal nature’.

  ‘You just need a good shag, Tone!’ he said.

  I argued that it was possible to have self-discipline and control your physical urges and that casual sex and promiscuity spread disease and caused people great emotional pain, and a good socialist and feminist shouldn’t be sexually exploiting women anyway.

  ‘Bet you wank as much as I do, Tone!’ he replied.

  Byron Drake could be very annoying. We got on well most of the time, and I was pleased that he approved of my new New Romantic clothes – even though they were obviously a cheap version of his – but how dare he accuse me of being sexually frustrated! It wasn’t as if I was thinking about sex all the time. My mind didn’t once wander to sex with Rita Hayworth in the library while I was trying to write an essay on sexual power and the femme fatale in film noir. When I was walking on the beach devising solutions to the world’s problems my mind never ever wandered to sex; I was too absorbed in the waves churning in and out and in and out and caressing the moist sand. How could you even think about sex when the wonder of creation was all around you? The landscape was so thrilling I sometimes had the urge to run into the ocean and thrust myself into the surf. I was much too entranced by the power of nature to imagine Bo Derek coming out of the waves in her wet swimsuit like in 10.

  Next Byron would be suggesting that I imagined Bo inviting me up to the dunes, taking off her swimsuit and offering her beautiful body to me for hours of unrelenting passion. Joyce Huggett and Jesus would have disapproved of these sinful fantasies, if I’d had them, which I didn’t. Of course, at night it was harder, but I had no control over my dreams. I may have been single and celibate, but when I was asleep the devil regularly tempted me with Debbie Harry in a bubble bath. But in spite of Byron’s taunts, I was neither repressed nor denying my animal nature. I was definitely not sexually frustrated in any way, so I wasn’t.

  9

  VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

  ‘What is it with “so it is”, Tone?’

  Byron Drake was angry with me and I had no idea what I had done to upset him so much.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked innocently. ‘All I said was that our media production assignment is going to be class, so it is. I’m going to make a radio documentary about …’

  ‘You people finish every bloody sentence with “so I do” or “so it is” or “so a bloody something-or-other”!’

  ‘We do not, so we …’ I stumbled. ‘We do not!’

  ‘It’s a nationwide speech impediment,’ he said and slammed his Guardian newspaper down on the table so petulantly that he spilled coffee all over my revision notes o
n media, culture and society. I was ragin’!

  ‘Well that’s just a typical arrogant English attitude, isn’t it?’ I retorted, mopping my notes with a flimsy paper napkin.

  ‘Why can’t Irish people …’

  ‘Northern Irish!’ I interrupted.

  ‘… just end a sentence with a full stop?’

  ‘That’s just the way we talk, so it is.’

  Byron smacked his forehead with his palm. I had a sudden urge to assist him. ‘There you go again! It’s just so fucking irritating!’

  Now I was just as angry as Byron. I needed a devastating put-down in response to this unprovoked attack on my people, and I needed one fast.

  ‘Oh, that shows just how middle class you really are,’ I said, as passionately as if I were a Spanish Inquisitor accusing someone of heresy.

  This was not the first time I had heard educated people mock the Northern Irish vernacular. I was well aware that the intelligentsia did not approve of ‘aye’, ‘yousens’ and ‘wise a bap’. It was strange, because English people were supposed to be on our side, but when criticism was levelled at us in the haughty tones of an English accent it hit a nerve of resentment within me that would have impressed a Provo. This was the same feeling I experienced when James Prior, the posh new English Secretary of State for Northern Ireland came on the news to talk down to the people of ‘Naaawwwwthan Aaaaland’.

  I could tell Byron was still smarting from the ultimate insult of being labelled middle class, but he regained composure sufficiently to continue his attack, albeit in a slightly more Cockney-sounding accent than before.

  ‘Do me a favour, Tone. Try ending just one fucking sentence without “so it is”.’

  ‘Well isn’t that just typical of youse …’

  ‘Arrggh!’ he seethed.