A Prison In The Sun

Childhood

ChildhoodIt was Aunty Iris who said I was different. I grew up with that sense of otherness superimposed on my psyche by my overbearing relative, singled out from the rest of the household in our detached house in Heene Way – a leafy street in the well-to-do end of West Worthing, Sussex – after my father ran off with the woman next door. The family seemed to want someone to blame. I couldn't understand why I was chosen, other than that I was the only male remaining in the house. All I knew was I went from being a happy and innocent little boy to an unhappy child saddled with observing the tortured emotions of others.

My mother was beside herself. She was a god-abiding Catholic who refused her husband a divorce. Consumed by shame, she took no solace in mass or confession or the sympathies of her priest. Instead, she took to drinking heavily, and when she wasn't drinking, she would sit in a chair and stare blankly at a wall. All the family photographs had been removed. My sister, Marnie, who was thirteen when the terrible betrayal took place, started scouring her forearms with blades of various kinds and decided she no longer needed to eat, habits that alarmed Aunty Iris, who had moved in to help.

I couldn't see that Iris helped at all save for attending to the household chores. Along with the sickly-sweet air freshener she sprayed everywhere, she infused the already turbulent atmosphere with her own hysteria, for she was a touch histrionic, was Iris.

I did what any sensible boy my age would do. I retreated to my room. It was the only course of action available to me since I was not the type to run away. Ensconced in the smallest bedroom in the house, I buried my mind in books and comics and, on days when it wasn't raining and I felt a need for fresh air, I would skulk around in the back garden or ride my bike up and down the streets of my neighbourhood.

I was a regular boy, neither shy nor extrovert, and the only difference I could see between me and the family I had the misfortune to live among, was that I did not thrash about or bleed or shrink or wail or sulk or stagger.

I've always disliked extremes: extreme heat, extreme cold, and especially wild displays of emotion. My preference for evenness extends to my environment. I like my land undulating, my ocean calm, my surroundings neat and smooth. Even at nine years old, I made my bed every morning and kept my room tidy. I arranged my books in order of size on a single bookshelf. On the shelf above, arranged in neat clusters, my vintage cars were displayed. My father had gifted them to me, but I never played with them. My chess set, dominoes, draughts and Monopoly were stacked neatly on the bottom shelf next to my piggy bank.

I preferred to visit my friends' houses, rather than have them enter mine, for fear they would encounter my mother or Aunty Iris or my sister in a state, or they would turn my bedroom into one through boisterous play. Aunty Iris was fond of telling me I was too much of a loner and should invite boys over. To appease her, I would invite my best friend, Vince, round from time to time, but mostly I went to his.

A wily and perspicacious child, Vince lived in the next street, and I had known him since my first day at school. Vince was my confidant, and he summed up my domestic circumstances beautifully one time when we were about thirteen, by saying that I was the scapegoat. I think we were learning about the world wars in History, and he applied the term to me. I considered his remark at some length, carrying it home with me and cogitating as I observed the attitudes of the women in the house, how they chose to ignore me, or jibe me, or pick holes in me, and by the end of that day, I had decided that Vince was correct in his assessment. I was indeed the scapegoat.

From that point on, his home became my home. I found his parents warm and inviting. I would spend as much of my waking life in Vince's bedroom as my own.

When boyhood gave way to hormones and our hair grew in our armpits and our groins, that other part of my anatomy grew of its own volition at the slightest spark and demanded release of its own unique kind. Once, while we were shut in Vince's bedroom, he unfurled a sexy magazine, and we lay on our bellies on his bed and leafed through the pages. After some time ogling, Vince pushed me over onto my back and when he looked down at me, his gaze fixed on the growth in my trousers. Without another word, he unzipped my fly and, before I could stop him, he reached in and tugged. I was delirious in an instant, and in the very next, my newly realised manhood exploded in a sudden gush.

After that Vince's explorations grew bolder. He would unfurl his member – his was much larger than mine – and encourage me to unfurl mine and we would have w*****g contests, shooting our loads into the waste paper bin.

It was all just boyish fun. Neither of us questioned what we did. On the contrary, we sniggered and joked and drew lewd pictures and shared our fantasies.

A year later, our voices broke, and Vince fell in love with a girl called Amy, and our w*****g days were over. I completed school with high grades in English and History and went on to study at the University of Sussex in Brighton. I lived at home throughout the three years of my degree, but I was never there. Vince had by then married Amy, and I was dating her best friend, who would become my wife, Jackie.