the story of blobo

It felt weird, but not in the time I put my mouth up against the down pipe and blew and all the liquidised bird crap came into my mouth kinda weird. Weird in a way that I knew was pervy, like the time that Jimmy had admitted to sticking a finger up his ass whilst wanking, admitted to tasting a bit of his own spunk, to see what it tasted like. I had done that too, although I would never have admitted it so readily, as if he was admitting to taking a book back to the library. I didn’t really like doing that. So it was no big deal. But I did like her tongue inside my mouth, feeding me my own stickness. I liked the way that she guided my hand back down inside her. I could almost get my whole hand up now, as she bucked against even more desperate than before. Her moans no longer cloaked, but raw and needy.

She pushed my head down. I started lapping at her tits, biting at her nipples, but she pushed my head lower, so that I kissed all the way down to her stomach button, stopped and began tasting the saltiness of her there. But I knew that she wanted me lower, that she wanted my tongue to replace my fingers. I didn’t know how to do it, but I wanted to do it.

I squatted between her open legs, seeing for the first time the red rawness of  a dripping cunt. .

‘Fuck me,’ she said, for she could see that my cock was erect again, as she tried to pull me on top of her.

I came up to meet her half way, positioned myself over her, but slid down again to my original position and pushed, not just my tongue, but my whole mouth and face against her cunt, like a hungry dog lapping up porridge. I didn’t know where to lick, but that didn’t stop me. I pushed up and she pushed down so no only were my lips covered in cunt juice, but also my nose and cheeks. She used her legs to push up and down the bed. I followed. She pushed up with her legs and right back with her neck so that she was positioned almost in mid air and I licked all the way up her pussy and back, hesitant to go up further and lick her ass hole. We were poised that way for less than a second of indecision. My tongue was up and around and trying to force its way inside like an insistent finger until she farted and I knew I’d made a mistake. It was all a mistake.
   
    She laughed, shook me off like a working dog and got up to light a fag.
    I sprawled on the bed, suddenly exhausted and despite having a hard on, maybe because I did have a hard on, needing a pee. The thought of getting up, getting dressed and walking across three steps across the hall to the toilets seemed outrageous. I got up, scratched myself and tuned one of the taps on as I peed in the sink.

    She watched me with an amused smile on her face, as I washed my hands and took a quick drink of cold water, that was really no more than lookwarm.
    I lay on the bed watching her as she smoked. For the first time I noticed she had a black hair on her nipple. I wondered how I could have missed it. My cock began to get hard again just watchng the way she moved, the way she held herself naked. She was beautiful.
    I wanted to touch her again. But she sashayed away saying 'don't' as I reached out to her, as I wasn't there. She was thinking of something else. She looked at her self in the mirror, brushed her teeth and squatted and peed in the sink.
     I wanted to fuck her. I needed to fuck her. But when she came and sat beside me on the bed she looked so sincere, as if she had put on a set of clothes that I felt a pervert for looking at her naked.
    She took my hand and started rubbing them as if they were cold, but it was my cock I wanted her to rub.She looked into my eyes and I felt bad about what I'd made her do. I was so sorry. 
    'I'm sorry' she said, before I could say it. I knew what she was going to say next. She was going to say how it had all been a mistake. I was going to tell her it was ok and I'd always love her.
    'It wasn't your fault' and she kissed me on the lips, a little kiss, but one that gave me hope. I thought that she was going to cry. I stroked her arm and felt such tenderness for her I could have cried as well.
    She got up, suddenly, panicky, shaking a bit and lit a fag. 'Your such a good listener' she said. She blew a smoke ring, then another, watching them dissolve into the ceiling.'I've never told anybody,' she said 'it was my brother, my brother that abused me. That's how I don't like you touching me there'.
    I didn't say anything at first. I'd touched her all over and she seemed to have liked it fine. She might even have enjoyed it. 'What age was he?' I said. I imagined saving her, beating him up a bit if he wasn't too old.
    But she ignored my question, carried on as if I wasn't there. 'He used to make me do things, bad things, things that I wasn't to tell anybody, but he never fucked me, you know, not really, he would never do that. He didn't want to get me pregnant. So he put his cock up, you know, down below.'

    I think I did. I stroked her arm, then her face and kissed away her tears on the way to her lips. When she reached for my cock and began to wank it more vigourously than the last time I knew everything was going to be ok. I pushed her head down so that she knew to take my cock in her mouth again and feel it grow. She tried all of the things that she had did before, but just when I reached a peek and was just about to come, it got too tickly and I pulled myself away.
    Once I pushed her head away, she just laughed and mounted me quickly and efficiently, her little bum bobbling up, with my cock inside her. She leaned over I could smell tobacco on her breath. I wanted to taste it. But she fed me both her tits at the same time to compensate.
    'Don't come inside me', she said, 'I don't want to get pregnant. Tell me when, and come on my face or tits.
   But she was too late. I'd came before she had said anything. My cock went soft then hard again with her moaning and grinding and fucking and we just went on and on until with an almighty spasm she came again.
    'I'm sore', she said, as she eased off my cock gently, spunk and sweat and love juice sticking us together as we spooned up. It was far too hot to go under the blankets.
    I could feel her body jumping about as she fell asleep.
    I was too hot. I woke her up by clambering over her to get another drink of water. I did another pee, washing it away with boiling hot water.
    She was all adrift in the bed snoring loudly. But she moved over, like an old wife, when I got in beside her, with her head facing towards the wall.
    Her skin was, like her, beautiful white and soft.
    I could smell the stale booze off her now.I pulled the blanket back expsoing her. She never flinched.
     I started rubbing my cock up and down the cleft in her bum cheeks. I did it harder and harder, but she never woke up. I could feel myself getting a little bit of cock inside her, just as I felt her waking up and she I was coming, allowing me to get more and more in. I bit her behind he ear and said 'shshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh'.

I  had too much to drink, which meant that I didn't nearly have enought. I squeezed into a space beside the bar with the dexterity of a showjumping hog, all arms and legs and bumping into people and saying sorry, although I didn't mean it. I just wanted a drink, to get a round in. There were four of us, some whose names I couldn't even remember. 
    One of  the girls was alright. I'd snogged her a few times. She liked me, in a hippy kind of non possessive, straggly long hair kind of way.  She looked normal, until you got up close enough to touch her lips, hear that little moan from the back of her throat , smell her all petualia oil and something else you just wanted to taste. She seemed normal when you walked by the concierge's desk and punched in the code and walked arm and arm to her small room, little more than a cupboard, with a bed. It was all awkwardness then as I didn't know whether sitting on the bed would be too forward, even though there was no were else to sit, unless you sat on the telly.
    But that was gone when she said 'I need to pee' and rushed out the door, giving you a school girl peck on the cheek, as she went.  She came back too quick to find me fiddling with the telly , more to take my mind off  my cock that was almost  an escapee trying to push through my trousers, slightly sore from the constant buffetting it had took from trying to rub itself inside her, in shop doors, alley way  and even in the main street all the way here.  'I need to pee as well' I said, desperate. She gave me an outside kiss then slow, tasting my lips, slow, experimently. I pulled  her to me, back to the rutting position I'd been earlier, rubbing my cock up against her, wondering if I should try and sneak my hand back up get a cop of her tits. I moved it up slowly, kissing her even harder, so that there wasn't enough salivia and our lips became chapped and sore. I got my hand up to bra cup and rubbed like some kind of demented window cleaner, but it seemed to be working because she made those kind of moaning noises. I pushed myself even harder against her and felt my cock jumping and emptying a load of spunk all the way up my pants, almost over the top of my High Waist 15 button trousers.
    'I really need to pee' I said, stepping back. But she stepped closer, just as quickly, closing the gap between us. I moved back towards the door. 'I reallly need to pee'. My cock had shrunk in my trousers and I could smell the fishy smell of spunk and feel it congealiing and running down my leg. I thought she must know. She can tell. I'll just leave.
    'Och, just pee in the sink. She pointed behind her, to a small chipped green basin, with a mirror above it that looked older thn the room itself. ''all the guys do,' she added on, 'and some of the girls'. I didn't know what she meant by that. I could imagine a guy peeing in a sink, but I didn't  think a girl could.
'No, I said, I was going to say jobby. 'I need a number 2', as if I was explaining thinks to Mrs Boyle in Primary school., but I wouldn't have lied to her.
    She opened the door a notch and pointed across the hall. 'It's over there,' she said, pulliing out her fags and lighting one.
    The toiets were communal. I went into one of the cubicles and cleaned myself up. I didn't feel as bad now that my spnunk was just a damp patch on my trousers. I didn't think she had noticed. I wasn't gong to let her, that would be a real reddy. I needed to go back to get the combination to let myself out. I felt sober and if I hurried I might just be able to get the last bus home and a quick pint. I'd a key to our house.
    I 'd left the door a bit ajar. I pushed it open cautiously, sure I had the right one, but  all the other doors looked the same and there were no light on so that  I wasn't sure. I would have whispered her name, but I'd forgotten it, caught up in kissing her in a fugue state, for the first time for her tweny-first birhtday.  All her pals had cheered. But when we went on and on, kissing and carressing  outside the kebab shop, on the main road, they left us clinched there.
    One of themsaid in a resigned tone: 'Fcuking hell Julie, he's  a big baby, get you back at the fucking nursing home'.
    'Julie', I said it cautiously, pushing myself into the room as if she was going to be standing against the far wall and shout 'caught' and I'd have to turn into a statue like all the other bold others, already caught in that game. I could see her by the light of her fag sitting up in bed, her back against the headboard, the grey scratchy blanket folded back, her tits hanging down as casually as her hair in a cloud of smoke. They were bigger than I thought., bigger than I imagined, when I'd been feeling them though her bra. He aureoles were rougher, her nipples like a baby's finger. But  I'd only pictures to compare them to.
    In two steps I was beside trying awkwardly to sit diagnoally on the bed beside her and on top of her like an over eager puppy. 'Fuck sake', she said holding the lighted fag above my head, still sounding pert lipped and petulant,  for me going away.  I tried to kiss her lips, but it was her tits I wanted to taste, my left hand quickly groping their rounded smoothness, their perfection, almost pushing her back. She laughed, a short laugh and then I knew everything was ok with us.
    I kept kissing her until she lay back and let me, pushing her down onto the shape of the pillows and rolling my other leg onto the bed. But I was a bit crouched. I lay  on top of her, but  I used my knees to keep my cock away from her. I didn't want her to get the wrong idea.
    She pushed my head down into her tits. I licked every part of them, sucking and licking and sucking and licking, until I almost felt contended. She lay and pushed one, then the other, then the first then both into my mouth so that I went from being a starving man with no nipples on my tongue to more than my mouth could cope with.
    She stretched over me and lifted my Bay City Roller jumper and pulled it up. I held up arms like an infant as she lifted one then the other arm up over my head. She did the same with my Fred Perry shirt.  I'd already kicked off my Weegin shoes when I got on the bed.  My cock was peeking up over the top of my denims, but it was still a shock when she grazed the back of her fingers against the cloth,  touching it, but not really touching it.
    She pushed off from the bottom of the bed with her feet, so that she was sitting shoulder to shoulder beside me. I could smell her pussy, but  was too scared to put  my hand down until  she guided it. I didn't really know what to do, so just stroked until I felt one finger going inside her.
    I stopped. She kissed me even harder. I got two fingers in and then three. I didn't want to hurt her, but she was bucking up and down on my hand, driving herself into me. She pulled away from my lips, took a very deep breath. emmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. she groaned, leaning down taking my nipple in her mouth, licking and biting at  it, until she seemed to uncoil her neck and back no longer elongated, but relaxed.
    She brought my fingers up to her lips. She watched me watching her lick every one clean of her wetness. She kissed me so I could taste it.
    Her blonde hair was almost matted. I realized that I was soaking wet with sweat as well. None of that mattered. I was in love with her.
    I was so focussed on doing the right thing that my cock had shrivelled. But as soon as she touched the button on my denims it jumped up again. By the time she had my zip down it was jumping up to meet her. I breathed through my nose as she touched it , took its stock in her hand. I quickly pulled off my denims then pants. I wanted to be inside her. I wanted to fuck her. But I wasn't quite sure how. I wasn't stupid I knew I had to lie on top of her and put my cock were my fingers had been. I knew that .
    But it was too late. I had felt her hand wanking me as she kissed me on the lips, two or three times, hard, hard, hard and that was it. I shot my muck up over her stomach and the bottom of her tits. My cock grew flaccid in her hand, but she never let on she just kept on wanking and kissing and then with my eyes shut, she was gone, and fucking hell man, my cock was in her mouth.
    It was tickly, too tickly, I tried to back away from her, but her mouth just followed my cock. Then she had one ball in my mouth and then both. I liked that it gave me a rest from  the tickleness and it felt good, looked good to see her tits swinging in front of me, looking straingt into my eyes, willing me to like it as much as her. My cock grew  hard. I wanted to spunk in her mouth and I knew that she did too. Maybe that knowledge was enough, because I felt a spasm go through me.
    'Oh, baby',  the first time she had said anything for so long. It didn't matter. I felt myself shoot all my stuff into her waiting mouth. She furiously lapped it up and tongued the little hole in the head of my cock to get even more as it and I went slack. I wanted to sleep.
    But she pulled my face up to hers. I gave her a peck on the lips. She kissed me back, harder, like one of our first kisses. I was no longer that interested. Half heartedly I kissed her back, feeling desultory at one of her breasts, clipping a nipple between my fingers. She pushed my  mouth open with her tongue, the taste of tobacco past my teeth. Too late. I tasted the chewy taste of my own sperm.

It felt weird, but not in the time I put my mouth up against the down pipe and blew and all the liquidised bird crap came into my mouth kinda weird. Weird in a way that I knew was pervy, like the time that Jimmy had admitted to sticking a finger up his ass whilst wanking, admitted to tasting a bit of his own spunk, to see what it tasted like. I had done that too, although I would never have admitted it so readily, as if he was admitting to taking a book back to the library. I didn’t really like doing that. So it was no big deal. But I did like her tongue inside my mouth, feeding me my own stickness. I liked the way that she guided my hand back down inside her. I could almost get my whole hand up now, as she bucked against even more desperate than before. Her moans no longer cloaked, but raw and needy.

She pushed my head down. I started lapping at her tits, biting at her nipples, but she pushed my head lower, so that I kissed all the way down to her stomach button, stopped and began tasting the saltiness of her there. But I knew that she wanted me lower, that she wanted my tongue to replace my fingers. I didn’t know how to do it, but I wanted to do it.

I squatted between her open legs, seeing for the first time the red rawness of  a dripping cunt. .

‘Fuck me,’ she said, for she could see that my cock was erect again, as she tried to pull me on top of her.

I came up to meet her half way, positioned myself over her, but slid down again to my original position and pushed, not just my tongue, but my whole mouth and face against her cunt, like a hungry dog lapping up porridge. I didn’t know where to lick, but that didn’t stop me. I pushed up and she pushed down so no only were my lips covered in cunt juice, but also my nose and cheeks. She used her legs to push up and down the bed. I followed. She pushed up with her legs and right back with her neck so that she was positioned almost in mid air and I licked all the way up her pussy and back, hesitant to go up further and lick her ass hole. We were poised that way for less than a second of indecision. My tongue was up and around and trying to force its way inside like an insistent finger until she farted and I knew I’d made a mistake. It was all a mistake. It felt weird, but not in the time I put my mouth up against the down pipe and blew and all the liquidised bird crap came into my mouth kinda weird. Weird in a way that I knew was pervy, like the time that Jimmy had admitted to sticking a finger up his ass whilst wanking, admitted to tasting a bit of his own spunk, to see what it tasted like. I had done that too, although I would never have admitted it so readily, as if he was admitting to taking a book back to the library. I didn’t really like doing that. So it was no big deal. But I did like her tongue inside my mouth, feeding me my own stickness. I liked the way that she guided my hand back down inside her. I could almost get my whole hand up now, as she bucked against even more desperate than before. Her moans no longer cloaked, but raw and needy.

She pushed my head down. I started lapping at her tits, biting at her nipples, but she pushed my head lower, so that I kissed all the way down to her stomach button, stopped and began tasting the saltiness of her there. But I knew that she wanted me lower, that she wanted my tongue to replace my fingers. I didn’t know how to do it, but I wanted to do it.

I squatted between her open legs, seeing for the first time the red rawness of  a dripping cunt. .

‘Fuck me,’ she said, for she could see that my cock was erect again, as she tried to pull me on top of her.

I came up to meet her half way, positioned myself over her, but slid down again to my original position and pushed, not just my tongue, but my whole mouth and face against her cunt, like a hungry dog lapping up porridge. I didn’t know where to lick, but that didn’t stop me. I pushed up and she pushed down so no only were my lips covered in cunt juice, but also my nose and cheeks. She used her legs to push up and down the bed. I followed. She pushed up with her legs and right back with her neck so that she was positioned almost in mid air and I licked all the way up her pussy and back, hesitant to go up further and lick her ass hole. We were poised that way for less than a second of indecision. My tongue was up and around and trying to force its way inside like an insistent finger until she farted and I knew I’d made a mistake. It was all a mistake.
   
    She laughed, shook me off like a working dog and got up to light a fag.
    I sprawled on the bed, suddenly exhausted and despite having a hard on, maybe because I did have a hard on, needing a pee. The thought of getting up, getting dressed and walking across three steps across the hall to the toilets seemed outrageous. I got up, scratched myself and tuned one of the taps on as I peed in the sink.

    She watched me with an amused smile on her face, as I washed my hands and took a quick drink of cold water, that was really no more than lookwarm.
    I lay on the bed watching her as she smoked. For the first time I noticed she had a black hair on her nipple. I wondered how I could have missed it. My cock began to get hard again just watchng the way she moved, the way she held herself naked. She was beautiful.
    I wanted to touch her again. But she sashayed away saying 'don't' as I reached out to her, as I wasn't there. She was thinking of something else. She looked at her self in the mirror, brushed her teeth and squatted and peed in the sink.
     I wanted to fuck her. I needed to fuck her. But when she came and sat beside me on the bed she looked so sincere, as if she had put on a set of clothes that I felt a pervert for looking at her naked.
    She took my hand and started rubbing them as if they were cold, but it was my cock I wanted her to rub.She looked into my eyes and I felt bad about what I'd made her do. I was so sorry. 
    'I'm sorry' she said, before I could say it. I knew what she was going to say next. She was going to say how it had all been a mistake. I was going to tell her it was ok and I'd always love her.
    'It wasn't your fault' and she kissed me on the lips, a little kiss, but one that gave me hope. I thought that she was going to cry. I stroked her arm and felt such tenderness for her I could have cried as well.
    She got up, suddenly, panicky, shaking a bit and lit a fag. 'Your such a good listener' she said. She blew a smoke ring, then another, watching them dissolve into the ceiling.'I've never told anybody,' she said 'it was my brother, my brother that abused me. That's how I don't like you touching me there'.
    I didn't say anything at first. I'd touched her all over and she seemed to have liked it fine. She might even have enjoyed it. 'What age was he?' I said. I imagined saving her, beating him up a bit if he wasn't too old.
    But she ignored my question, carried on as if I wasn't there. 'He used to make me do things, bad things, things that I wasn't to tell anybody, but he never fucked me, you know, not really, he would never do that. He didn't want to get me pregnant. So he put his cock up, you know, down below.'

    I think I did. I stroked her arm, then her face and kissed away her tears on the way to her lips. When she reached for my cock and began to wank it more vigourously than the last time I knew everything was going to be ok. I pushed her head down so that she knew to take my cock in her mouth again and feel it grow. She tried all of the things that she had did before, but just when I reached a peek and was just about to come, it got too tickly and I pulled myself away.
    Once I pushed her head away, she just laughed and mounted me quickly and efficiently, her little bum bobbling up, with my cock inside her. She leaned over I could smell tobacco on her breath. I wanted to taste it. But she fed me both her tits at the same time to compensate.
    'Don't come inside me', she said, 'I don't want to get pregnant. Tell me when, and come on my face or tits.
   But she was too late. I'd came before she had said anything. My cock went soft then hard again with her moaning and grinding and fucking and we just went on and on until with an almighty spasm she came again.
    'I'm sore', she said, as she eased off my cock gently, spunk and sweat and love juice sticking us together as we spooned up. It was far too hot to go under the blankets.
    I could feel her body jumping about as she fell asleep.
    I was too hot. I woke her up by clambering over her to get another drink of water. I did another pee, washing it away with boiling hot water.
    She was all adrift in the bed snoring loudly. But she moved over, like an old wife, when I got in beside her, with her head facing towards the wall.
    Her skin was, like her, beautiful white and soft.
    I could smell the stale booze off her now.I pulled the blanket back expsoing her. She never flinched.
     I started rubbing my cock up and down the cleft in her bum cheeks. I did it harder and harder, but she never woke up. I could feel myself getting a little bit of cock inside her, just as I felt her waking up and she I was coming, allowing me to get more and more in. I bit her behind he ear and said 'shshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh'.

 

 

I didn’t need to wear those black banded, Joe 90, National Health specs. They were alright for a puppet, for old folk like my dad and somehow they suited my wee sister.  I was a bit short sighted, although I would never have admitted it. I was never very good at geography either and not very observant. The man at the gatehouse told me to go right along past the old hospital buildings, turn left and that was you there. You couldn’t miss it. But I did and somehow ended back at what looked like office buildings. In my haste not to be late, I couldn’t remember whether I turned right or left.  I hurried along, a new and different direction, and started following a white coat, that I saw in the distance. He turned into one of the buildings. My luck had changed. I knew that I was at The Huts.

            The Huts were like a school block, all new greyish breezeblock, white clip on plastic pipes and well tended front lawn, whilst all the other building were the blackened stone of old fortresses that seemed to put them in permanent shadow. Some wards even had gargoyles, with splayed stone hair, like mine was now, clinging to the masonry, looking down on you with their tongues out, supporting iron cast gutters.

I was looking for Ailsa ward, but there were no signs and no one to ask. I felt nervous about asking anyway, but even more nervous about being late on my first day. I went up the white concrete steps of the first hut I came to. It was still cold outside, but not inside. I could feel sweat soaping down my armpits and making me itch, like I was wearing a new jumper and self conscious about smelling as bad as I did.

I had my favourite duffle coat with the hood on, a white shirt and black tie, and a pair of black trouser, and black shoes. The letter telling me I had got the job had not told me to wear these things, but mum kitted me out as if I was going to some kind of funeral. All the euphoria about getting my first job had disappeared at the hospital gate. I just wanted to get in and get work over and done with, as if somehow it would be finished with my arrival.

I even longed to return to Catholic priesty beasty school, as it was called, for those that went away, as I did, instead of going to the local secondary to become a priest had muted into a different species that my childhood pals could no longer talk to, could no longer quite trust. There was no return ticket that could make it as it was.

There was a clock on the wall, which divided the wards on the right and left hand side. They would be at mass now repenting over the many sins of people like me. I too had sat, kneeled and stood on my last day of candle wax and incense, listening and then mouthing the right things. The upright nuns were there from the convent over the hill, swooping down on us, like row upon row of starlings, on a power line, their singing responses somehow too beautiful to contain, cracking something within my chest. My body was there, but my mind was darting ahead, flitting from place to place like a moth, its antennae snuffled by a dark crimson set of curtains.

The gospel had been something about a woman suffering from a haemorrhage that had touched Jesus’ garment. Power had flowed out of him to her. He knew and she knew. No one else noticed. There were crowds all around Jesus. Her faith had made her well. It was a good story, with a happy ending.

There was a sequel to it. Jesus had been walled in by his people. A man from the synagogue could not reach him. When he did, it was too late. His daughter was dead. Jesus heard them telling him this and immediately went with him: ‘Tabitha cum’, He said. And the child did. She got up and walked.

Jesus told the parents to give her something to eat. I understood that there were several reasons for this. As a child myself, at mass, I thought that maybe being dead made you hungry. Later, by some kind of osmosis I knew that it was more to do with symbolism, letting the parents know that their daughter was really alive and not a ghost or phantom, likely to keel over at the sight of live giving food.  Then I realized how nervous and overjoyed the parents would be. They literally would not know what to do with themselves. Jesus gave them something practical and life affirming to do. I always imagined little more than a baby or toddler in a casket getting up and walking about, in a way that was endearing because it was just her, so cute, like my  niece Tracy. I never imagined that the child would be aged 12. That jarred me. She was not a child. She was a woman. She was the same age as me and George when we came to priestly school, older even.

Everyone knew that you had to run, every weekday. It was like mass and cold showers, even the fat kids had to run around the trail of our campus twice. Hill two was almost vertical. That was part of the official route. The once a year route. Most people avoided it, ran around the playing fields and down over the stones in the stream. I did that too, but for me the running was finished too quickly. I would be lapping some of the other boys. That was when I decided to tack on Hill two to my run.

The first part was a slight gradient. There were fir trees used as hedging either side of it, so that it looped up and back onto itself, almost horizontal every 15 yards, then it would twist away again, steeper and steeper, the grey granite path pushing through thin sandshoes and biting into your feet as air fought to get into your lungs. On and on it would go, never ending, until it did, at the summit. It was almost a disappointment to freewheel your legs, back down the grass and heather scree slopes, back to school.   

George was a lot younger than me. I was a day older. We had the same star sign. Not that we believed in any of that kind of stuff, but it was kinda reassuring. We were the same, only different. He was smaller, nipper, ready to laugh and be laughed at. I was seen as more dour. I wanted to tell jokes and not forget the punch lines and then the jokes and even what I was talking about, but I couldn’t. I wanted to be the boy with my hand up in class explaining things to the teacher, as he smiled at me, inviting me to say more. Any answers I gave were one word or two. I was accused of being lazy, not trying, but all that burned away when I ran. 

George ran behind me one fine day as I made my way towards Hill Two. I speeded up. So did he. We ran shoulder to shoulder, saying nothing, our breathing speaking to each other. I lost him half way, accelerating away form him, leaving him tethered below. He could not catch me, so I ran on the spot, waiting for him to appear, and then accelerated away again, until he was just walking, unable to keep up the pretence of running. I left him strolling there, while I ran back

The next day was the same and the one after and the one after that. I let him keep up with me, until there was no pretence, he was keeping up, and trying to outstrip me, but it was in a George kind of way. I could almost feel his laughter in the way that he ran, as if he was saying to me, I know that I’m going to try this and I know that it won’t work, but I’m going to try it anyway. I looked out for him. We were a team, him and me, yoked together, a plough horse and a piebald, tacking up the hill. We ran every day, every time we could get out, ran up the hill and down the back lane. Running was no longer a chore. We could see the difference in our muscle tone, particularly in our legs.

I didn’t like going to confession with Father Conroy. Nobody did. We would count how many of us were in the pews, how many priests were giving Confession and try to guess who we would get.

‘NO, NO, you go first’. It was an old trick. Try and look saintly in the postulant priest’s robes that we were learning how to wear and inviting the boy you were in front of, to go first, in a loud enough voice so that he got embarrassed and had to go into the cubicle with Father Conroy, leaving confessional with one of the other priests. Father Conroy always took ages. It was a sin, but not a sin and even if it was a sin, it didn’t really matter as you were going into confession anyway.

Inevitably, it would be George kneeling next to me. He didn’t get embarrassed. He didn’t get stuck with things he didn’t want to do. When it was only Father Conroy that was available, you could feel the resolution of prayers quicken, hardening like cement. Everyone seemed to look up from their prayers and wait, for what seemed like an eternity, until the next postulant was sucked into the confessional box. George smiled, like a cherub, got up and walked past Father Conroy’s confessional box, onto the side altar to Our Lady, knelt and lit a candle. I could see the statue of Our Lady, most pure, smiling at him.  

He explained to me later that he would just owe Our Lady the half penny for the candle as he was skint and she knew anyway that cassocks had no pockets. I’d frowned at that, not that what he had done, but the bit about the half penny. ‘I thought it was threepence, for a candle,’ I said. I must have sounded a bit peeved, because he started kidding me on. ‘Threepence for rich folk like yourself, but a penny for the poor peasants from the backwaters of Old Kilpatrick.’  

Father Conroy’s confessional box stinked of fags. He was a nervous kind of man, always on the verge of saying something, reconsidering and having a fag instead.  I wasn’t sure if you were allowed to smoke when in the confessional, but I was glad that he did. We had cold showers. The priests had hot showers in their quarters. That made no difference to Father Conroy. The nuns who did the laundry called him old fashioned. We just called him smelly. Even his round back to front collar, that was made of plastic and showed he was a priest, seemed steeped in an  algae, almost as green as his teeth. It was well known that he didn’t like dentists, had never been to one and never intended going to one. It was almost a joke.

The confessional box had a lattice structure between the priest and postulant. It was covered in a heavy brocade of purple curtain material that had tacked on. There was a little post box opening at the bottom of this cage through which both parties spoke. But the wall between the confessional ended a foot from the door, so that any speech was aimed also into this man size gap. Older priests inevitably asked you to speak up so that you were also addressing the pew holders, outside the door, no more than three feet away. Even if you whispered, as most did, the priest would paraphrase what you had did in a loud voice to a gluttonous audience ready to eat up every word. There were few secrets in the confessional.

  The postulant kneeled on a Prie-Deux. The priest had an option of  kneeling, but he also had a chair. Father Conroy knelt and whispered through the small gap, like the boys. That had made him popular with some, but not me. There was meant to be anonymity in Confessional, but everybody knew each other’s voices, so the pretence did not hold.

‘How’s your father,’ whispered Father Conroy.

‘Fine, fine,’ I said, although I had no seen him for a number of months, as he knew.

‘And your mother? A fine woman’

‘And your sister?’

We went through this whole rigmarole, as my dad would have said, because Father Conroy went to school with dad and mum. He was, I knew, reminding me of their special relationship and ours. He was almost like an Uncle.

The first time I had spoken to him of my family warmly. But I had grown wary of the way that he twisted things about. I could almost feel his hairy hands as he asked me about my mum and sister.

‘Have you seen your sister naked? He sprang that upon me as I had went through the usual list of things that I had done wrong or badly or both and had lastly and red facedly admitted to masturbation, wishing the curtain, between us was even thicker.

‘Of course not Father.’ I spoke louder than normal, forgetful of those outside. I didn’t mean that I hadn’t masturbated. I had. Some of the priests, I thought got as embarrassed as us, skating over it very quickly with a tariff of decades of the rosary that we would need to say in order to atone. Others were more jocular, the boys will be boy’s brigade, as we used to call them. They were the most popular confessors. You felt that you had won something when it was your turn and you got one of them, the younger confessors. They even joked about masturbation as being healthy, and that to think of it otherwise was to link it with medieval indulgences, five wanks to a Hail Mary. Confession was about atonement, so that how could you atone for having a wank, by not having a wank. Obviously, that was a tautology that benefited no one and left one feeling guilty for an act that was akin to peeing. I could see the logic in such arguments and was thankful for them, but I still felt guilty and preferred being given decades of the Rosarry as punishment.

Father Conroy fell into neither camp. He wanted to know where we had wanked? ‘Where you lying or sitting in bed?’, for example, he would whisper fiercely, if you weren’t giving him enough detail.  Questions would build up one after the other, until you were worn out and answered in the same whispered monologue as him. ‘How many times?’ ‘Was there anyone else there?’ ‘Did he see you?’ ‘Do you think he saw you?’ ‘Do you think he knew what you were doing?’ ‘Are you sure he was asleep?’ ‘What were you thinking of?’ Talking to him in the confessional was a bit like I imagined sleep walking to be. You didn’t know you were doing it, but something would jerk you awake, bring you back to yourself. ‘Where you thinking about a man or woman?’

‘A man?’ I almost never whispered it. ‘Why would I be thinking about a man?’ I didn’t understand the question. Up until then I’d assumed that he knew what he was talking about, but now I wasn’t so sure. I felt like just walking out, but wasn’t sure if that was a sin in itself. I wouldn’t have done that anyway, walked out with all the boys watching me, knowing that I hadn’t made a proper confession. I didn’t want to let everybody down.

‘What age is Audrey?’

‘Five’. We were back to things that I understood.

‘And you have never seen her naked’.

‘NO. Of course not.’ I didn’t know what he was getting at, or where he was going, but I didn’t like it.

Father Conroy sighed, as if I had hurt the feelings of him and the church. ‘Does she still wear a nappy?’

I decided it would be best if I was more formal declarations. ‘No, my sister Audery is five. She does not wear a nappy.’

‘Did she wear a nappy?’

‘Yes she wore a nappy.’ I was worn out with this. I could see no sins in wearing or not wearing nappies.

‘Did you ever change her nappy?’

‘No,’ I said, curtly, ‘my mum did.’

‘When your mum changed the nappy, did she have another nappy on under it?’

‘Of course not,’ I said exasperated, my head bowed almost touching the ledge that ran along the rectangular hole in the confessional window.

‘So your sister, Audrey, was naked.’

I sighed. ‘Yes she was naked’.

‘Have you seen her naked any other times?’

I was going to say no, but then I thought yes I had. ‘I’ve seen her naked when we go to the beech, when she changes. I’ve seen her naked when she is having a bath. I’ve seen her naked lots of times.’

‘What do you think of  when you see her naked?’ he whispered to me like a dark secret coming from a dark hole.

‘I think I said that is the most perfect thing in God’s creation. I think that if there is anything more perfect I have never seen it. I think when I see her that she fills me up with such goodness that I could burst.’ I felt strange, as if someone else had said those things. It felt good and right.

 

 

The doors were thick fire doors with slit windows made of safety glass with wire through it. Unbreakable, but someone had tried. It had a crack in it, a fracture, with a small dart hole. I chapped loudly on the window.  

I could see three women crowding around the entrance, like a scene out of Macbeth, looking at me, with mouths agape, as if I was the goldfish. They were the first naked woman I had ever seen. I kept chapping and became bolder the longer I was ignored. I found a six pence and used it to chap. The three naked Buddha’s parted-all droopy breasts and  although I didn’t want to look lower, varicose veins- to let a man through.

He was about the same age as me, but he had on some kind of trendy denim, the kind that I wasn’t allowed to wear that it would have been sacrilege to iron- shirt and jeans with gold gleaming buttons- and an afro kind of cut that was so cool, that was the word, cool, compared to my short back and sides. He had on some kind of brown moccasins, with tassels. He smiled as he pulled the door open as if he knew who I was. I smiled back.  He pointed to a switch for a bell, at the side of the door, a big bakelite switch that was difficult to miss. He switched it on and off experimentally. I could hear the ringing inside.

‘Come in’, he laughed, ‘I don’t want any of them escaping’.

The way he said it I knew that he was kidding me on, but I didn’t know what to say.

‘I’m looking for Ailsa ward’, I said too quickly almost stuttering.

‘Yeh, I know,’ he said waving generally in the other direction as if it was too much trouble lifting his hands, showing me that he didn’t have sweat patches on his shirt. I followed him inside and he locked the door, with one key, letting the others jangle on the same keyring.

‘You’re next door,’ he said, with a smile, as if that explained everything, ‘with Old Paddy. He’ll keep you right. Just laugh at his jokes.’ He laughed again, but I was barely able to hear.

I’d heard the noise and screaming from outside the main door. From outside it was like the wailing of an imam calling the people to prayer. I imagined him there, placed him there, from my old story books, high in a minaret, with a crescent, calling, calling and being answered from the wailing of the good people below, lining up their prayer mats to face him.  

Stepping inside the main door it felt as if a farmyard had been tipped upside down and all the frightened animals poured into this one room. I expected that. What I didn’t expect, what I hadn’t prepared myself for, was a smell that made me want to turn around and head straight back out, even before I was in. I’d a weak stomach.

‘Paddy doesn’t do jokes,’ he finished saying, following my gaze.

There were toilets beside the entrance to the ward. They had no doors on them, with six baths, all of which had a person in it. There were cubicles with people squatting on them, with people standing outside waiting to go in. Although some were carrying towels, that were more like the dish rags at home, men and women were indifferent to their nakedness, or each other. One of the woman was drying herself with a towel that was covered in shite.

‘Hey Massie, put that fucking towel down. Put it in the wash basket. Put it in the basket. That’s right. That’s right. Over there. Don’t make me come over there. Right, that’s good. Now get back in the bath. The bath. Get back in. I’ll get you a towel. In. Yes, get in. Good girl. 

 ‘Fuckin hell man, it’s always wild at this time.’ The frown was gone. He was smiling again. ‘Fag break, fucking hell do I need one, working in this dump’. He jangled the keys of out of his pocket and into the lock.

We were barely outside his ward before he had lit up. ‘Want some snout?’ he said, that was the word he used for fags, that was kinda cool.

‘No thanks, nah,’ I said, ‘I don’t smoke’.

He almost choked breathing through his nose, as if I’d said something funny.  ‘You don’t smoke,’ he repeated it, testing it on his tongue.

‘Everybody smokes,’ he blew smoke into the air to emphasis his point. ‘That’s all you’ll ever get from now on. Night and day. If you sleeped here’ He blessed himself, making me wonder if he knew about me, but he changed the tone of his voice talking like in a lower pitch, like the patients: ‘Geeza fag? Geeza fag? Geeza fag?

‘You’re over there’. He nodded in the direction of the other door. ‘Ring the bell.’ He smiled again. ‘And good luck, Father’, he said. ‘Paddy’s all right, old school, he’ll keep you right.’

The door to Ailsa ward was open practically before I’d even rung the bell, making me think that he’d been watching.

I stuck my hand out to shake his hand, but he hanged a coat on it.

I followed him. ‘I’m John Connelly, but my friends call me Jack.’

‘Put the coat on, Mr Connelly’ he said, handing me a brownish dust jacket, the old fashioned type, which a janitor would have worn at my primary school. The kind that he was wearing.

‘You don’t want to get your good clothes dirty.’ He looked directly at me for the first time, as if he was weighing me up, as if he already knew me. I felt my face going red and once more felt the sweat running down my back. I quickly put the coat on and followed him into the toilets.

The main entrance to the toilet had a door on it, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but did. All the toilet cubicles also had doors on them. They all stood ajar, as if someone had pushed them all to the same forty five degree angle. They had no locks. The toilets were clean. Normal even. There was no one in the baths.

 The men stood in a line, as if they were waiting for a bus. There were no women. Some had bathrobes and slippers, some had green bath towels around there waists. I could have imagined them standing there reading a paper. None of them spoke or made a noise of any kind. They just stood. Waiting.

A grey haired man seemed to darted from behind a partition. He stopped and handed a mug and razor to the nurse in the same way that an altar boy would hand the priest the chalice. The line moved forward, a chain of men, with their necks extended and chin up, as if they were going to get there head loped.   The nurse shaved the first man.

‘You,’ he said, ‘Boy.’ ‘I’m very busy. Shave these men’. The men turned to me as he held out the razor. None of them moved.

I’d never shaved myself never mind anyone else. He handed me the razor and the pewter mug. I didn't know which was in worse condition, the razor or the mug. The top of the razor didn't screw down and flapped about from left to right. It was coated in hair, grease and skin. The way he had used it make it seem as if it was new, but now I could see it was as blunt as a pair of rusty hair scissors. The mug looked as if a car had run over it and everyone in the line had took turns hawking into it, from the pit of their stomachs. I felt for the crease of the man's skin, between his nose and mouth.

He was watching and with one swoop he had the razor out of my hand. He moved the razor over the man's face effortlessly, but, for the first time I noticed red nicks, in the man's face, appearing were the razor had been. He dipped the razor into the mug and the next man moved forward.

‘You shouldn't put your arm down, or pull the razor from the man's face until you're finished the cut', he said, handing me the razor and walking out of the toilets.  

The first man moved forward. I put the razor to his cheek, but couldn’t do pull the blade down. I went to the sink and rinsed the razor with hot water. Then I rinsed the cup. They all watched, but only the man with the grey hair, the acolyte spoke:

‘That’s not the way you do it’, he said and went to take the razor from me.

I didn’t know who he was, or what he did, but I knew that he was a patient. I pushed his hand away. ‘No,’ I said.

The external door flapped shut and seemed to bring in extra oxygen. The men still stood in line, but it was no longer slide rule straight.  He left as quickly as he’d come in.

I put the razor back up, slowly as if it weighed more than it did, to the first man in the line.I’d given all that religion dogma up, left it all behind. I was all grown up now, but found myself saying a Hail Mary.

The first man in line took the razor from my hand and with four quick strokes he shaved a little bit growth that was on his chin. He put the razor under the hot tap and handed it to the next man. On and on it went. One after the other. I was saved.

 

I used to think about sex all the time. On average the average male thinks about sex every six seconds. I know because I was timed. My girlfriend said 'what are you thinking about?'

I said 'you'.

'What are you thinking about now?' she said, hovering above me, with her hair and brests just not touching me, in that way I liked to be touched.

'What are you thinking about now'. The stopwatch away, her black hair cut at the back like a boys, falling, fallling to the front like a girls, smelling of last nights booze and fags