Man Of Few Words

Chapter 13

I don't want to detail my childhood in much depth. I may not have time. And besides, instinct is telling me to skip the lot and get straight into the story of how I got laid for the first time – how the boy became a man, if you will. But that seems a little too much of a jump and, as is the case for most people, isn't that good of a story. I'll tell it anyway. But not yet.

By way of a compromise I've decided to follow-up my earliest memory with the story of the first time I ever had "sexual" contact with anyone. It's a better, weirder story than that of the loss of my virginity, and I'd like to think will form a sort of bridge between childhood and adulthood.

Trouble is, I've got to remember what really happened. Over time, the actual events of that afternoon have become rather mixed up with the various versions of the story I told various other boys at school, around the neighbourhood, and pretty much wherever I could find someone who would listen and might be impressed.

Fuck it. Some of this honestly might be made up. I promise I'm doing my best to recall the facts, and just the facts, though.

I was... ten, I think. And she was a little older. She went to a different school to me, but I think she was in the same year. Older though. I'm pretty sure she was eleven. At the time, that made her practically a grown woman. That and her far from fully-developed, but undeniably noticeable, breasts.

The first time I noticed them – her breasts, that is – I thought they were hysterical. I mean, there was nothing actually funny about them. It was just that, being a pre-pubescent boy, I had no idea how else to react. So I fell back on hysterical sniggering.

I was at the village recreation ground with my best mate at the time, Cameron "Cammy" Latham. Pearford being so small, the rec was a pretty limited affair – two swings, one see-saw, and a grassy mound of earth with a concrete pipe running through it. The concrete pipe always had a dog turd in it. A different dog turd every day, oddly enough. Honestly, we checked. We were ten – of course we checked.

In addition to the "facilities" there was a cracked patch of tarmac smaller than a tennis court with a rusting metal football goal at one end and next to that a patch of uneven grass of about the same size. No human being ever set foot on the grass unless it was for a dare. It was basically one big dog toilet.

One of my other mates, Niall "Richy" Richardson, once crawled the full length of it in return for two bags of pickled onion flavour Transform-a-Snacks. He was actually pretty lucky. Only his left thumb made contact with any dog dirt, and it was a fairly dry one so it didn't stick to him or anything. Still, looking back, he should have washed his hands before he ate the Transform-a-Snacks.

I'd always deny he was my mate if anyone asked, by the way. Always.

Anyway, if you wanted a half-decent game of footy in my 'hood, you had to go to the slightly larger neighbouring village of Cullingdon. They didn't have a see-saw though.

As it was, Cammy and I were on the swings. We weren't swinging, not properly anyway. We were too busy eating sweets for that. I had a quarter pound of toffees and Cammy had a quarter pound of strawberry bootlaces. He was sat on his swing. I was lying frontways on mine. It wasn't particularly comfortable, but I thought it looked cooler than merely sitting.

Emily, for that was her name, was on the see-saw with a similar-aged, but rather less developed friend whose name I cannot and will not remember. We kept telling them, again and again, that it was our turn on the see-saw. We didn't actually want to go on the see-saw, of course. But they were on it and we weren't, and that was easily enough of a reason to harass them.

So far, calling them names, shouting at them, throwing sticks at them, making annoying noises, and simply telling them it was our turn had all failed to rid the see-saw of their horrid, girly presence. I had resorted to putting three toffees in my mouth and saying Emily's name over and over again, so it came out as, "Uh-muh-muh" accompanied by sticky, brown, toffee-flavoured drool. That wasn't working either, but I was at least succeeding in amusing myself,

"Uh-muh-muh!" [snorty, sloppery laughter]

"Eugh-muh-mlee!" [a snigger followed by a loud sucking noise]

"Agh-mwer-wuray!" [high pitched teeheeing]

But then suddenly out of nowhere Cammy, who'd been quiet for a while, said,

"Titty titty titteees!"

And laughed uproariously.

I laughed too. So hard that two of the three toffees were propelled – sticky saliva trails in their wake – onto the tarmac in front of me.

I didn't even know what was funny. But when you're ten and one of your mates laughs that hard, you follow suit. It's one of the pillars of your friendship.

He said it again,

"Titty titty titteees!"

This time louder. And as he said it, he made a stupid, faux-grumpy face and clutched at his own skinny chest.

"Titty titty titteees! Titty titty tittees!"

I'd been laughing from the moment he first said it, but now, finally, I got the joke.

Emily had breasts!

This realisation would have been hilarious enough on its own but, of course, she was riding a see-saw at the time, so her breasts were actually jiggling a little bit.

"Titty titty titteees!"

I laughed so hard that the remaining piece of toffee jammed itself momentarily in my throat. I coughed violently, managing to keep the toffee in my mouth this time, but failing to prevent toffee-spit from going up the back of my nose and down out of the front of it, all over my mouth and chin.

Now Cammy started laughing at the state of me, so it fell to me to keep the "Titty titty titteees!" going. So I did.

"Titty titty titteees!"

It only took a couple more chants of our new-found battle cry before Emily stopped bouncing, got off the see-saw and stomped past us towards her house, with her arms very tightly crossed.

"You're disgusting..." she muttered.

"Titty titty tittees!" we cried in less-than-perfect unison. She marched away faster, refusing to look back.

She was clearly gagging for it.