Not My Idea of Heaven

I soon found that I could amuse Natalie better than Samantha could, and gradually Natalie spent more time with me than with my big sister. I could see that Samantha was distressed at this turn of events, but she didn’t put up much of a fight. She did try to get her own back just once, though. The three of us were playing out and I was being my usual annoying self, butting in on their games, when Samantha suddenly called me.

‘Lindsey, come over here, would you?’ I felt wary. I could see a huge grin on my sister’s face, which immediately told me something was up. It was common for Samantha to have a faraway, often worried, look on her face, but now she seemed alert and very much in the moment. With Natalie’s persuasion, at last I sauntered over. I was certainly not going to hurry. Samantha grabbed my hand when I reached them and told me to open my mouth. No way, I thought to myself. I’m not that stupid. Then they said they had a chocolate for me. Well, that was quite another matter. I couldn’t possibly pass up on this opportunity. Obediently, I opened my mouth, and waited for the treat.

‘Yuk!’ I spat on the ground with disgust. Far from the smooth, creamy chocolate I had expected, a Polo mint had been placed on my tongue. I hate sweets of any kind, apart from chocolate and fudge, so what might have been a nice surprise for most people was like a kick in the stomach for me. I’m not sure whether Natalie knew of my pet hate and had assumed that this was a nice surprise for me, or whether she was in on Samantha’s despicable plans. Either way, it exposed a side of Samantha that I hadn’t seen before. I was very impressed. She was more like me than I had thought!

I continued to build my friendship with Natalie, and we discovered that we got on really well. We must have looked an odd pair: I with my knee-length skirts and Hi-Tec trainers and she with her trendy jeans and Reeboks. We did have one thing in common, though, and that was our long hair. We both wore it tied back in a ponytail. The only difference was she did it out of choice, and I did it because I had to.

It didn’t take me long to become a well-established part of Natalie’s life. Every day after school I would rush to her house and knock for her to come out and play. She was two years older than I, so sometimes she had homework to do. So then I waited, hanging around in front of her house until she had finished.

I guess it was the natural course of things that I should go into her house. We played in the street. We played in her garden.

‘Are you coming in, Lindsey?’

I didn’t give too much thought to my reply. Not nearly as much as I probably should have done.

‘Yep.’

And that was it. I was in. Surrounded by all the tempting things that I might have had access to before if Kerry’s mum hadn’t walked in on us or if I’d stayed friends with Leigh.

I got into the habit of going to Natalie’s house every day after school. I knew that Mum wouldn’t come until dinnertime to pick me up, so I had hours to kill and it wasn’t long before I asked if I could watch the TV.

At first I couldn’t really grasp what I was seeing. I couldn’t distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t. Anything with people in I thought was real life, but I did wonder how I was able to watch them. Did these people not know their lives were on telly. I felt much more at ease with the cartoons. At least I could see that they were drawings, even if they were moving. ThunderCats was my favourite.

One afternoon, I sat down in my usual position from where I could see Mum if she came up the garden path. I was looking forward to watching ThunderCats and Alvin and the Chipmunks, but Natalie had something else in mind.

‘Let’s watch a video,’ she said. That sounded fine to me. I certainly wasn’t going to let on I hadn’t the faintest idea what a video might be.

‘Which film do you want to see?’ Natalie asked.

Oh dear! I thought.

My eyes darted between the two homemade videocassettes she held out to me. I had seen Watership Down and the musical Annie at Kerry’s house, but that experience was not helping me in my decision. Natalie had seen lots of films, and I was afraid that, if I didn’t take matters into my own hands, she would remember that what she really wanted to do was to go outside and play. If that happened my opportunity to watch television would be gone. I had to move quickly.

‘Which do you want to see?’ I enquired.

‘I don’t mind. I’ve already seen both.’ She was beginning to sound bored already.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘what’s that one there?’

‘Pinocchio,’ she said, eyeing the cassette in her left hand. ‘It’s about a little boy whose nose grows bigger.’

It didn’t sound particularly promising.

‘What’s the other one?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Dirty Dancing.’

I knew plenty about dancing – I loved my ballet books – but I couldn’t begin to imagine why a dance would be dirty. Whatever it was, it sounded more interesting than a little boy with a big nose.

‘Let’s watch that,’ I said, trying not to let my excitement show.

Natalie put the cassette into the machine, undoubtedly wishing she were playing outside, or doing almost anything else at all.

Well, I’m glad I didn’t choose to go outside and play, because I learned some things that day. As the video images stuttered into life I sat with my eyes glued to the television screen. I didn’t want to miss one single moment.

‘I’m not sure you should be doing this,’ Natalie’s mother said.

‘It’s fine,’ I mumbled. In front of me, men and women gyrated, their bodies grinding against each other.

A women’s voice was singing, ‘And if I had the chance I’d never let you go.’

Natalie’s mother left the room.

For the next two hours, I imagine that I am Baby, and that I am dancing in Johnny’s arms. I am falling in love for the first time. And my lover is a fictional man called Johnny played by a film star. I am nine years old.

I found out later that the actor’s name was Patrick Swayze, when Natalie bought me a full-length poster of him. I carried it home, rolled up tightly under my arm. It felt as if it were burning a hole in my side. Like a guilty criminal, I crept into the house, scurried upstairs and pushed that piece of filth under my bed, far out of sight. Every day for the next week I unrolled the paper and kissed the mouth of the man who looked back at me. I didn’t care if his name was Patrick Swayze or Johnny Castle, the dance instructor he portrayed in the film. I was his Baby.

I couldn’t stand the guilt for longer than a week. With one last kiss of regret, I screwed the poster into a ball and tossed it in a neighbour’s dustbin.

I’m glad I watched Dirty Dancing that day. I felt that I had definitely made the right choice.

I may not have been able to stand the guilt of having the poster in my own house, but that did not stop me wanting to watch the film again. And again … After I’d seen it for the third time, Natalie’s patience snapped. ‘For God’s sake, Lin, let’s go outside and play.’ I was crushed by her bluntness, but I knew when to stop pushing my luck!

Instead, I relived the film over and over again in my head. In the privacy of my bedroom, concealed by my duvet, I held an imaginary man and kissed his lips. This was as close as I could expect to get to a member of the opposite sex for many years to come. I hoped to become a Fellowship girl again very soon, and if that happened I would meet my husband at the age of nineteen or twenty.

I continued to go to Natalie’s house and became a regular fixture on their sofa in front of the TV. It really annoyed me when her dad and brother wanted to watch the motor racing. What a load of rubbish! I thought. It was noisy and as far as I could see no one was testing their own strength. It was cars doing all the work! I liked it better when Roseanne was on. Or The Cosby Show.

One Saturday afternoon Natalie’s mum poked her head round the living room door.

‘Do you want something to eat, Lindsey?’ She understood that I was in no hurry to leave. In the back garden she was preparing a barbecue for friends. It was really time for me to go home, but I had never eaten a barbecue meal before, and I was always tempted by food.

‘Yeah,’ I said happily, ‘I’ll have something.’

‘Lindsey,’ Mum said when I arrived home. ‘Dinner’s on the table.’

I ate two dinners that night. My belly was fit to burst, but I didn’t care. Patrick Swayze put his arms around me and I felt good.

I was becoming good at being two different people. At home I behaved like a Fellowship girl who listened to Dad reading the Bible and said my prayers at night. Outside the house I took part in the worldly things that my friends were doing without feeling guilty.

The Fellowship taught me always to expect that God would punish me for my sins, but it also taught me that anyone under the age of twelve was free of responsibility for their actions. As far as I was concerned, I could do pretty much anything and God would forgive me.

Natalie was older, but often looked to me for what we were going to do. When I was nine and she was eleven I thought it would be a good idea for us to start smoking. We picked half-smoked stubs off the ground, pocketed them and headed towards the school gates.

I did what I had done many times before, and scrambled over the top of the gates, dropping to the ground on the other side with a heavy thud. There was a gap underneath, but I had found out through bitter experience that, while Natalie could slide gracefully underneath, I couldn’t.

We legged it up the school driveway and dashed around the corner, onto the field, and over to a thin row of bushes, carefully avoiding the school caretaker as we went. Once we were well hidden we began. It was more a case of inhaling a mouthful of acrid smoke and trying not to cough our guts up when it hit the back of our throats.

Following that initiation, we smoked on and off for a while, until even we couldn’t overlook the fact that our regular supply of cigarettes came from dirty pavements, and filthy gutters. My habit didn’t last long, and, after that, another nine years passed before I touched another cigarette.