Sexy Beast: The Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man

Mulling this over, I felt better about myself.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Ange. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Hmm? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.’ But I have a face that cannot tell a lie.

‘No, come on, what’s up?’

‘Oh, God, Jesus, no, nothing.’

‘Pfffffft,’ said Ange. ‘Come on! Time is of the essence! We could both be dead tomorrow!’

‘All right, all right. Jesus.’ I composed myself. ‘I was just thinking…I keep thinking about that morning at school when you tried to kiss me.’

‘Eh?’ cried Ange. ‘Are you sure this wasn’t something you merely imagined?’

I was sure.

Ange and I were in the same registration class. Our registration teacher, Miss Stirzaker, had a bit of a soft spot for me, which is to say, she liked me, and probably felt sorry for me. So she told me nice things sometimes. She said I was very bright and funny and that I shouldn’t allow some of the less intellectually well-endowed children to get me down because they didn’t really know any better and probably just called me names in order to take the attention away from their own shortcomings. Also, a couple of times, after assembly, she gave me the keys to our classroom and sent me up ahead of her, so that I could let everyone else into class, and she could stroll up in her own time and not have to rush back.

The first time I did this, all went well. I bumbled through the milling throng of classmates on the stairs and on the landing and in the classroom doorway, I ignored their mundane, quotidian taunts, I opened the door and everyone piled in.

The second time I did this, Ange and a bunch of her friends were in the doorway, hanging around, and when I arrived, Ange thought it would be a killer wheeze to pretend that she found me attractive. Space in the doorway was scant and I had to squeeze past the bodies that were already sardined in there, so it was easy for Ange to get between my hand and the lock, thus preventing me from escaping into the classroom. This she did.

‘Oh, Stan Cattermole,’ she said. ‘Ooh, you sexy thing, you.’ And while she said this, she ran her hands over my chest, arms, and back. I was hideously embarrassed. Naturally her friends found all of this hilarious, and their giggles and whoops spurred her on. ‘Kiss me,’ she said. ‘I want your tongue in my mouth.’ She put her hands on my cheeks, twisted my head to face her, made me look at her. She licked her lips.

Then, I guess, she saw the terror in my eyes—the terror and the shame and maybe even something of the love I thought I felt for her, and she relented. She stopped humiliating me. She stopped stamping all over my heart. I scrabbled the key into the lock and pushed open the classroom door. I remember there was bright sun shining into the classroom, in contrast to the darkness of the corridor outside, and I remember feeling an overwhelming urge to vomit.

Of course, we were only thirteen or fourteen then, and this was nothing but a bit of meaningless, malicious fun, immediately forgotten by everyone except me. At first Ange didn’t remember it at all. I ran through the details and, eventually, the penny dropped.

‘Oh, God, yeah,’ she said, followed by a tiny, guilty laugh. ‘It was just a bit of fun though. I mean, you know that, right?’

‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘But it stayed with me. It destroyed me,’ I added, perhaps slightly melodramatically. Perhaps not.

Ange assured me she was sorry she had hurt me. I believed her.

‘I had a massive crush on you,’ I confess.

‘Ah,’ said Ange.

‘Quite,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ said Ange.

‘Still do if I’m honest,’ I went on.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Ange, with slight pleading in her voice. ‘Don’t say that.’ I looked helpless. We both knew I’d already said it. ‘Don’t spoil this,’ she added.

‘Does it have to spoil it?’ I asked.

‘Stan,’ she said, her voice hard, authoritative. Her teacher’s voice.

‘I just thought, you know, you’re quite a loose woman. I’m…’

‘Oy, you cheeky fucker!’ she barked. ‘I’m not that loose, and besides, look, listen, Stan. I think you’re a really excellent bloke, and I think it’s great that we’re in touch again after so long, but honestly, I don’t want anything more than friendship with you. And if you don’t think you can handle that…’

‘I can handle it,’ I told her. ‘Jesus. I’m not in love with you or anything.’

That night I walked home from the tube station in the rain.

‘I’m in love with her!’ I told myself. ‘Again!’ I cried. ‘After all these years! Still in love with the same bastard woman! Damn it.’

I hate January.

CHAPTER SIX PICKING UP (#ulink_c69a35e9-ed34-574e-8198-e2e8de69c6bc)

Things are picking up. Thank God.

This morning, after a good healthy breakfast of eggs and bananas, I boarded the number 3 bus to Oxford Circus to give blood. I hadn’t been on a bus in quite a while, and I have to say, it really took me by surprise. What really amazed me, moved me even, was the intimacy. I guess what I’m really talking about here—really—is the proximity of the other human beings, many of whom—and I feel like a colossal pervert even mentioning this, but if you take the bus yourself sometimes you’ll know it to be true—many of whom are women.

Good God in heaven. All I wanted to do was give an armful of blood, maybe save the lives of a few desperate children. But things are never that simple. Instead I was forced to bear witness to a cavalcade of sumptuous young ladies, getting on the bus, getting off the bus, ceaselessly brushing past me with their clothes and their flesh and their fresh feisty smells.

I thought of Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, that scene at the Orchid Show, trying and failing to concentrate on the orchids he must write about, distracted by women. ‘One looks like a school teacher,’ he muses. ‘One looks like a gymnast.’ Well, that’s pretty much exactly how I felt as we sailed through South London, heading north. One looked like a Polish waitress. One looked like a human-rights lawyer. One looked like that girl on Grange Hill who had a brief career in pop. One looked like a New Cross intellectual with whom you could go to the Tate Modern and kiss passionately in the Turbine. One had eyes like a cavern under the sea in the deepest darkest dead of night. One had large hoop earrings and a saggy-faced dog in a bag.

You see all sorts on public transport.

One looked like Ange.

I looked away.

I found myself thinking about the Japanese too. People point to the Japanese—with their weird cartoon erotica, their soiled-knicker vending machines, their schoolgirl obsessions, and their pixellated private porn parts—and they snicker and think, ‘My oh my, what an inscrutable race of smiling, damned perverts they are,’ but I really think that any race insightful enough to have commuter-train simulation rooms in brothels is way ahead of its time. You may find it offensive, but it taps right into a lot of men’s fantasies, and in an ideal world, not just men’s.

So, I must confess that my journey was filled with thoughts of this nature, and by the time I arrived to give blood, most of it was lodged in my nether regions.

Once inside the blood clinic, I had to fill in a form, just to make sure my blood was good. Do I have HIV? they wanted to know. No, I do not. Do I have hepatitis B? Nope. C? Nope. Have I ever received payment for sex? Oh, come on. Have I had sex in the last twelve months with any of the following: needle-wielders, fudgepackers, Third World backpackers? No, no, no. Have I in fact had sex at all? Oh, leave me in peace, for God’s sake. I just came here to save children’s lives. Why must I be made to feel inadequate at every single turn?

I heaved a sigh, made for the couch.

But as I lay there, opening and closing my fist, being leeched, I felt positive. Things were picking up. I could feel it in my water.

Outside, on the way back to Oxford Circus, I was approached by a pretty young chugger. ‘How would you like to help a deaf child?’ she asked.

‘Pardon?’ I said.

I chuckled. She must get that all day.

Sweet though she was, with her lips and her hair and her eyes full of hope and drama-school training, and sympathetic though I am to deaf children, and indeed deaf people of all ages, on this occasion I had to decline. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve saved enough children for one day, don’t you think?’

She smiled pitifully, thinking, ‘London is full of loonies.’