GET IT ON

by
Richard Cabut

Lunch time at school, but Ray can’t get a seat at any table worth sitting at. He hovers with his tray.

Jon Earley pokes his spoon at the cream atop his school meal jelly.

‘It looks like this,’ he says.

‘What?’ asks one boy.

‘Spunk,’ Earley laughs, and flicks some over at Ray, splattering his school jumper.

Jon, an older boy, is good at teaching little kids the essentials of school life, like how to mask the smell of cigs from teachers and parents. ‘You gotta eat a mint so they can’t smell it on your breath, that’s obvious. But if you want to get the stink off your fingers, the only way to do it properly is to make your fingers smell of something else,’ he advises. ‘And the best way of doing that is to stick ‘em up one of two holes: a girl’s crack, or your own arse.’

Earley holds up his index and forefingers in a V-sign, and moves them up and down. ‘Stinkfinger, stinkfinger,’ he chants. His nails are filthy with the crust of daily detritus, including a little shit he wasn’t joking about sticking his fingers up his arse while the unwashed fingers themselves are stained deep brown from the cigarettes he eagerly puffs.

Ray winces and, balancing his tray, wipes his mouth as if to remove a distinct taste.

At home Ray, full of pre-pubescent yearnings, looks at his willy, and ponders over the somewhat tricky subject of spunk. Although he’s perplexed about exactly what it entails, he’s picked up enough information from Earley to suspect that the whole mysterious thing is related to certain feelings that he’s had since he could remember and before deep down in his dna. He wets his hand with spit, some of it hanging off in a string, and tugs at his flaccid penis for a little while. Pulling back the foreskin, he scrapes at a little of the mysterious viscous white substance beneath actually smegma that has been coagulating all these unwashed years. He lifts some of it to his nose and sniffs. The rest, he mixes with saliva is this spunk? he wonders and tugs some more. There occurs the slightest of tremors, barely noticeable on the Richter Scale of human sexuality. Yes, Ray decides, this must be spunk, and resolves to tell his school mates if he had any, that is.

Ill in bed, a day off from junior school in striped pyjamas, Ray reads comics: war, adventure, and science fiction. He flicks through the pages until he comes to an image which startles him: dressed in a tight costume, Princess Kayla is spread eagled on a table, her limbs tied at the corners, ready to be mistreated by the evil forces of Zarborg. Ray is filled with sensation: thwarted euphoria, swirling confusion, and youthful impotence. He rises from bed and looks frantically for something to help him to alleviate his childish frustration. Spotting a paper knife, he opens his pyjama top and swiftly cuts at his chest twice, until the flood of punishing emotion stops.

* * * * * *

Years later, on the way to the school bus, Ray is jumped by an older boy John Wildman, who gets him in a head lock and rubs his knuckles over Ray’s face.

‘Smell that,’ jeers Wildman, forcing his fingers into the boy’s nose and mouth. ‘I’ve just fingered Janine Brown.’

Wildman lets go and, in his thick souled shoes, runs laughing for the bus. Dishevelled, Ray trudges after him. The experience leaves a powerful taste in Ray’s mouth: mostly stale cigs from Wildman’s tobacco tinged digits, but underneath that there is another flavour: iron and earth, the taste of the future, of possibility and amazement.

Ray hates going to the school disco, where he wanders around trying to hook up with classmates, but the cliques are all full-up. The feeling of loneliness amongst the throb and mania is almost palpable. The girls, in their glad rags, dance and laugh, but not at Ray who is almost invisible to them. Instead, he buys a coke and a packet of cheese and onion crisps and makes conversation with the fat kid, who is similarly solo. Then Ray, full of adolescent yearnings, looks around at the whirling, frightening girls. On his own, he feels raw and exposed. Even Robin Taylor is talking to a girl, and everyone knows that it was he who broke in to the janitor’s room and shat on the hot pipe so that his turd melted on to the floor in a stinking puddle. Robin was put on pills soon after.

Over by the stage is John Wildman, who makes a show of perching on a chair with his legs spread, while Janine Brown sits, facing forward, on the floor between them. His property. Occasionally, she glances back, trying to catch her boyfriend’s gaze, but he is too busy seeking out the admiring looks of his peers, revelling in his position of awesome dominance. Janine sits with her legs bent, arms hugging her knees, the hem of her short skirt tight around her the bottom of her thighs. Wildman’s stained fingers tap out the rhythm of the record that currently plays out the soundtrack to his youth.

Well you’re dirty and sweet
Clad in black don’t look back and I love you
You’re dirty and sweet, oh yeah
Well you’re slim and you’re weak
You’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you
You’re dirty sweet and you're my girl

Ray looks at Janine for as long as he dares to, until she notices him staring and flicks a V-sign in his direction. He gives her one last glance before looking away. Janine Brown, he whispers to himself.

In class before the teacher turns up, Ian Blaine gives a lesson of his own, revealing how he and four or five others meet to masturbate together a circle jerk the Yanks call it, he says. The class sits to attention. Blaine says that the lads pass around filthy mags and tell stories of ‘fingerings’, and’ tittings-up’, ‘bunk ups’, and ‘spunk ups’, of friends’ mothers dropping their knickers, while their daughters discard their bras: enough fiction romance to bring the group discussion to a fitting climax. Whoever comes first is the winner.

‘I won, but that wanker Bob didn’t join in,’ says Blaine. ‘Said he didn’t want to have a toss. So I punched his ear, and Vic Smith made a mess on the back of his blazer. That’ll teach the the spunkless bastard.’

Ray is in awe of Blaine and gang, whose swaggering cockiness contrasts his own weedy turmoil. He makes an effort to be Blaine’s friend, giving him cigarettes, laughing at his jokes, and nodding at even his most crass and brutal opinions.

Ray lays on the grass with Blaine smoking cigs and looking at a bunch of Fourth Years mucking about with some girls, including Blaine’s ex, Lorraine. Blaine is by now titting up others, but the split is still fresh enough for him to consider Lorraine to be his responsibility. ‘If they fucking touch her’s’ he says menacingly. ‘It’s eight on to one, but I’ll fucking have them.’

‘Eight on to two,’ says Ray pointing to himself, even though he’s a wanker not a fighter.

Ray lives in a suburban semi with his mother and father. Whenever he gets the chance, during the school holidays or days off ill, he takes the opportunity to snoop through his parents’ room. Truly unhealthy things happen on these sick days. His parents’ bedroom is invariably dark, the curtains remaining closed while they are at work. One wall is covered in red-striped wallpaper, the others in flowered print. Ray starts with his mum’s dressing table, carefully opening the draws, going though the contents, making sure to replace items to their proper place. Jesus in his crown of thorns looks down on him from a crucifix on the wall above the bed, which is loosely covered with an orange nylon spread. Ray roots through hair grips, curlers, and nail scissors nothing of interest there.

In the cupboard, meanwhile, he discovers an instrument which makes him shudder. There it is, in its familiar blue box, with its bulb and nozzle: the enema kit which, when he was very little, his parents used on him at the first signs of constipation. He still remembers the stinking sinking feeling whenever his mother went off to retrieve the dreaded box before preparing a solution of soapy water. It wasn’t long before Ray learned to lie about the state of his bowels.

His father’s wardrobe is next. It is locked, but Ray has long ago found where the key is hidden. Inside, amongst the shirts and socks, are treasures: documents, a locked cash box, and the payoff: his father’s collection of dirty paperbacks. These are bought second hand at the local market the price ‘10p’ is scrawled in pencil on the inside cover and exchanged every couple of weeks or so for a new batch. The tatty smut ranges from the titillation of The Confessions of series (Window Cleaner, Driving Instructor, etc) to those books which promise much big titted cover girls but deliver little in the way of action. Ray feels enraged by such obvious cons and annoyed by his father’s gullibility hasn’t he ever heard the phrase ‘never judge a book by its cover’? But there is occasionally some real filth to be found in his dad’s hoard a woman’s anus feels like corrugated iron when it is penetrated, he learns from one US import. It is with this book that Ray settles down on the bedspread, unzipping his trousers to use it in the same way as his father, and all the men who had owned the grubby tome before him.

During the games lesson, the boys are forced to undertake a cross country run on the nearby Downs, where many of them take the opportunity to have some crafty fags.

Ray looks on as Tim Foster and Trevor Janes light up a No 6 each. Simon Tomlins jogs up, gasping.

‘Give us a fag,’ he demands. ‘You hear about Kevin Clarke in the fifth year?’

Heads are shaken.

‘He’s having a wank in the bathroom,’ says Tomlins as ears prick up: this is a subject close to all their hearts. ‘He’s looking at this mag, and this gorgeous bird is on her knees giving this big bloke a blow job. It’s not fair, thinks Clarke who wants a blow job, too. There’s only one thing for it: he decides to suck himself off!’

‘Bollocks, it’s impossible,’ says Foster.

Ray thinks of his own experiments; at his age he’s supple enough to bend down and touch the very tip of his erect cock with the very tip of his straining tongue.

‘Yeah, he has a bit of trouble, so what he does is lie down and hook his legs under the sink, lifting himself up until he get can just about get his cock in his mouth. But after a couple of minutes, he decides that there’s something missing from this little scenario.’

Eyebrows are raised. Cigarettes are puffed.

‘You’ll never guess.‘

‘What?’ asks Janes.

‘A candle up the bum! The pervert!’ Tomlins says. ‘So, he unhooks his legs, gets some of his his mum’s Nivea, smears some over his bum, gets under the sink again, and shoves the candle up.’

Jaws drop at such orgiastic adventurousness. Most of the lads go in for frequent-but-quick trips to the toilet for light relief. Ian Aitch has got the whole process into toilet, lock the door, trousers and pants off, the act itself, a swift clean-up, flush the tissue complete with issue down to two and a half minutes.

‘You won’t believe what happens next,’ continues Tomlins.

The boys sniff sensation.

‘Candle gets lost up his arse?’ guesses Foster.

Tomlins continues: ‘Nah. Clarke is going for it when someone rattles the door knob, trying to get in. Course, it’s locked, no one would be stupid enough to have a wank without locking the door first especially a Cecil B DeMille production (Cleopatra had been on telly the week before) like this. ‘Clarke freezes. It’s his mum. “Kevin, is that you in there?”’ she asks. Clarke is shitting it. The door lock is a bit iffy and sometimes flies open, but it should be alright if his mum doesn’t push too hard on it. He tries to answer, but he’s still got his cock in his mouth so it comes out: ‘Gberghhh mmmmnnhgg!’

”Kevin, are you all right?” cries his mum, now worried that something has happened to her son. Maybe he’s had a funny turn and banged his head on the toilet?’

‘So, she tries the door again, shoving hard in the hope of saving her mortally wounded offspring.’

‘“Mnnnnnnggggh!!!” says Kevin.’

‘”I’m coming!” shouts his mum, but the trouble is, so is Clarke, just as she barges through the door, the lock of which finally gives way. She takes one look at the horror scene under the sink, screams, faints and smashes her head. Meanwhile, Kevin’s dad hears the noise and, in an instant, is up the stairs. There, framed in the bathroom door, is his wife crumpled on the floor, while what’s this? It cannot be! his son, lies on the floor, legs akimbo, his cock in his mouth and argggh! a candle stuck in his arse!’

‘At the sight of his dad, Kevin’s cock flips out of mouth, the candle pops out of his bum and, now speckled with shit, skitters across the floor. Kevin’s dad steps over his wife and puts his foot down straight down on to the candle, goes arse over tit and bashes his head on the rim of the bath.’

The boys look at Tomlins in disbelief. ‘Bollocks, never happened.’ says Foster.

‘S’what Phillips says,’ replies Tomlins. ‘The whole family are in hospital. Two cases of concussion, and Kevin had a nervous breakdown.’

The boys stub out their fags and jog on, coughing, gobbing and laughing.

* * * * * *

Ray sits at home; a suburban semi. His wife and two children are in bed asleep. But he is in front of his computer, where he will stay until god knows when.

‘What do you do on that computer all night?’ his wife sometimes asks him.

‘Well, I’m studying, for the Open University course,’ Ray replies, defensively. ‘There’s a lot of research to do. I’ve got to pass this exam; it’ll look good on my CV. I may be able to apply for a couple of new jobs.’

His wife shrugs. He rubs his eyes.

In fact Ray, full of post-adolescent yearnings, spends all night on the computer looking at pornography. He has done this since he first went online some years ago. To his wife, he bemoans the crappiness of his computer, says he wishes they could afford a better one because, well, with the amount of research he needs to do for his dissertation, it’s intolerable that he has to put up with the rubbish he currently uses. He needs a decent up-to-date Mac no viruses on Macs, he says, referring to the vicious programmes he unwittingly downloads from certain sites that fuck up his email or, sometimes, screw up his hard disk so badly that he has to take the machine into the shop down the road.

‘Tsk,’ says the bloke behind the counter. ‘You been looking at porn again? Some of those dirty sites will really trash your machine with a worm or a trojan. If you want to look at that stuff you’ve got to get yourself a Mac, mate. These little virus bastards only attack Windows, which Macs don’t use. I’ve got a nice G4 here for a tidy price...’

Ray thinks it’s funny that computers which do unsafe sex face the same risk of transmitted diseases as humans.

Skint Ray, however, is stuck with his crappy PC, which blurs the contours of writhing limbs, and downloads so slowly ‘When, oh fucking when are we going to get broadband?’ he complains to his wife those particularly exciting and collectable moments from the net named as such, thinks Ray, because I’m caught up in it, night after night.

In the early days, Ray was confused about exactly how to go about getting his computer kicks. He typed ‘fucking’ into a search engine and got a billion sites which taunted him with tiny pictures of cavorting couples that refused to expand to a satisfying size until money had been paid via credit card subscription. Is it worth it? Ray mused. Will the wife notice a monthly fee going out of their account to some weird business in Tucson, Arizona? Maybe.

For the first year or so of surfing, after he’d got into the swing of it, Ray was content to hit the relatively ordinary sites, the ones which give a decent offering of free pics: blow jobs, doggy-style, and cum shots. Then, he moved on to the more outre material: gaping and bukake. It’s in man’s nature to be inquisitive, he said to himself after such visits. More recently, he has moved on to whips, scat and slaves. For some time he was obsessed by a young woman in a tight costume spread eagled on a table, limbs tied at the corners, ready to be mistreated. After viewing these sites, he said nothing to himself. And the silence soon turned to impotence as he found he could no longer get an erection, could no longer summon up sperm. Spunkless bastard, he thought.

Now, desperate for something to touch him, Ray searches the net until he hits one particular site, Friend’s Reunited. He registers and checks his leaving year to find that most people haven’t bothered to put any information and he can’t be arsed himself. Nobody would remember me in any case, he thinks. But some do leave info: Trevor Janes - a fat bastard these days if his photo is anything to go by; Simon Tomlins moved to the US and was in the car park of the Twin Towers when the first jet hit yeah right, so how they fuck did he get out? Karen Bass, training for the marathon, wants sponsorship with her matchstick legs? Robin Taylor joined the police force.

Ray looks a year either side of his own some people get their leaving dates wrong and spots a vaguely familiar name: Janine Brown. Ray wipes his lips as an unusual taste fills his mouth: Cigarettes, iron and earth, the taste of the past, of possibility and amazement.

Well you’re built like a car
You've got a hub cap diamond star halo
You’re built like a car, oh yeah
Well you’re an untamed youth
That’s the truth with your cloak full of eagles
You’re dirty sweet and you’re my girl

© Richard Cabut
Reproduced with permission

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