STARETHROUGH EYES

by
Megan Hall

Me and Lou � we had been best friends since we were 7.

She had grey blue feline eyes, dark ringlets in her hair, with plucked brows shooting up to her temple. The smallest waist you have ever seen, so tiny you could span it with two hands clasped together. Every day after school we would smoke Berkeley Menthols on the roof of her parent�s house. We had matching 16 hole Dr.Marten Boots, tied with red laces. Best friends for real.

But Lou, she was the Queen of smalltown Bohemia.

Records, we had hundreds, it was what we spent most of our time talking about. Hers (of course) were better than mine; she had sophisticated taste for a 15 year old girl. My records were shit in comparison � a point that I was constantly reminded of. She was also the cleverest girl in her year, as for me, well I was a dunce, never destined to scale the heights that she would climb.

�When I leave university, and have graduated from Music College, I�m going to be in the London Symphony Orchestra, and then study Neuro Science.�

She�d often let me know how special she really was - why she�d taught herself Bassoon, Oboe, Clarinet and Piano to Grade 8 standard in only a year? How could anyone top that?

Me, on the other hand, I was fat, liked Glam Rock too much, wore feather boas, and would never reach her intellectual heights as she had �better genes�. In comparison to her I was a prize frump � just watch her tear the pants off every Indie boy I ever fancied. I�d sit there and watch her making a move on the fruit I�d been chasing for months, keeping quiet, devastated underneath the layers of glitter make up. I was powerless in the face of this porcelain creature.

I was always beneath her. Except for the night when we drank a litre of gin and decided to have a lesbian threesome as it �sounded like a laugh�. It couldn�t have happened at a worse time of the month. And boy, she never let me forget it.

It was never one of those pre-meditated orgies, it was actually a random act, and Alice, the girl who we conned into doing it with us - she just didn�t know what had hit her.

Alice was definitely not the brightest girl on the block, but we had been friends as kids, and she was just desperate to hang out with us two, she had never in her born years met two girls as wild as us.

�What music do you like Alice? Do you want some gin? Can we dress you up? We�ve got some really nice clothes that might suit you better��

Every tape we played her, she asked for copies of, the dress that we made her wear, it was a 1960s multicoloured puffed sleeve number, looked like someone had drooled down the front of it. We told her she looked great in it, in reality she looked awful, but it made her feel like part of our special gang. Secretly me and Lou would nod and wink when her back was turned, we stole posh eyeshadow from mum�s make up box, and painted layers of it across her bushy brows. Alice had freckles too, so we plastered layers of cake foundation on her cheeks, and a dark red lipstick on her mouth.

I don�t know how it progressed, but I think me and Lou started snogging, and she felt kind of left out on the bed, so we took it in turns to kiss her too. Then off comes the clothes, and before you know it Lou is upside downing her, me on the side, kind of wondering what our parents would say if they found out. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn�t relax, couldn�t get into it, of course there was the problem of me actually wearing a sanitary towel in my knickers, and every time someone tried to put their hand down there, I�d flinch. Then Lou was like �Oh don�t worry, it doesn�t matter let me lick you out anyway.�

I was so fucking mortified that this was my first proper sexual experience and it was with two girls, and I was stuck on day two of my period, as I�m laying on the bed I can feel the clots of blood slopping out onto my nappy sized pad, and the love of my fucking life wants to eat me out now. Of all the times in the world.

So reluctantly (after drinking revolting gin and orange all night) I let her do it, and she says �Sorry, but this tastes disgusting� after 30 seconds down there, and I�m totally gutted but the room is starting to spin so I keep my trap shut. The three of us are sprawled out naked across the bed, and I get up, open the window and chuck up the dinner down the red brick work under the frame, and the bitch laughs at me again, rubbing extra salt in the wound. �God you�ve such a fucking fat arse it�s unbelievable�, turns over and falls asleep.

When we woke up the next day, our parents must have come home and seen the three of us on the bed, empty gin bottles and vomit splashed down the front of the bungalow, jossticks and patchouli oils burning out in the bedroom, empty fag packets and post coital teenage girl sweat hanging in the air. Needless to say, we never saw Alice again, and every time her mother saw me she gave me an accusatory glance for defiling her daughter. What she told her I will never know, but Alice certainly wasn�t complaining when Lou stuck her tongue up her arse that hot summer�s night.

I genuinely thought if I tried it a few times more, then I might actually become a bona fide bisexual; which might just have been a rebellious aspiration for a fourteen year old goth, semi-detached hell, 15 Golf Parks Crescent, North Yorkshire. I�d spend every spare night slippering about under the covers dreaming up schoolgirl shower time fantasies, sometimes three, even four times a night. There was a pile of tissues going stale under my mattress growing mustier by the month. It didn�t take much to get me there; just a hint of red lace poking out from a teacher�s blouse would give me masturbation fodder for infinite sleepless nights.

What else was there to do? Nobody fancied me, apart from losers and smackheads after a night on the tiles wearing rose tinted beer goggles. I wouldn�t have fucked them anyway, but the offer might have been nice.

In the schoolyard one day I remember seeing my first piece of pornography. Up to that point I had been content with the Freeman�s catalogue lingerie pages, dressing up (when the house was quiet) in a home made lace g-string (cut out from an old pair of my mother�s knickers) with a pair of American tan stockings bought second hand from help the aged, and the odd dirty movie showed late at night on channel 4. I had a black and white tv in my bedroom, and some nights I would wait until Mum and Dad had gone to bed, then switch on the tv really low, and watch films like �Cat People� or �The Draughtsman�s Contract�. It certainly seemed easier to fantasise about women, just the idea was a whole less stressful than the idea of a real male penis � but realistically, what would I do with one if I saw one in the flesh?

The magazine that I saw, well it was probably something like Razzle, the pages were a bit torn, but I picked it up, pushed it in my bag, and took it home to our empty bungalow. Once in my bedroom, I laid the pages out across my lilac patterned bed sheets, and hands shaking, pulled down my pants, tore off my nylon regulation skirt, school tie and shirt, and laid on my front awestruck at the site of this woman covered in baby oil straddling an exercise bike in a gym. She was sunbed brown, wore a sweatband across her forehead and had one of those regulation 80s perms � it was the most exciting thing I had ever seen in my short and confused sexual life. What I didn�t realise was that whilst I was getting myself off on the bed, my blinds were half open � as I flung my head back mid stroke I get a knock on the window from my aunty carrying a box of flapjacks and laughing at me through the glass. When I opened the front door there was a biscuit tin left on the step, I didn�t see her for three months after that day, but I was rumbled for sure. I died with embarrassment, but she never uttered a word.

In the end Pete, my best male friend, did me a favour and took me behind the Leisure Centre car park one Christmas Eve. I was wearing a stinking black rabbit fur coat, 70 denier tights, and painted on eyelashes. We drank a bottle of whiskey, and after three whole minutes of inebriated kissing he slipped his hands through my coat and ripped my tights down to my knees. The weather was minus 5, and the frost burned up my ass cheeks as he shoved his cold hands through the sides of my knickers.

�Do you wanna fuck me?�

�Well, erm, you know, I�ve never really done this before, I�ve tried, but.. it never seems to go in properly�

Visions of attempted penetration flashed through my head, different positions, unruly boys, but no matter how hard I had a go at it, it would never squeeze up there.

Deep down all I wanted was to be soaped in the shower by my head of year. On the surface all I got was Pete screaming with disgust as he broke through my hymen with his Brickie Mitts under the twinkling stars. His hands were covered in blood; he�d done the job well.

�I�m sorry; I didn�t mean to do that. It should have been something special for you. I feel really bad.�

He went all sheepish on me as he dried off his hands.

�Well don�t worry Pete; rather it was you than some twat from down the pub.�

We gave each other a hug, shook sticky palms, and as I walked myself home I felt slightly confused at the last hour�s detached car park fumblings.

When her ladyship finally discovered my Christmas secret, she announced the arrival of her �new boyfriend�, and regarding us, �We would never make it anyway; imagine being girl lovers in a place like this�.

Some nights at house parties we would all crash in the same bed, under the same duvet, and she�d fuck her boyfriend right next to me, let him eat her out, give it a come scream, as I would grip my eyelids together desperately trying not to move. I was jealous that she wasn�t mine. Jealous that nobody would do that to me. Jealous that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn�t get a boyfriend.

What sex was, and what I was meant do with what I felt was becoming the more confusing the older I got. I liked boys, but I liked girls too, boys were more something to aspire to, whereas girls, well they were something really naughty to fantasise about. I desperately wanted to lose my virginity to a boy named Robert. He was six years older than me, and I would trail him down the street, staring at him in his �Joe Bloggs spirit of Manchester 1989� t shirt. He was tall and gangly, with a pudding bowl haircut and looked a bit like the singer from The Charlatans. He was the coolest boy I had ever seen, and some days he would smile at me and say hi, I would blush and hide behind Lou, who would flirt like a red blooded slut with him, knowing full well that I was desperate to talk to him.

One day he invited us to a gig his band where playing at in York, it was in a place on Heslington Road, where you could get drinks underage - he even said we could go on the guest list. I spent all day getting ready, and wore a white Victorian dress, subconsciously virginal in my attire, and spent the entire gig pinned to the back wall with fright. His band were standard shoegazing fodder, but he was the most beautiful vision � he had a terrible voice, no stage presence whatsoever, but girls went crazy for him. After the gig we talked, he made me laugh, more than anyone I had ever met before; he even bought me a vodka lime and soda. At the end of the night, I sat on the wall out the back of the pub; he leaned forward and gave me a kiss. Because he thought I �deserved one�. It ignited a doomed connection that never went away through our disastrous 7 year friendship/fuckship whatever you want to call it.

�I love you. But as a friend. But don�t tell anyone. I know there�s this thing between us, but the problem is I don�t just love my girlfriend; I love you, and someone else at work. She�s blonde � got a really tight ass��

Then he�d ask if I�d give him a blowjob down the viaduct later on, and I�d always say yes. Robert had a girlfriend, void of personality, but I was pretty convenient as the girl he would never admit to fucking � though he had me over the barrel with the promise of eloping until I was 23.

He once saw me and Lou kissing on the back seat of the Coastliner one night, and asked if he could come and watch us sometime, just the three of us. The thought terrified me, so I laughed in his face, but it spun him along for what seemed like years.

Sometimes I close my eyes and have visions of the three of us running barefoot through cornfields at midnight. We�d take microdots and drink strawberry 20/20 mad dog, tearing each other�s clothes off under harvest moons, singing crap songs from the eighties together. Me and Rob would sneak off to the top of the limestone crags just before sunrise, we�d lay out on the rock boulders laughing our heads off, watching the red sky permeate the horizon, whilst his girlfriend was none the wiser, nobody knew, except for me, Lou & Rob, it was our little secret affair.

It was an underwhelming feeling, being 16, having a secret boyfriend with Mick Jagger lips who would see you once a week at midnight, and having a girlfriend who would flirt with you to make the boys stand to attention, but on the sly would cuss you for being thick/fat/a tad layabout. At the end of the summer of 1991 my Mum and Dad got divorced; I got into drugs, festivals and got kicked out of sixth form after my first 3 months.

I lashed out in traditional teen style. Got into some bad habits, and screwed around with any guitar boy that crossed my path. Spent the summer�s roly-polying down the walls of the Spotted Cow, giving quick head to anyone who would buy me half a cider. If I missed the bus home, I�d swoop into the local meat market, pick up a man, use him for his bed. If he was pissed enough, I�d steal the money from his wallet, and catch a taxi home � knocking on her door when I finally returned. Me and Lou would laugh together like two little bitchy witches, cackling at the winnings, vowing to spend it in the morning on vodka and pink champagne speed.

The day she left for university, I thought I�d see her name up in lights. But it never happened, like most precocious plans from her pink petal lips. She dropped out, got married, moved to the far east with a sugar daddy � and gave me her records in favour of �his CDs�. The records still sit in the corner of my room, never get played, gathering dust, a relic of batting for both teams; a reminder of pathetic teenage torture, wasted love, and bitter disappointment.

As for Robert, he dares never see me again, stood me up at Leeds bus station on the day we were meant to move to Manchester together. The 7 year dream died a death, the smokescreen filtered out. I�d been had good and proper. The only way out was through black hole oblivion, and clouds of cocaine � through time I fucked the pain away. Close your eyes, close your ears, open your legs, lie back and think of Yorkshire.

� Megan Hall
Reproduced with permission

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