Two Roofs and a Fry
My books are 100% fiction based on 50% reality, so two truths and a lie is upping my honesty ratio to uncomfortable levels. Let’s see if I can make you uncomfortable too…
I started writing smut when I was far too young for that sort of thing, but already beginning to experience, and experiment with, those sorts of things. One day, in my constant quest for new stories to occupy my unruly mind, I borrowed a slim paperback with an intriguing cover from the bookshelf in my parents’ bedroom. The woman on the cover resembled me in the same way that the acts described on the pages resembled real-life sex.
I took that book up into the attic, which was a place I’d learned I couldn’t be easily surprised, and, lying under a roof beam I often thought of finding an alternative use for, I miseducated myself.
I don’t remember the title of that seminal work, but what does stick out in my memory is the protagonist’s penis. It was ten inches long — yes, I measured against my body and boggled my mind — and it would remain hard until he’d come several times, with several willing women.
Mr Wondercock* worked as a scriptwriter for a porn production company, so that book was how I learned that some people filmed sex, and made those films available on video tape, and that other people could watch those tapes at home, on their VCRs.
We had a VCR.
I don’t know if videos of that type were ever in my parents’ bedroom, but if they were, I never found them. I did find my father’s special interest magazine collection, but that’s many other stories.
But before I found and read those stories, I took what I already knew, incorporated what I imagined I’d learned from pulp fiction, and wrote my own stories. Tragically, none survive.
Gah! Typo. That should have been: “…wrote my own stories, tragically. None survive.”
An imprecise number of years later — let’s just say, “It was at an age when trespass was the only crime committed,” and then exclude that sentence from ‘two truths, one lie’ consideration — I and one of my friends** climbed onto the flat roof of the vestry of a local church.
The graveyard of that church was one of the places disaffected young people — a group I aspired to membership of at the time — gathered on summer Saturday nights. We would drink expensive cider (the cider was cheap in purely economic terms but often had ancillary costs), we’d smoke anything anyone had and was willing to share, and we’d hop the wall into the woods on the rare occasions a police officer took an interest in us.
We had ample warning when the police did take an interest: there was one narrow, poorly maintained road leading up to the church, and we had a view of it, so there was always a minute or two of advance warning during which we could hide either the evidence, or ourselves. Usually I hid myself, and if I ever left something behind, I hoped my mother wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t wearing evidence when I got back home.
One time, I went back for the evidence.
Sensitive Stuart*** came with me to help, which was unlike him. He found the evidence first and climbed onto the vestry roof so he could wave them as a victory banner to taunt me. That was like him.
I could have gone home, but I climbed up after him. I was used to hanging around the edges of excitement; this time I wanted to be part of something, even if it was my own humiliation. He went up in three seconds and as many steps: window sill, drain pipe, coving. Climbing took me longer in my unsuitable shoes and body.
He helped haul me over the edge onto the roof, where I lay on my back, gasping, while a boy who knew what I wasn’t wearing stood over me demanding a reward.
And I wanted to be part of something exciting.
One year, on my husband’s birthday, I let a stranger set fire to my womb.
Linked to Wicked Wednesday and 4Thoughts
