Among Others

it all off.
    Then I was talking to Leah about Andrew for ages, and afterwards to Nasreen about Andrew, for ages. Leah was over it, mostly, and interested in somebody else, an older boy called Gareth who has a motorbike. Nasreen was in the middle of a huge saga of fights with her parents about Andrew on which I had to be brought up to speed. Andrew doesn’t seem significant enough to make all that fuss about if you ask me. But nobody did ask me, so I spent a couple of hours making a fuss about him. When he arrived, which Leah’s parents had solemnly sworn to Nasreen’s parents he wouldn’t do, he spent the rest of the evening with his arm around her very self-consciously. Leah’s parents had gone out until eleven o’clock, to the theatre in Cardiff with her younger sister.
    There were a number of people there I didn’t know very well. One boy tried to put his arm around me, and I let him. Why not, I thought, because I’d had a few glasses of the stupid purple punch by then, with its little floating half-grapes and bits of pear and peach. It’s nice to have someone near and warm. He was one of Gareth’s friends, so he must have been sixteen or seventeen. His name was Owen, and as far as I could tell he’d never read a book in his life and had no interests apart from motorbikes and girls and music. He likes the Clash, who I’ve never heard of, and Elvis Costello. Leah must like Elvis Costello too, because she was playing some very loudly. I really miss out on music because we’re not allowed any at school. I like the idea of Rock against Racism, but I don’t like the actual music very much. He asked me what music I liked and I said Bob Dylan, which disconcerted him totally. I could tell he’d heard of Dylan but didn’t know a thing about him. Oh well. He was a bit put off by the walking stick and left me alone for a bit after he saw it—I got up to go to the toilet. Later, after Moira had assured me he didn’t have a girlfriend and wasn’t he lovely—not a patch on Wim, I thought, and Wim has a brain, too.
    Anyway, later Owen came back to me and started cuddling me again, and I didn’t stop him. I was enjoying it, in a very much physical-only way. The thing is, I know that the others at least pretend to be in love with their boyfriends while they’re going out with them. They’re sort of rehearsing for grown-up relationships. They’re temporarily exclusive, and playing at romance. I didn’t, don’t, want to play that game. Owen didn’t make me in the slightest bit breathless, nor did I especially like him. But he was warm and male and solid and interested, and he did make me curious and desirous of more body-contact. So when he suggested he show me his bike, I went outside with him. It was only a Moped, 50cc, but he was very proud of it and told me all sorts of things about it. I’m not even sure those things go up hills.
    You’d have thought the night air would have sobered me up, but it seemed to make me more drunk. When he started kissing me I liked it, and kissed him back, which he seemed to find a bit disconcerting. (Maybe I was doing it wrong? Books do not say, but I was doing it exactly the way I have seen in films.) He had his arms around me and he started running them over me. Now this did make me a bit breathless, and actually very turned on.
    So we went back inside and into a little room which is actually Leah’s father’s study. There’s a sofa in there and we sat down on that and started cuddling. It was dark—there was a light in the hall, but we didn’t put any lights on in there.
    Why is writing about sex more private and worrying than writing about anything else? There are things in this book that could get me burned at the stake , and I don’t worry about writing them.
    Anyway, we cuddled for a bit and then Owen put his hand inside my knickers, and I liked it, and I thought I was being selfish just sitting there and not reciprocating, so I put my hand on his leg, and moved it to his penis—and I know perfectly well what a penis is, I have had baths with my cousins, and played doctor with them as well, when we were young enough that there weren’t all these stupid rules of etiquette. Anyway, Owen had a penis just as you’d expect, and he was excited too, but as soon as I touched it, through his trousers, he took his hands off me and practically leapt away.
    “You slut!” he said, standing up with his hands clenched defensively in front of it, as if he thought I