ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
When I was a little boy, maybe seven years old, Mrs Phillips gave an introductory lesson on the reproductive systems. Well, sort of. I remember she told her class of slack-jawed and scabby-shinned innocents quite plainly, quite simply, that babies come from love, and love was between a mum and a dad. She told us that one day we would meet someone of the opposite gender and if we played our cards right, that love would make a baby. And that would be that.
The only problem was I knew for a fact, even at seven, that I found Andrew G from Australian Idol more appealing than Ricki-Lee. I wondered if that would be a problem for me in the future when it came to baby-making. Could Andrew G and I have love the way Mrs Phillips talked about? Could we make a baby? Whose belly would it live in? Surely his belly: my belly was too little and already full from recess. I hugged my little knees to my chest and pretended not a thing was amiss.
The following week, I met a young girl, my age or thereabout. I met her at the park on Beryl Street up the road from my house. I didn’t know her name. I’m sure she must have told me one. Our similarity in age was enough to bond us, and our difference in gender was more than enough to guide us along. As you might expect, the young girl and I spent all hours of the afternoon up at the park playing mums and dads and teaching each other how to kiss as we hid away in the hollow of a lilly pilly hedge.
I can’t remember if I specifically thought that planting a kiss on a girl was how you make a baby, or if I was just following a hunch. Mrs Phillips had barely given me anything to go on, so I must’ve been running on instinct. But I was determined. I wanted to see if it was possible – if it was possible that two people could make something, a human. So, we kissed.
‘No, not like that, like this,’ I said, trying something new each time her stomach didn’t bloat with child.
‘No. I’ve seen my mum and her boyfriend do it like this. Copy me,’ she commanded as she closed her eyes and parted her lips. And I did copy her, parting my lips; I did as I was told.
As I leaned in, I knew I wanted to see just what was happening, so I kept my eyes open the entire time. The young girl slowly went from her regular form to a sort of kaleidoscopic image, all jumbled eyes and brows. She smelt like my baby brother’s scalp – all milky – and I remember thinking her mouth tasted the way runny snot did when you suck it back.
There in the hedge, we took toothless, inelegant bites out of each other. We held our mouths open there, unmoving, unwavering for seconds at a time, punctuating each kiss with a noise that sounded like a tiny screech of a salted slug. I’d pull back, look down at her tummy, and … nothing. There was never anything. No sign of life anywhere. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me. Were we not opposite enough? Was there something about me and her that was too similar, and we couldn’t make a baby? Maybe she preferred Ricki-Lee to Andrew G…
Even in all this, I wanted to be a big, burly husband to her. It’s what I’d seen demonstrated by every man I’d ever met. It was the way of things. I had to. It’s what boys did. Boys kiss girls and make babies, I thought, and they drink pee-coloured drinks at the pub with other men too. I wanted this, or at least I wanted to look like I wanted this.
It was nothing but pure innocence. We were searching for answers in one another's increasingly chapped lips. That was until three older boys dragged me by my scruff from the safety of the hedge hollow.
‘It’s Lizzie's little brother,’ the boys said as they yanked the neckline of my t-shirt, and the skin of my back grazed along the twig and gravel-covered dirt of the hedge bed. Green leaves and pink lilly pilly berries fell around me as they hurled me to the ground and shoved my head into the bark chip-covered soil under the swing set.
They spat words at me that I had only overheard older high schoolers say to each other on the backseat of the school bus.
‘You like that, faggot? You like that?’ I knew it was a question, but it wasn’t one they cared to hear an answer to. They asked again and again as they stood on my wrists and ankles. I started to think maybe it wasn’t a question at all.
There was a husk of white dog shit in the distance as their words burned into me. There was a terrified look on the face of the young girl who, moments before, had called herself my wife. As the weight of the feet increased on my limbs, making my hands and fingers pulse beet-purple, I felt less and even less of a husband to her. I did nothing to free myself for fear of making it worse. I didn’t dare shriek.
My young wife was distressed as she told them to stop, begged them, and pleaded with them to stop. But they didn’t. They ignored her and carried on. They did not stop. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves as they started to strike the patterned soles of their runners into my cheek, pummeling the other side of my face into the chips of bark and the sticks and the dirt beneath. Mud began to gather where my saliva met the earth.
The young girl cried out.
‘Help us!’ she said, ‘help us, please!’ She scrambled around the park. But all I could think was: Help us? Help me! There were plenty of houses around, plenty of parked cars in driveways, how did no one see or hear her? Then again, maybe they did.
The young girl gave up on telling them to stop; she couldn’t watch anymore. Each of them was taking turns digging their heels into my tummy, my private parts, the parts Mrs Phillips told me no one was to touch but me.
I saw that the whites of the young girl’s eyes were tarnished red. It was now just the simple sadness of a child. She was no longer my wife. How could she be? I didn’t know then the Oxford definition of the words those boys were branding me with, but I knew the feeling they sparked in me, and that was definition enough to a seven-year-old. I was less than a husband, less than a man, even less than a boy with his face in the dirt. And for reasons I didn’t know, they wanted that kicked into the side of my skull.
The young girl readied herself to run, and gave me a look that said, sorry and what a waste at the same time.
Eventually the older boys left me to lick my wounds and I dragged myself home at the coming on of the streetlights. When I walked through the door, I told my dad I fell off a swing, that was why I was so hurt. Dad took a look at me, appraised my injuries, the bruising on my wrists and hands, the patterned dirt on my face. He plucked a piece of bark from a tuft of my tawny hair, and then asked, ‘Did you cry, son?’
I shook my head.
‘Good man, good man.’ ▼
Image: Danilo Henrique - Pexels
If you liked this piece, please share it. And please consider donating or subscribing so that we can keep supporting writers and artists.