Boxing Day.
1982.
Perched on the edge of Alex’s bed, I leant forward until I could almost feel the prickles of static electricity on the end of my nose, and my scruffy fringe began to reach out to the curved glass. If you could have sat inside the portable television and peered out at the huge pale face of Jason Smith, you might have assumed that my slightly gaping mouth, my wide eyes and dilated pupils, the sheen on my forehead, and the blush in my otherwise gaunt cheeks was evidence that nothing that the world had to offer could possibly trump the images on the screen.
And yet, Alex was less interested.
He lay back against a pile of pillows at the other end of the bed, his shirt wide open to reveal his “Empire Strikes Back” t-shirt, his hands behind his head (though carefully avoiding the fragile construction of gel and spray that passed as a hair style), oblivious to the high pitch wail of a siren, and what sounded like a squeaky toy being repeatedly stamped on.
After a while he let out a long exaggerated yawn and watched as I clutched the chunky joystick in sweaty hands and jerked the controls up, down, left, and right, to manoeuvre a crudely animated “slice of lemon” round a maze of dots, whilst being pursued by four multicoloured ghosts.
I was completely rubbish at this game. All my teeth-clenching, heart-pounding, and hand-sweating seemed to make no difference - I’d already eaten all my “power pills”, and still had more than half the screen to complete, and now the ghosts had me cornered. It was only a matter of seconds before my lemon slice ran into one of them and would shrivel up to what sounded like an electronic penny whistle being deprived of puff, at which point I, or rather my video game counterpart, would be dead.
Alex sniggered as I met my computerised demise, and then bounced along the bed until he was sat next to me. I thrust the control in his direction, and after he’d blown on his hands and pretended to push the sleeves up on a shirt that had never ever been unrolled past his forearms, he snatched the joystick from me.
I rested my bony elbows on my knees, cupped my chin in my hands, and watched the master at work. It was a stupid game. I could see the point of Asteroids, or Space Invaders, even some of the lame racing games, but Pacman involved steering a yellow blob round a maze, whilst avoiding ghostly collisions with other blobs! ‘Surreal’ and ‘empathy’ weren’t really words that I used much at the tender age of fourteen, but if they had been I’d have argued that this game was too much of the former, and completely bereft of the latter. Instead I just grunted, and when Mrs Grant bellowed up the stairs to get the attention of her son, a small spiteful part of me was pleased at what would inevitably happen next.
Alex ignored his mother, and continued to play. I gave him an enquiring sideways glance, which he met with an expression that said, “If she calls again, then I’ll see what she wants.”
She did.
“Bollocks,” said Alex, launching himself off the bed, hitting the reset button on the games console as he did so. He tossed the control into my lap, and stomped out of the room. I listened until I could hear the muted sounds of my friend and his mother shouting at each other. And then slowly I turned my head, and looked up at the glossy addition to Alex's bedroom wall.
Maybe there was time.
I took the calendar off its hook, and sat on the edge of Alex's bed. Several "stunners" adorned its pages. At least that’s what the text on the cover promised. But by the time I'd got to August, "Samantha" had made at least three appearances. There was nothing particularly unpleasant about Samantha; she had enormous breasts, and long blonde hair, and those things were very nice, but there wasn't anything … else. It was as if she was missing something. Not a limb. Not anything important or disfiguring. Just, well … “something”. Whatever that was. And without the “something”, once you'd seen her breasts there really wasn't any need to see them again. Like Mickey Mouse's ears, they really didn't seem that different regardless of the angle you looked at them from.
I turned the page and finally, there she was. Linda. Now she definitely had the “something”.
Wearing only a pair of skimpy bikini bottoms under a see-through black lace sarong, she stood with one hand perched provocatively on a hip, whilst the other hung so that long fingers and painted nails brushed against an exposed thigh. My eyes caressed the image, drinking in every curve, every detail. Her tanned skin, speckled lightly with beads of water. Her wild back-combed hair, lit from behind to create a halo effect. Her exaggerated pout. The heavy make-up around the eyes. The way she looked at me as if she could see the contents of my head - and, as she did so, a very basic primitive part of me started to resonate, and I could feel my heart thumping, louder and louder, like the beat of ancient drums.
"Oi," said Alex, snatching the calendar off me, "stop perving."
"I wasn't!" I protested, but it was too late, the calendar was out of my hands, and Alex was hanging it back on the wall.
"Best of three?" he asked, without turning to look at me. It took me a moment to realise he was referring to the video game. But of course! Who would want to spend Boxing Day looking at Linda Lusardi when the alternative was ritual humiliation in the form of stupid bloody Pacman!
"Yeah. Sure," I said. Alex’s large bottom hit the bed, and a moment later he had that glazed look on his face like he was wired directly into the console.
I glanced up at the calendar. She was probably ten years my senior. Which meant that by the time I was twenty five, Linda could very well be the kind of woman I was going out with on a regular basis, and probably about to marry.
“Tell you what,” said Alex, his eyes never leaving the television. “I'll do half, then you see if you can complete it. Deal?”
“Ok,” I said with a shrug.
Thing was though, none of the girls I knew at school seemed to be developing into mini Lindas, and none of them had that Linda potential. Even with ten years to go, it seemed like a transformation of evolutionary proportions if they were ever going to reach full Linda-ness.
Apart from Melanie Jackson, of course.
Even at fourteen, Melanie Jackson didn’t just have “the something”, she was practically made of the stuff. Which is why there’d almost been an emergency meeting of the governors when Mr Thomas allowed Melanie Jackson to play the music department’s one and only saxophone.
There are certain things in this world that, on the face of it, shouldn't be any more sexy than the next thing, but really, really are. Girls in men's shirts are one thing, and girls playing saxophones are another. Everybody knows this. Anybody who’s ever seen those Robert Palmer or Rod Stewart videos knows this. Even the girls know this. That’s why any girl who casually expressed an interest in learning the saxophone was given a stern look and promptly handed a clarinet. Or an oboe. Maybe a flute. But giving a girl a saxophone in a school full of raging adolescent male hormones, especially a girl like Melanie Jackson, would be a little like tossing a glowing cigarette end through the open window of a firework factory.
Practically overnight, membership to the school orchestra doubled and became almost fifty percent male. And whilst none of the newly formed brass section would admit to joining because of Melanie Jackson, it was most definitely the case. I should know. I was one of them. And Alex was another.
It also wasn’t a coincidence that from my place in the orchestra I had a better view of Melanie Jackson than anyone else. The musicians sat in two rows that radiated in large arcs facing Mr Thomas. The brass section was to his right and arranged in order of instrument size. So the small spotty kids with their trumpets came first, then Nigel with his French horn, then Derek on the euphonium, followed by me on the trombone, and finally Alex on the tuba. Except that Alex and I would, accidently on purpose, swap places, putting me on the end and giving me a clear view of the reed section in front of Old Thomas, and the object of my desire.
I’d arrange my music stand so that whilst it was ludicrously high I could flick my eyes from my music to Melanie, and back again, without being obvious.
“Move up,” growled Alex. I ignored him. “I can’t see,” he said. Alex elbowed me in the ribs, but I stayed rooted to the spot. If anyone was going to be leering at Melanie I wanted it to be me and me alone. If we both started gawping, that was only going to draw attention.
“If I move along any further, I’ll be sitting amongst the bloody audience,” I hissed.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” said Alex, “there isn’t an audience. That’s why we call this ‘a rehearsal’.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Next time you’re sitting here,” grumbled Alex, “like you’re s’posed to.” But I was ignoring him again.
She was a good inch or two taller than the other girls, with a mass of permed chestnut hair that bobbed and bounced, and fell in front of her eyes, so that when she looked at you - if you were ever that lucky - it was like she was playing peek-a-boo. That alone would get my insides in a tangle, but if she smiled - suddenly I would feel like I was sitting there in nothing but my vest and pants, my skinny arms and legs on show to the whole world. And whilst I might feel self-conscious at first, everyone else would just evaporate, until the entire universe consisted only of me and Melanie.
Not that she looked in my direction that often. Most of the time, she just sat there, staring at Old Thomas, waiting for her cue, whilst I would catalogue every detail: the stud earrings she was wearing, the colour of her lipstick, the thin gold chain round her neck, the number of buttons undone on her shirt, the V-neck of her school sweater, and the two small mounds just beneath it.
“Pervert!” said Alex, burying his outburst within a pretend cough. Mr Thomas glared in our direction for a second or two before turning his attention back to the violins. I put my right foot on Alex’s left and began to press down, until he thumped me in the arm.
None of the other girls had breasts. Not yet. Nothing to talk of anyway. I mean ok, some of them did, but Melanie had had them for ages which meant that any other girl who’d recently acquired a bust was just making a feeble attempt at imitating the original. A point that Alex insisted on making, albeit in far cruder terms, each night on the way home from school.
Alex’s obsession with Melanie Jackson’s breasts was really beginning to get on my nerves. I swear if she’d had a head transplant Alex wouldn’t have noticed - but the day she went from an A cup to a B he was telling anyone who cared to listen. One more reference to her bust as “Mount Jackson” and I’d have stuffed my trombone in his great fat cake hole. Truth was, Melanie could have been flat chested for all I cared, because just like Linda, Melanie Jackson had grace. Though back then I wouldn’t have used that word. I wouldn’t have used any words. Around Melanie I was reduced to a mute idiot, and any attempt at conversation was nothing more than a collection of squeaks and whistles that made me sound like I was trying to conceal a set of bagpipes about my person. All I could do was watch, from my place in the orchestra, and wait for the moment when she lifted her saxophone to her lips.
The slice of lemon devoured a pixelated bunch of cherries, rounded a corner, gobbled up a power pill, then turned and chased after the four ghosts that were now blue with squiggly mouths, indicating that they too could be eaten.
“You done any band practice?” I asked Alex, hoping the question would put him off his game.
“Nah,” he said.
“Aren’t you worried about the New Year’s concert?” I asked. Alex shrugged.
“Not really,” he said completing half the screen. “I’ll just mime. No one will notice. It’s not like I’m the one with the big solo or anything!” He nudged me in the ribs, and then handed me the control as promised. I took it, and looked back at the screen.
“It’s not a ‘big solo’,” I muttered. “It’s just one note.”
“That’ll be why you cock it up every time then,” smirked Alex. Seconds later I ran into a ghost, and died.
“Ready when you are, Mr Smith,” said Mr Thomas, and as he did so the rest of the world rushed in to fill a space in my head that had previously been occupied with just one person. The entire school orchestra was looking at me.
“Sorry,” I said weakly. “I … lost my place.”
“Really,” said Old Thomas, a bushy grey eyebrow climbing his wrinkled forehead. “Because from where I’m standing, it looked like you knew exactly where you were. Sadly though, it just didn’t happen to be with the rest of us.” I felt my cheeks flush red whilst the orchestra rippled with the smirks of my fellow students. Mr Thomas tapped his baton against the side of his lectern. “Settle down, people, let’s take it from the top of the page. And one, and two, and ...”
“You numbskull,” said Alex, elbowing me. I said nothing. I just put my trombone to my lips and waited for my cue. Then I glanced over at Melanie again, only this time – she was looking back at me.
And then, she smiled.