Pete Bennett - Pete - My Story

Pete Bennett

With Andrew Crofts

Being able to do this book is a brilliant opportunity, because I really want to try to explain to people what it feels like to be me. People have always made snap judgements about me. They might only have seen me walking down a crowded street, sitting in a school classroom or a pub, but that would be enough for them to decide that I was weird, or gay, or soft, or mad or very annoying, and I am excited to have an opportunity to paint a bit more of a detailed picture of how I got to be like I am.

I’m not the only person in the world with a few problems. Some people have far worse ones, and some have far milder ones. But we all start out from the same place, until things start happening to us. For some people the problems begin the first day they pop out into the world; for others, like me, they ambush us later on. When you see some guy walking down the street, talking to himself or shouting abuse at the gods, it’s easiest to just cross the road and walk on by, but the chances are he didn’t start out life like that. When he was born his mum and dad probably had very different plans for him, but stuff happened in his life, and probably in his head, that made him turn out different. It’s not often someone like me really gets a chance to tell their story to a wide audience, rather than to just a few doctors, psychiatrists and so-called experts.

Maybe some kids will read this book, and then they might understand better why some of the other kids in the playground act a bit different to them. Maybe they’ll feel it would be worth getting to know them better, rather than just shouting names and insults at them and knocking them down into the mud.

My mum’s had a fair bit of superficial judgement landed on her over the years too; you know the sort of thing – a single busking mother with two sons by two different fathers, plus some pretty funky style decisions. She’s got a bit of a mouth on her has Mum, and that hasn’t always endeared her to everyone, particularly people in official positions who didn’t quite get the whole Pete thing, but she still has the most gigantic circle of devoted friends, with me right at the front of the queue.

I hope there will be a few laughs along the way too, because we’ve laughed a lot over the years, when we weren’t crying or shouting with frustration.

Anyway, this is it, for better or worse, my story.

Title Page PETE MY STORY Pete Bennett With Andrew Crofts Introduction Chapter One: A Bit Of A Bad Start Chapter Two: Rock And Roll Baby Chapter Three: Baby Minders Chapter Four: A Visit From An Angel Chapter Five: Animals And Graveyards Chapter Six: Dave Chapter Seven: Warning Signs Chapter Eight: A Family Unit Chapter Nine: The Explosion Chapter Ten: The Padded Cell Chapter Eleven: Bollocks! Chapter Twelve: Thoughts Of Suicide Chapter Thirteen: Special Places Chapter Fourteen: Obsession Chapter Fifteen: Dressing Up Chapter Sixteen: Falling In Love Chapter Seventeen: Brighton Chapter Eighteen: Perfect Pete Chapter Nineteen: Through The K-Hole Chapter Twenty: Joolz Chapter Twenty-One: Fetish Parties Chapter Twenty-Two: The Night Of The 23Rd Chapter Twenty-Three: Heaven And Hell Chapter Twenty-Four: Cracking The Code Chapter Twenty-Five: Big Brother Epilogue Copyright About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

I love my life, but it did get off to a bit of a dodgy start. I definitely wasn’t keen to come out of Mum’s belly. I probably felt safe and had a premonition of some of the stuff that was on its way once I hit the fresh air. I was about two weeks late popping out and Mum and Dad were sitting around in the hospital for a pretty long time, just waiting for me to decide I was ready to make my first dramatic entrance. Apparently there had been one giant explosion of a contraction and then just pure agony for Mum and no more action from me. I wasn’t going anywhere. I stayed stuck there for the next seventeen hours, just couldn’t get out, or didn’t want to. I mean, why would I want to? Pretty cosy and safe in there, I should think.

I was taking so long getting my act together Dad got fed up with waiting and went home for his breakfast. Probably a bit of an attention-span problem going on there. I can understand that. I always have trouble sitting still waiting for something to happen.

A couple of foreign nurses, without too much English between them, were keeping Mum company, just watching the clock drag round, waiting for their shifts to end. One of them was so bored she was cleaning her ears out with a matchstick and examining the results before wiping it on the bedclothes.

‘Ma babies all popped out like stones from peaches,’ the other one kept saying, as if Mum was being deliberately lazy and messing up their day on purpose. ‘Why don’t you push, dahling?’

In the end an Egyptian lady-doctor sauntered into the room to see what was going on, or not going on, and realized that Mum was close to death. Suddenly everything changed, alarms started ringing and she was rushed off to the operating theatre. A few minutes later I was brought out on to centre stage by Caesarean.

So there I was, safely delivered and ready for whatever life might want to throw at me. A healthy eight pounds ten ounces and glad to be alive from the first moment I drew breath. No reason for anyone to worry there, baby delivered, job done, let’s all go home. Mum put my surname down on the birth certificate as Bennett, because she believed Dad was going to marry her. To be fair to her he had asked, so she had every reason to be optimistic, but then he announced he was only joking. I suspect Mum didn’t exactly roar with laughter at that one. His name isn’t on my birth certificate at all because he didn’t manage to turn up in time to sign it, having had a bit too much cider in the pub according to Mum. She generally tells it like it is, does Mum.

Mum hadn’t realized she was pregnant with me till she was already five months gone. Apparently she’d been taking the Pill, but she had a dodgy Indian take-away one evening, and being sick must have shot the pill back up before it had done whatever it was supposed to do to discourage my conception. A bit of divine intervention there. I’ve always liked a good curry myself, and I am deeply indebted to the whole culinary species for my presence on Earth. If Mum had decided to have pasta or a McDonald’s that night I guess I would never have happened.

So there I was, a bit of an unplanned event, although Mum assures me she’d always wanted me. She probably should have guessed she was pregnant a bit earlier, like the day when she felt violently sick on the bus, jumped off and threw up all over the window of a carpet showroom, under the furious gaze of half a dozen disgusted shop assistants. Mum was a full-fledged, scary-looking punk rocker at that stage, so it must have looked like a bit of a political statement, spewing up over a bourgeois retail outlet. They probably thought she had done it on purpose.