James Hannah - The A to Z of You and Me

I exchange a glance with Kelvin, and we agree with a microshift of eyebrows that we’ll remain silent. I stare back down into my nearly empty pint. Look at us, two seventeen-year-old no-marks who’ve gravitated like children to the two squat little stools drawn up to the sticky darkwood table. But here we are with Laura’s friends, all of them around twenty-two, and all sitting in proper chairs with backs. Laura’s finally deigned to let me come out with her. She’s in a bad place at the moment, having ditched her boyfriend of six years. I could almost persuade myself that she’s glad of my company.

‘Because men — society — it’s such a pain, isn’t it? They’re either leg men, boob men or bum men, aren’t they? It’s not fair. I mean, if you’re a woman, you can’t say you’re like a chest woman, or a lunchbox or an arse woman.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Becca. ‘I like a nice arse.’ She twists theatrically at the outside of her afro, and looks randily into the middle distance.

Oh, Becca.

If there is any benefit in the world to listening to my sister whinge on about her woes it’s that we get to sit at the same table as the goddess Becca. Smouldering eyes and flawless ebony skin — an instant magnet to everyone around. How pathetically feeble Kelvin and I must look in the company of Becca. And yet here we are. We’re on the stools.

‘But it’s men who make all the rules. And we’re all supposed to play by those rules. It’s bollocks. I think, you know, if you’ve got a lovely big pair of chesticles—’ and she holds her hands illustratively in front of her imagined boobs ‘—you’re already a step ahead of the game.’

‘So what are you then?’ Becca asks Kelvin. ‘Are you a boob man? Do you like a lovely big pair of chesticles?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t really know. Maybe a leg man?’

I’m suddenly aware of the crapness of Kelvin’s hair. He’s got good-boy hair. Side-parting. I run my fingers through my tangles, just in case. At least mine’s long. Kelvin looks like an office junior.

‘Not a boob man?’ says Laura.

He reddens, but plunges on, shaking his head. ‘I never understood the fascination with breasts. I mean, what’s so amazing? They’re just fat-sacs, aren’t they? Fat-sacs with a cherry on top.’

There’s the tiniest pause, before both women collapse in laughter. I glance at him, and he looks bemused. They think he’s joking.

‘Any more than a handful is a waste,’ he adds.

Jesus, I don’t want to be linked with this. I’m here trying to appeal to girls — to women — and he’s giving out all the signals of inexperience. I catch myself actually shuffling my stool away from him.

‘What about you then?’ says Becca. She turns to me and gives me one of those smiles that could knock a man down. ‘Give me a shopping list so we can get you matched up. Are you a boob man or a leg man or an arse man?’

‘You’re a boob man, I bet, aren’t you?’ says Kelvin.

Here’s the thing: Becca has I think the most magnificent breasts I have ever seen. Kelvin and I have spent hours dreaming up wonderful new positions we would like to take in relation to Becca’s breasts. We both know it, and we both know the other knows it. I fix my eyes firmly on her eyes, and then gaze up at the ceiling, lean back from the table, right back on two legs of my stool. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers, can they?’

‘Aw!’ says Laura. ‘Are you reduced to begging?’

‘You must have a preference,’ says Becca. ‘What’s the first thing you look at? Go on, say you’re lusty and forget everything about personality and being a gentleman and all that. You just want, y’know, a good wooargh . What is it?’

I’m thinking boobs. I’m thinking Becca’s boobs. I know, I really should just say ‘boobs’. The word actually leaks into the middle of my tongue, but I clamp my teeth shut.

‘Boobs. Totally boobs,’ says Kelvin, with finality.

But I can’t admit it to Becca. I’ve angled my position on the stool specifically to include her breasts in my composition of the room.

‘Honestly — I really — I couldn’t choose. I’d be all over the shop. It’d be everything. I don’t think there is a boob man or a bum man or whatever.’

Mal mercifully chooses this moment to return from the bar, carrying three pints in his hands, a glass of wine in his top pocket, and a packet of scampi fries swinging from between his teeth.

‘What about you Bigbad?’ says Becca, turning away from my wriggling deceit. ‘Are you a boob man, a bum man or a leg man?’

Mal grits his teeth around the packet of fries as he knocks each glass out on to the table.

‘I’m a cunt man.’

He drops himself in his seat, and tears open the packet.

‘Jesus, Mal,’ I say.

‘What?’ he says.

Becca gives a great big hearty laugh.

‘I hate that word,’ says Kelvin.

‘Cunt?’ says my sister, brightly. ‘Oh, I like it. I think it’s funny. Cunt, cunt, cunt.’ She puts a very deliberate clean ‘t’ on the end of each word. She draws out a fag for Mal, and one for herself.

And this is it: I’m getting the first possible stirrings of a tiny inkling that Mal and Laura have a little bit of a thing going on between them. She’s laughing now very brightly and I see Mal smile to himself, a big smoky smile, looking down at the table. Pleased with himself. It strikes me because Mal never normally gives this stuff away.

How is this? How is it that this bloke can come along and be as horrible as he wants, and still come away smelling of roses? That’s the magic of Mal, isn’t it? People are just drawn to him. They do what he says. And they don’t stop him doing anything.

‘So, you’re the only one who’s not laid your cards on the table yet,’ says Becca, looking over at me. ‘Boob, bum or leg?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ I say, as honestly as I can.

‘Aw, sweet!’ says Laura.

‘No, I mean, I think I’m all of those things.’

‘A sensitive lover?’ says Becca, with a teasing little smile.

‘Well, I’m seventeen, I’ve had one proper girlfriend,’ I say. ‘What do you think?’

Becca roars with laughter. ‘Honesty! You’ll go far!’

‘What do you think, Mal? Do you think I should get a boob job?’ says Laura.

‘Yeah, go for it.’ And now all of a sudden, Mal’s an expert on the pros and cons of cosmetic surgery. ‘People get too hung up about it. Some big moral thing. Especially with women. This major pressure that somehow you’re not allowed to do this with your own body. It’s stupid.’

‘Yeah!’ says Laura, sparklingly.

‘It’s just like dyeing your hair or getting your ears pierced, isn’t it? It’s the new make-up, a nip and a tuck here and there.’

‘That’s what I think,’ says Laura. ‘You’ve got all the eighteen-year-old girls getting boob jobs for their birthday — it’s totally part of the culture. It’s just like a tattoo.’

‘I bet Mum would love to see you get a boob job,’ I say. ‘Because she absolutely loved your tattoo, didn’t she? What did she call it? A slag tag?’

‘Cranky old bitch,’ says Laura. ‘Just repeating some phrase from her church group. I bet she dined out for a month on that story. The prodigal daughter.’

‘I think she might want to get you exorcised.’

‘Do you know what they did in the nineteenth century?’ Mal dabs the ash off his fag, and speaks out the smoke. ‘When they were wearing corsets, anyway, they had these two ribs removed, here—’ and he grabs Laura by the wrist and lifts her arm, and chops his hand at her lower two ribs ‘—down here, they had them taken out so they could make the corset thinner.’