Read the book: «The Men Commandments»

II

RITES OF PASSAGE

On the journey through life we pass through various experiences that shape who we are. The boy becomes the man. Or more likely the boy stays the boy but buys a house, gets married and has kids, all the time wondering when is he going to grow up and stop laughing when people fall over.

But what are the key moments in a young man’s life and development?

PARENTS

Whether it’s informing you that eating apple core will make trees grow out of your ears or that playing with yourself will turn you blind, these people shape us into what we become. Be it a serial killer or an MP – it’s all their fault.

Actually, it’s our dad who gives us the first impression of what a man is and does. My dad was very loving and he instilled a great sense of ‘you can do anything in life if you work hard enough’ in me. He was and still is nuts.

The best story to illustrate this is how we dealt with the death of my younger sister’s cat. Well, actually, it was the second cat death in our family. The first died after my dad accidentally left it out one night. In the snow. Sadly this was before Ray Mears and Bear Grylls so poor Henry didn’t know how to construct a rudimentary bivouac for shelter.

The second one, a beloved tabby cat called Pepper, passed away in less extreme circumstances. My sister was understandably upset but my dad assured her that he would be on his way to Cat Heaven and he would take care of his burial. What I’m about to tell you is beyond belief – but please don’t judge my dad as he is made from the same man genes as us all. Having been promised a decent cat send-off for poor beloved Pepper, my sister came running into the house in floods of tears. Hysterical. She claimed in her emotional state to have seen ‘my Pepper on a skip’.

Now it’s not unknown for the grief-stricken to see visions of the recently departed. That’s what must have happened here. Or so I thought. My dad calmed her down and asked me to help him with something. He quietly told me we needed to move the body.

Sorry, Dad? The body?

You see, my dad had deposited poor old Pepper, the family cat, on the neighbour’s skip. Hey, who hasn’t dumped some carpet underlay or old paint tins in a neighbour’s skip late at night? But a dead pet? He hadn’t even made an attempt to cover it with anything! So now he was getting his son in on his deception, and I was loving it. Both father and son bonded and giggled as poor old Pepper was lifted off the skip and taken elsewhere. Then my dad calmly told my sister we had just checked the skip and there was no cat body. Go see for yourself, he urged her. She checked it and agreed. I had learnt a valuable lesson: men lie.

Then there was the time he tried to landscape the garden on the cheap by doing it himself. He hired this beast of a thing called a rotavator. He tried to steer it one way and it flung him over the neighbour’s fence. All I saw was this runaway rotavator, Dad-less, and then I heard a word I hadn’t heard before – ‘FUCKER!’ – as my dad popped up the other side of our neighbour’s fence, leapt back over and began to chase after it. Shirtless, wearing only, of course, his magical Dad Pants.

I learnt another valuable lesson. Men are funny. Funny peculiar. Oh, and another lesson: always hire a rotavator with an automatic cut-off switch.

SCHOOL DAYS

When I think of my school days, I physically wince. It’s the flashbacks of brand new shoes in September, which had no give in them until March the next year, at which point it was time for a new pair of Clarks Commandos. In your early school days your mum dresses you… but then something called puberty happens.

In men puberty lasts until they die. So many changes happen to the young man. First come the little acts of rebellion in your school uniform. You don’t want your mum’s big fat Windsor knot in your tie – I was at school in the eighties so it was now a slim jim. Or you tucked it away into your shirt. Then you wanted to wear Stay Press trousers. You couldn’t hope to get a girl’s attention without Stay Press.

Then it was the looking at girls differently. Very differently. Getting these funny feelings you didn’t really understand. You used to be happy to stare out of the window during lessons, praying for excitement like a stray dog running into the playground. Now you stared at bras and tried to work out who had one and who didn’t. Oh, and the teachers’ breasts.

Puberty is hard on a young man. How do you cope with getting unwanted and embarrassing erections in the middle of a history lesson about the Great Fire of London? They were either unwanted or I was getting the horn from all that fire talk. It was even worse during PE. The girls in PE skirts, getting cheap thrills coming down the ropes. Me and my grubby mates suddenly taking a very keen interest in netball lessons. Happy days. I remember this girl at school who was very attractive, totally aware of it and a terrible tease. During a squash lesson, she was playing our teacher and we were all told to watch as he demonstrated his court technique. She had conveniently forgotten her outfit so was playing in little more than her bra and knickers. With her pert breasts bouncing up and down. It was too much not only for the boys leering down at the court action but also the teacher. He started to show a boner. I helpfully and loudly pointed this out, thinking it was part of his ‘court’ technique, and everyone started shouting, ‘MR ______’S (name deleted here as he was a good teacher and I feel bad about humiliating him, but not that bad as it was funny) GOT A BONER.’ We were ordered to go and get changed immediately and wait in the school minibus. When he got into the minibus to take us back to school he told me to get out and walk. I had learnt another lesson. Never ever laugh at another man’s erection.

PE

It was during the hell of PE and games that I got my first real sense of rejection. At school you just want to be part of the gang, to have some sense of belonging. You don’t want to be an outsider. You want to be in the school football team. My problem was that I was very bad at football. My toe punt had killed several kids and therefore I never got picked. At break time I was always last – chosen after the asthmatic kid, the fat kid with tits and the kid with a sticking plaster over one of the lenses of his glasses. I don’t think I’ve ever got over the feeling of rejection of not making the school football team and maybe it’s that that made me want to sit in a little room each morning talking crap between songs. I am still looking for the approval the PE teacher never gave me. All the awards, they don’t help the pain.

While we are on the subject, what’s the deal with PE teachers? Psychos. Why did they hang around the showers checking we were going in naked? And, of course, like every other school, there was this kid who hit puberty at eleven and had an enormous cock that quite obviously scared/fascinated the PE teachers. I never understood why the PE teacher had his own office. All that was in there were tennis rackets and porn mags, or so my young fertile mind would imagine. Watching too many Porky’s films polluted my mind.

SCHOOL MUSICALS

After the sporting rejection I decided maybe the world of school entertainment would prove to be my calling. So I auditioned for the school production of Bugsy Malone. With the promise of after-school rehearsals (mainly with girls), I was on to a winner. It would also keep me away from my penis and my masturbation habit, which was threatening to overtake my life.

The only small obstacle in my way was the audition. Simple. Sing to the Head of Music any song you wanted. As a huge Elvis Presley fan, I went for ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. I now regret this. What justice could a spotty 13-year-old with a breaking voice do to The King?

I was to stand behind the music teacher – ‘Just call me Dave’ – while he accompanied my powerhouse of a performance on the piano. I set off at a blistering pace full of vim and vigour that The King himself would have been proud of. This was soon derailed by the shaking shoulders and head of ‘Just call me Dave’. At first I thought he was getting lost in the powerful vocal performance from yours truly, giving it some Jerry Lee Lewis at the piano. But no, he was shaking with barely concealed laughter. At me. And in a way at Elvis. I kept going until the end like a pro and quickly made my excuses and left. (Hey, ‘Dave’, I hope you’re living alone in rented accommodation now while I talk to – no, enthral – an audience of 17 each morning. FUCK you!)

The next day the cast list went up on the school noticeboard by the staff room where we all thought the teachers had orgies. I was cast. As Knuckles. Who was a heavy. Cool, I thought, they cast me as a hard man due to my rugged presence. Like the future man I would become, I was developing a keen sense of denial and the ability to kid myself. I slowly realised Knuckles was also a mute. I learnt another valuable lesson. Only gay boys do school musicals.