Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

1972
I am twelve and skinny, my hips jut out like those of an ailing cow. One time, I’m picking gristle from the Irish stew, when down comes a knife and fork. Bang, bang. Dad is giving me daggers. I feel sick
whenever I look at you, he says, you better get some weight on fast. That night with pencils and ruler splayed over the kitchen table he makes a chart and sticks it on my bedroom door. “Eat like a horse,” it says; Mother is told to crank up the chips. If you go above six stone, she says, you can go to the disco with your friends.

    I am done up like the bees knees, looking the business at the Top Rank Suite Saturday morning slot for under 13s. We are curled and polished, lipsticked and ready, a few of us riding into town on the bus, looking for a bit of Boy. I choose the boy most likely to say yes as he is runtiness in extremis and just about comes up to my shoulder.

    My mate Julie goes over, says, “Will you dance with my friend?”

    He’s probably flicking dandruff from his shoulder or lost in a reverie over Abba, or maybe doing neither only looking like an executive in a boy’s body, all four foot ten of him. So he looks over and my mate looks over and there’s me, standing nonchalant under the mirrorball, five foot six in my corduroy suit. And he whispers into my mate’s ear, he says something which makes her laugh, then go serious. When she comes over with his reply, her cheeks are puffed up like hamsters and she says to me, “He says, ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’”

    And I turn sideways and disappear.

1988
Still as thin as a blade but I’m hard now. I have metal, leather, bone, nicotine. Levi’s and studded choker. A good combination. And I’m pissed up and ready for the pull. So there’s me and Waxy, my best
mate, sharking the dance floor, antennae twitching. I’m giving the eye to a couple of girls who are admiring the rings in my ears and Waxy’s giving me hell, wondering which one I’m gonna pick.

    But.

    I am so pissed up with a bottle of tequila in one pocket and a bag of grass in the other, I’m losing it a bit as there are three of my exes there in the same room and two of them are staring at me. One lunges the other and now they’re snogging, just to spite me, like the couple of bitches they always were.

    I’m on the dance floor studying the amazing way that I dance; I could have been a professional I am that bloody amazing. I’m admiring the way my boots are polished right up to the eyelets, it
took me ages to do that, the whole of Blind Date, in fact. Donna Summer is getting to that croonie part when she’s about to have an orgasm. And I’m away with it. I’m gone, solid. My boots take me
over, melt into the sticky floor and the lights are popping over my head. I feel myself falling. Bang. I see lights, lollipops, red, green and amber. The sound of shattered glass and Donna comes right there on the dance floor and I’m gonna be sick in a minute.

    There is black and a soft noise of talking and a hand comes out of the dark. Some kind of hand with one two three four rings on it and my hand goes up, and up I come, standing at last and someone
is holding me and I’m looking into the eyes of a stranger. Lights appear around the edges of her like an aura and I realise that she’s huge; she’s a Himalayan mountain range in her own right. And
for the first time in my life I’m looking up and out at the same time.

   She takes me to her house that night, driving like the wind in her VW Golf. She tells me to imagine I’m lying on a beach; it’ll relax you, she says. Her name is Katya. I look a wreck but am not to worry, she won’t take advantage, which is a crying shame. We stumble along the hallway and she throws me on a bed so hard I think: “This has got to be a futon.”

    “The bathroom’s thattaway,” she says and disappears.

    I wake to the sound of wind chimes and the smell of incense and I think: “Christ, I’ve died.” Then comes the smell of fried eggs and I realise I am in heaven but not a Christian one. She comes in, Katya, a woman with a suntan disappearing down a fluffy bathrobe. Strong legs, the kind I want to climb, a bathrobe that stretches from here to here and she’s bringing me some Alka Seltza that fizzes in the water
like sparklers and suddenly I’m as shy as hell.

    “I’m really sorry about last night,” I say.

    She tosses her hair like Greta Garbo. It’s light brown, curly and wild. I put her down at mid-thirties, with green eyes. Green. And what you’d call a generous mouth, showing me her teeth in one slow smile, a glimpse of tongue perched somewhere behind.

    “Are you American?” I say.

    “Not San Francisco?” I say.

    “No. Not San Francisco. I made eggs. I thought... People say it’s the best cure for a hangover.”

    I look down to see two yolks sitting pretty on a plate and I’m off. There’s a shoal of mackerel in my stomach - “the bathroom’s thattaway” - chucking up last night’s tequila. What a waste. I’m searching for toothpaste like a heat-seeking missile; I can’t leave this bathroom without getting the taste out of my mouth. People don’t want to be spewed over on the first date. That’s what my friend Waxy says.

    Katya’s in bed, the covers pulled up under her chin, and me, I’m by the door, hopping up and down like a dickhead, my jeans in front clutched like a life jacket, and there’s that split second when there’s still time to run. But I don’t run, I sidle up to the bed, drop the jeans. And there’s me, all bone and no tits. I feel like a piece of fold-up furniture that’s been put together wrong. But she doesn’t mind, she being Katya who lifts the duvet so’s I can survey her queen-size, no-edge body. Is this what you want? She is massive. She sits up a little
and gathers me in her arms; me, the forgotten deckchair that’s been left out in the rain, and already I can feel the tears - shit, why does that always happen? - as I bury my head in her neck that smells of honey.

    And then she’s whispering stuff in my ear, how she’d like to do this and that and I’m thinking: “Christ, she doesn’t even know me.” I’m imagining myself on a summer beach, warm water lapping at
my ears, my belly, my thighs. I am cast out to sea on a float, loving it. I open my eyes and there she is.

     “Is this what you want?” she says, her eyes so close to mine we are that close; hers are green, the black in them growing larger and larger. I see her lip tremble and I’m gone. I feel myself falling.

   Weeks later, Waxy’s on the other end of the phone, pouring poison through the speaker holes. What’s with the disappearing act? Why haven’t I phoned her? Where’ve I been when she’s been getting shit from the new lass’ ex-mother-in-law’s budgie? She witters on about something that makes no sense at all to me but is life and death to her.

    “I need to see you, babe,” she says. “But more important, I need to cast my eyes over the new love interest, give her the Waxy seal of approval.”

    My heart sinks as I make arrangements for the following week. I gotta hand it to Waxy, she’s persistent, I’ll give her that. She’s my best friend and I hate her.

1989
Saturday night at the lesbian cabaret. Me and Katya on the Pina Coladas. We’ve already had a row. She’s nervous, going on about making a good impression in front of my friends, what is she to wear? She makes so much fuss it gets on my nerves. Dragging me round shops, trying on all this stuff and I think she looks great in everything. But she gets dead narky, me passing her the extra
large and it not fitting.

    “Too big?” I say, not that loudly.

    “Too big?” she says. “It’s too fucking small, okay?”

    We arrive. So far, so good. The usual crowd is in, mates from way back. Hi, they say. I do the rounds, holding her hand - Katya, this is so-and-so - as she doesn’t know many people. She just
smiles, says witty things. Charmed to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.

    The usual fuck-ups are there. I avoid them like the plague. Waxy is in, dressed to kill in a new leather jacket. She sidles up to both of us and introduces us to some skinny bunny she met at the social worker’s bun fight, someone whose legs go up to her neck, some looker with a personality of a plank. Waxy’s talking to me about a gig she’s been to.

    “Great to see you, mate,” she goes. “It’s been too long.”

    She talks like John Wayne at the best of times, but I wasn’t in the mood. She goes, Katya, I’m charmed, and whips Katya’s hand up to her lips and kisses it. Poor Katya, she doesn’t know what to do.
She’s going red or white or possibly green. Waxy has that effect on people.

    Then that song comes on. That one by Roberta Flack. The first time ever I saw your face. I love that one. So we’re on the dancefloor. Me and Katya, just the two of us. And I’m sinking into her cotton heaven, Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew up to my eyeballs. Then everyone’s around us and I say: “This is our song.” I played it so many times at her place, singing into a hairbrush. And I’m thinking, I’ve made it, I’m totally blissed out. Here I am in
the arms of a gorgeous woman, a real grown-up. We’re out at last and everyone can see.

    But after the song, we break apart. I see the sweat running down the side of her face as she pauses to catch her breath. I see a few sly eyes giving me daggers. Waxy and her witches across the room in a poisoned knot. A few little whispers. Tentontessie, they say. Fatso. I whip round to whop them on the head but they’re gone. Just the eyes remain, staring from the back of the room. Lardyarse. Porker. Beef.