Laid in Chelsea Read online

  My friend Dan Slowen and I used to compare our underarms on a weekly basis, looking for any sign of progress in the hair department. But nothing. I was as smooth and hairless each week as the last week, much to my despair.

  Dan could kind of get away with being one of the smaller, less developed boys because he was the first person at school to have a mobile phone. At the time that was incredible because they barely existed, so he was like some kind of mobile phone-wielding god. It wasn’t like some of the enormous brick ones I’d seen my dad lug around either, it was quite small and neat. I was jealous.

  After lights out in the dorm, we all used to huddle around his mobile and call up the porn lines that were advertised in the back of Loaded, then listen to them on the loudspeaker. For some reason the women were always Scottish. Dan would try to put on a sexy older voice, but as soon as he admitted he was calling from his school dorm the ladies on the other end of the line would call a halt to things with an expression that we will never forget, ‘I think you’re a wee bit young for this aren’t you, Danny?’ leaving us with no porn material to go back to our bunk beds with.

  I guess those porn lines opened the door to a world of sex that I hadn’t really thought about very much before. I kind of knew what sex was, but I didn’t know how it all worked (to be honest, I sometimes still wonder). I was so innocent, and all I really knew was that frigid was a bad word and not one that you wanted to be associated with. If anyone said you were frigid you would dispute it, even though we didn’t properly understand what it meant. Of course I wasn’t frigid, I had felt a boob, I would always say to myself.

  Sex became something that I consciously thought about, quite a lot.

  OK, I’m going to break down a barrier now. I’m going to mention the unspoken act: wanking. You can only imagine how much secretive masturbation went on in the dorms – even though the likelihood was that no one was doing it properly.

  We had no choice but to do it in the dorm or in the toilets, but even in these public places we could always find a way. I’ve heard all of the stories about boys’ private schools where apparently everyone lines up in a row and has a wank, and something to do with a soggy biscuit, but that certainly didn’t happen at any of the schools I was at. When you’re young you’re so insecure about the size of your penis that I can’t imagine anyone would want to get theirs out in front of their peers. Unless, of course, you were particularly blessed in the downstairs area, in which case you would probably choose to walk around naked most of the time. As far as I was concerned it was all very much done under the covers – and under the cover of darkness.

  Wanking certainly wasn’t a subject that was discussed at school. I am still very grateful to this day that I was never caught with my hands down my pants. I think that would have set me back several years, and I was far from advanced to start with. It’s entirely possible I’d still be a virgin now had that happened. Can you imagine?

  Aged 14 and still high on my first breast-groping experience, I decided that I wanted a proper girlfriend. Not the sort of hand-holding, occasional kissing type I’d had before, but a full-blown, boob-groping, bike-shed kind of one. I really fancied a girl called Evelyn Beanie, but she wasn’t at all interested in me. Outrageous, I know, but I still wasn’t exactly what you’d call ‘a catch’, and I was very inexperienced in matters of the heart. I just wanked a lot.

  I never used to get any Valentine’s cards and every time that ‘special day’ rolled around it was like a form of torture because everyone used to boast about how many cards they’d received and my granny’s handwriting was always distinguishable. I was the person who would organise for the other boys to send roses and cards to girls via the school. I was the cupid and the one the teachers selected to organise everything. You could send a rose to someone you liked and add it on to your school bill so your parents ended up paying for it at the end of the year, but I always sent them to the really popular girls and never received any myself. Tragic.

  I think the bottom line is that I was a loser. I didn’t help myself either, for when the opportunity came to be in charge of the headmaster’s fish tank I jumped at it, granting me the nickname ‘Fishy’. While other people were busy groping the go-getter Tiffany, Fishy here was busy making sure the pH levels of the water in the tank were accurate. I know I’ve said I love all things to do with marine life, but I think this was taking it a bit far, even for me.

  The squash courts were the place to go if you wanted to get down and dirty with someone. There were always stories about girls being felt up in the viewing gallery. It was legendary. I think every school has such a spot. There was one girl – who shall remain nameless – who had a real reputation for getting groped by virtually every single guy in school. She made Tiffany the go-getter look like a right prude. Apart from me, I might add; I was probably busy feeding the fish.

  Looking back, I thank God that I didn’t end up with my hand down anyone’s pants because I wouldn’t have had a clue what I was doing. It would be years before I had any understanding of the female form.

  I remember learning about the, I guess you could say, technical side of sex while sitting in a science lab, playing with the gas taps to distract myself from the horror that was unfolding in front of me. Some poor teacher was made to stand facing a classroom of 14-year-olds and slide a condom over a banana as the entire room looked on in mortified fascination. It was about breeding, not pleasure, it seemed they were saying. I guess they were trying to make it sound as unsexy as possible so we wouldn’t all go home and do it, underage. I should have been so bloody lucky!

  I honestly think that when it comes to sex education, rather than just telling people how to avoid getting pregnant or and the ins and outs of things, as it were, they should tell teenagers how to actually do it. There is nothing in place to help you avoid the humiliation of being absolutely shit when you do finally manage to convince a girl to get off with you.

  I remember having one absolutely awful lesson where we were shown a silky piece of material and told that we should use it, should we ever wish to perform oral sex on a girl, to prevent STDs. It was like a condom for oral sex and it was the most revolting thing I’ve ever seen. No one said we didn’t have to use it.

  In short, sex education taught me nothing about sex. It just left me confused and rather amused that our teacher, Mrs Oddy, had said the words ‘scrotum’ and ‘climax’ all in the same lesson. It was better than maths with Mrs Dilloway, though, I guess.

  Thankfully, Rupert and I soon discovered a place where we could learn what we really needed to at that point in our lives. That place was jackinworld.com.

  Jackinworld.com was a website that basically taught you how to masturbate in hundreds of different ways. Nobody at school had laptops back then, so Rupert and I used to have to wait until we had access to a computer in his dad’s secretary’s office and swiftly look up as much porn as possible.

  We also managed to get hold of our very own porn mag. At the time they were hard to lay your hands on and they cost a fortune. Luckily we found out that Donald Yang (of the shower-curtain expose fame) was something of a porn dealer. I may have had to miss out on dishing out sweets to girls after spending a small fortune on a magazine which only featured older, hairy Chinese women, but it was such a great source of knowledge that it was worth every penny. The only problem was that Rupert ruined the one and only porn mag we had by telling me that the main centrefold could be my Chinese sister. I could never look at Cum Soong in the same light again.

  We discovered porn not long after the Millennium. Yes, the anniversary to mark 2000 years since Christ’s birth coincided with my discovery of pornography. At the time Nestlé had brought out a time capsule of chocolate to celebrate. The idea was that after getting a well-deserved sugar high by eating all of the chocolate in one go, you could then put interesting, timely things like photographs, love letters and four-leaf clovers inside the capsule. You were then meant to seal it up and bury it so it could be disc
overed by people in years to come.

  Instead, I used mine as a makeshift sex capsule in which I could keep my porn without it being discovered. I’ve got it to this day, and it’s still got the same magazine in it. It also contains the condom wrapper from the first time I ever had sex. I really should throw it all away at some point.

  It seems incredible that nowadays porn is the most looked at thing on the internet, just ahead of Justin Bieber. I’m not sure what that says about today’s society. I guess porn has always been big business, but now it’s much more readily available. Back then we had to take it where we could get it; we’d read the Kama Sutra, but actually my first pornographic experience was my mum’s illustrated copy of The New Joy of Sex.

  One day I got an excited call from Rupert to say that he’d somehow managed to stream a porn film through his dad’s computer and onto a VHS. He asked his dad’s secretary to post a copy to me at school, telling her it was a nature documentary. Which it was. Of sorts. I suppose it did include beavers …

  When it arrived it had ‘The Blue Planet’ written on the side. The perfect disguise. If ever I went home I took it with me to lessen the risk of any of the teachers discovering its true content, and I kept it in my bedroom along with my other films. Completely safe. Or so I thought.

  One day I came home to find that my mum was ill in bed with terrible flu. She was bored so she’d gone into my room to borrow something to watch. She had nearly finished watching one of my movies, and lined up for her viewing pleasure was the ‘Blue Planet’ video. I have never panicked as much in my life. I had to make up some ridiculous excuse and whip it away before she had a chance to insert the tape into the machine and reveal its true contents. I still cringe now when I think about what would have happened had she chosen to watch that first instead of the other film. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

  We were allowed to have posters up at school, but nothing in any way rude. I had pictures of Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford that my cousin had given me when he’d left Winchester College. I was over Denise van Outen by then (sorry, Denise!) so supermodels became my crush of choice.

  Around this time, I especially liked older women. Not necessarily in a Harry Styles way, but I adored the fact that girls taught me about life in a way that the football-obsessed boys in my year couldn’t.

  There was an older woman I fancied around this time, but she was actually someone I knew rather than just a model I had a poster of.

  When I used to go and visit my dad in Hayling Island, I would demand he take me to the island’s best fish restaurant, called The Mariner’s. A girl called Nina worked as a waitress, and she was absolutely incredible. She must have been about 18 and was just amazing.

  I fancied her so much that she bizarrely became the blueprint for any girl I found attractive thereafter. She was quite short and slim, with long dark hair and a big smile. She reminded me of Rhona Mitra, the actress who once played Lara Croft. I assume she used to serve me my dinner thinking I was a sweet 14-year-old, but I was actually having very improper thoughts about her while surfing the web on jackinworld.com. I once again thought she was the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and she obviously had no idea that I fancied her. I would be devastated if she wasn’t working when I’d inevitably drag my dad to the restaurant on one of my visits.

  She was probably one of the first girls I ever seriously tried to flirt with, but instead of sweeping her off her feet I just blushed a lot, said the wrong thing, ordered moules marinières and tried to impress her with my weird fish knowledge. It was very awkward. She now works in a shipping yard near Portsmouth, and every now and then when I go and see my father I bump into her mother. The last time I saw her she told me that Nina had recently got engaged to a very wealthy man. Great, so now I’m at an age where I can date older women I’ve missed the boat, if you’ll pardon the awful pun.

  I had access to quite a lot of older women around this time, and I developed crushes on quite a few. Bizarrely, I mainly remember Joanna Lumley being the object of my desire. I was still pursuing my dream of becoming an actor by doing some work as an extra on TV shows and films, so through this I met a lot of glamorous older actresses. For some reason, even though I was somewhat shy around girls of my age, I was confident with older women. I genuinely thought I had a chance. If I had met Joanna Lumley I would have tried to win her over.

  Back in the real world, I started hanging out with a girl called Hazel, who I met through my school choir. She was 17 and, despite the age difference, I really fancied her. She and her friends used to let me hang around with them – they were very grown up and would talk about how their boyfriends had annoyed them by not calling or acting like dicks. I learned a lot from their more experienced insight into love, listening to everything they said and storing it for my later years, when I was certain it would all come in very useful.

  I didn’t have any jobs growing up like most teenagers do, apart from a three-week stint cleaning arcade machines at Hayling Island funfair. I was at boarding school all week and I didn’t finish until 2pm on a Saturday, then from 3pm until 7pm I was at Stagecoach drama school.

  My mum had this obsession with community church so we’d go there every Sunday. I liked the idea of religion, but I think it’s something everyone should make up their own mind about. I thought it was great fun and I loved the fact that they sang and played guitars, and although it’s maybe distasteful to say it, some of the church girls were seriously hot.

  At one point I got so into church that I used to go and sing and dance around each week like I was in some kind of gospel choir in Texas. I loved it. I’d top it off with a roast dinner at home with my mum and sister, before returning to school to start the week over again.

  My Saturday afternoon drama school was also a good way of meeting girls. I was used to quite posh girls, but the girls at drama school were totally different and more fun. They wore make-up and said ‘fuck’. It was a whole new girl world to me and I loved it. I intrigued them because they thought I was very posh. They always asked me about boarding school and I think they thought I lived in a castle.

  There weren’t many boys in my classes because guys of that age didn’t really do drama, so I got a lot of female attention. There was a girl called Sarah I really liked, and I also really fancied the principal’s daughter, Gabby (not that Gabby before you get ahead of yourself). She didn’t often do the classes but I used to text her a lot. Usually messages like, ‘I can’t text any more because I’ve got no credit’. My dazzling way with words shone through at a young age; clearly, showing that you can’t afford credit is not an aphrodisiac. Gabby was a bit gothy and I thought that was very cool because she wore Green Day hoodies. God knows what Green Day was, but it looked great.

  As I got older, my relationships with girls turned from fascination and masturbation to an appreciation of the actual friendship you can have with them. We were all hanging around together as a big group, guys and girls together. Every one of us was transitioning into adulthood – pubes were growing, spots were shining, and we’d started to drink and smoke as an outward sign that we were very old. So much so that, at the age of 16, I actually shunned cigarettes for Café Crèmes, which are like small cigars. I hated the taste of cigars but I thought they looked awesome. In my mind, I looked like a Second World War soldier – and a seriously cool one too.

  Dating was a fun game back then, and boarding school had never been more enjoyable. My search for my first proper girlfriend had lasted for a year with little – or no – success until I met Joan Lightening when I was around 15 years old. She may sound 75, but I promise she was my age, and hot. She was a tall and very beautiful redhead with a big smile. She was also very funny. After several months of dating, which consisted mainly of hand-holding, trips to the cinema and snogging like a washing machine, I sent her a letter to try to woo her into taking things to the next level. In today’s world of email, text, Facebook, Twitter and BBM, that sounds very old-school and I
suppose almost romantic, which it would have been, only I didn’t write the letter myself. I didn’t have a clue what to say so I asked an older and wiser prefect called Simon to pen it for me to increase my chances.

  It said, ‘I think it’s about time we made our relationship more intimate.’ To be honest, I had no idea what the word ‘intimate’ meant. I thought it was some grand romantic term, and I basically trusted Simon to write something sonnet-esque that would enable me to get some action. But rather than get me action, it got me in a lot of shit with Miss Blackwell, the head of boarding.

  The letter was found by a cleaner, who then passed it on to Miss Blackwell who, to put it mildly, was less than impressed. Of course when she read it, it sounded as if we were planning to have sex on school grounds, and there were few things worse than that. Joan was in the year below me as well, so she was probably only about 14. It was horrific and marked the end of that short relationship.

  I don’t think I’ve ever cried as much as when I got summoned to the headmaster’s office to explain myself. I was in so much trouble and convinced I was going to get kicked out of school. In the end my mother had to come and explain that not only was I obviously incapable of being intimate with anyone, but I obviously had no idea what the word meant.

  When I was getting towards the end of my days at Embley I had finally started to grow hair down there. It’s amazing to think how a few hairs can carry so much meaning, but they do. Those downy tufts of dark hair populating my nether regions and underarms were a tangible expression of my transition from boy to man. On top of those luscious locks of Ollie Locke pubes, I was getting pretty happy with the size of my ever-growing willy. Now, you may feel that I’m going off on one here, but bear with me. The previous Christmas I had been given a camera phone and it was my pride and joy. So, one day I did what every man does but won’t admit to: I took a picture of my semi-flaccid willy. Without going into too much detail, I made sure it looked as big as possible, and then I left the photo out to be found by the other boys so they would be impressed.