Chapter 6: Gay Or Just Really Sad?

In the morning I got up feeling like shit, I hadn’t slept a wink, still Elvis hadn’t moved.

I sat at the breakfast table eating my toast and marmalade, sipping my tea and pondering the night’s events. Then I heard mother coming down the stairs, “Kevin, Kevin darling”.

I looked up and to my horror, mother stood there holding up the pair of rubber pants in front of her. “They’ll be wonderful for your father Kevin, how very clever of you to have brought these home, did you get them from that new disability shop in the high street in town?”

I didn’t know what to say, my head just fell into my corn-flakes.

Mother just rambled away happily, “They’ll certainly save on bed linen, and you know your poor father has so many accidents these days, you are such a thoughtful boy Kevin”.

Mumbling “Yes mother” I wiped the milk off my chin.

This whole sex thing was not going well for me, I considered packing the entire thing in but I wanted to save little Elvis.

I looked up and saw mother in the kitchen wiping my rubber pants down with a wet cloth, I picked up my mug of tea, that’s when it came to me.

The reason for all this embarrassment and guilt was in my hand, it was the mug I was holding, my “Mummys Best Boy” mug. The reason was there in front of me, it was her, yes my mother, Edna Bradstock, the wrinkled, miserly, moaning old dear in the kitchen.

She was the reason that at twenty years old I was without a girlfriend, still at college and dressed like a jumble sale reject. She was the one who got me all my clothes from the local Oxfam shop, she was the one who demanded almost all my benefit for my keep. She was the one feeding me on Bernard Mathews Dinosaur shapes and telling me to wear a vest, which I would dutifully tuck in my Y fronts day after day after day, just to please her.

I was twenty years old with just £344.32 to my name, which I’d been saving up for like 10 years now. I Kevin Bradstock was a wimp, too weak to even disagree with my own mother, she had made me into a complete and utter mothers boy.

No wonder I was so disliked by other humans.

It was her; I lowered my head and scowled at her through my fringe.

That was it I couldn’t live like this anymore, I wanted to be like other young men, smoke, drink, take drugs, have sex, ride a motorbike, wear leather, burp and fart without having to say “Pardon my manners”.

I wanted to be wild, I wanted to be free but most of all at that very moment in time, I wanted to drown my mother in the sink, or suffocate her with her knitted tea cosy, but of course I never did.

Mournfully I went upstairs and sat at my computer desk, I should have been dressing ready for college, but I didn’t feel much up to going.

It was just another thing I hated about my life. I never wanted to go to college, I’d been going for ages now, I think I’d tried almost every subject out that they had to offer:

Firstly it was carpentry, ever since I made mother a toothbrush stand when I was 10 years old, she´d been going around telling every man, woman and child that I wanted to be a carpenter just like the son of God.

I definitely did not want to study carpentry, but being me, I did it for my mum, so I wouldn’t upset her. Everything I ever did was for her, never for me.

I wanted to be a train driver up until I was 11.

Then after going to Aunt Bettys funeral when I was 14, I wanted to be a mortician. I can remember looking at her in her casket thinking “God you have never looked better, I love how they’ve coloured your cheeks”.

Aunt Betty, I hadn’t thought of her in a long while. She was a wonderful old lady, mothers older sister, very small and pale looking, but always smiling. I have fond memories of her and I missed her a great deal. Every Sunday she would take me to church and then to the park to feed the ducks. I remember she stank like rotten eggs and was always pissed out of her head on gin, but she was always there for me to talk to. Aunt Betty would have understood what I was going through.

Anyway back to my mother, she had forced me emotionally into carpentry, I hated it and I never wanted to make things.

At the age of 16 I had already decided quite rightly on a suitable career for myself without mothers help, I wanted to be a porn star, a cock king.

But when it came to career day at school it wasn’t listed and mother had already filled in my sheet and given it in to my form tutor. So with a heavy heart I started to go to college, after doing carpentry for two years and failing the exam I then went on to try my hand at car mechanics.

I was only in that class for 3 months and then they asked me politely to leave. I thought it was best not to make a fuss as I had just blown the colleges’ mini metro up in a mix up with spray paint cleaner and petrol.

That then lead me to try cookery, this was also mothers idea, “Do you remember those lovely chocolate brownies you baked when you were 11 Kevin?”

Yes I remember them well; Father broke his false teeth on one of them, swallowed a molar and had to be rushed into hospital. I hated college cooking, all that waiting around to see if your Victoria sponge had risen. I wanted to be like the chefs on telly, I wanted to boss underlings about and cuss at them for making lumpy couscous. What’s more I wanted to know what couscous was!

Anyway I was again asked to leave that subject because I’d cursed a bit too often at my cooking partner and made her cry.

Following that I enlisted in the accountancy classes but again asked to leave as my snoring was disrupting the other students learning.

Then some bright spark suggested to my mother that I might be better at something more basic, such as bricklaying. Now I must admit I enjoyed that, I threw myself into the lesson as it made me feel manly. I even invested in a pair of huge baggy jeans, so that when I bent down my arse crack would show.

I just couldn’t stop constructing things, I built mum a new door step, a new TV cabinet, all out of old worldy bricks, it’s still standing, sort of. But it’s not quite strong enough for the TV so mum just has a few ornaments resting on it now.

After that I built her a new garden wall, which was a work of art, mum had the added bonus of showing it off to the neighbours. Well that is until one very windy day in June, when it fell down and crushed next doors first Cocker Spaniel Terence.

When that happened I thought it best that I discontinued that particular career path and try another.

My latest college course was flower arranging.

Yes flower arranging, three times a week I would go and stick fricking flowers into a bit of foam, stand around looking at them from all angles then write a paper on why the arrangement worked or why it hadn’t.

Nine times out of ten my paper was on why it hadn’t worked, very few words were needed to explain why; I hated fricking flowers and I wasn’t gay!

The only reason I was in this class was because no other tutor would agree to me attending one of their classes.

Ms Perkins was the only person who seemed to believe in me, in her words; “Well I don’t see why I can’t have him in my class, he simply needs a vocation, a guiding light and I feel that God has chosen me to be that light”.

Yep, Ms Perkins was a bible basher, which my mother simply loved.

Ms Perkins wasn’t that bad I must admit, she would often smile at me with a twinkle in her wide brown eyes and say “Oh Kevin, that simply is a work of art”, even though I knew and she knew that what she was actually looking at was a piece of crap.

I’d been in her class for fourteen months now, the exams were easy, but she didn’t feel that I was skilled enough to be let out into the wild world of floristry.

I on the other hand knew deep down why she wouldn’t recommend me for any apprentice positions, she had a crush on me, or at least I hoped she had. It made going to her classes a bit more exciting, dare I say it, even enticing?

Ms Perkins wasn’t bad to look at, single, late 30’s, slim, long auburn ponytail, small tits but beggars can’t be choosers, a handful’s more than enough when you don’t get any usually.

So I had hope, maybe our eyes would someday connect through a tussle of ivy and group of towering, ivory lilies.

Ha! you see all had not been lost, I had learnt something in her class, I’d learnt how to talk gay.

Well that was it, my life was fucked!

Reminiscing was as bad as looking to the future for me, I knew that every day would be a replay of the one before that.

It wasn’t before long, that I found myself peering into my blank computer screen, looking back at me I saw a skinny git with greasy hair and pimples.

I was never much to look at, but this time I began to feel unhappy at what I saw looking back at me.

“Kevin Bradstock” I thought, “What are you doing man, look at you!”

So I decided there and then that I should make a list of 5 things, which I wanted to do before I reached the age of 40, hopefully it would give me some kind of inspiration.

I dug around for a pen and sat pondering, ah yes I will start with “Number 1” have sex with another person (preferably a woman)

“Number 2” have more sex maybe with 2 women, “Number 3” kill mother, “Number 4” buy a motorbike and some tight jeans, “Number 5” well to be on the safe side, “Number 5” can be…erm star in a porn movie.

That way I will get some sex.

There I had done it, my list.

I looked at it for several moments then I got up and ran downstairs.

“Mother where’s the evening paper?”

“Oh it’s on top of the occasional table” she replied.

I’d always wondered why it was called the ´occasional table´, did it mean it was only sometimes a table?

Well there it was folded neatly untouched as always. I opened it to the classifieds and scanned down for the motor vehicles section, then motorbikes. There were lots of them a red Kawasaki, a blue Honda, a white Zannussi, with a spin cycle, but all of them were too expensive, all except one.

The advert read ´V.reg Honda C50, one careful owner, red and white, £225 o.n.o´.

I could just see myself, leather clad speeding my way to meet a lady for a night of unbridled passion and so may it seemed did little Elvis.

Since that unmentionable experience with Mistress Martha he’d been dormant like a large empty sausage skin, so I was relieved to feel my buddy perk up. That was it I had to have that bike, so tomorrow to the bank or should I say the post office I would go. I scribbled the number down from the advert and went off to the phone box on the corner. I didn’t want mother to hear of my plans, I could already hear her in my head “Kevin you can’t get a motorbike, you will die, Kevin wear your woolly hat under you helmet like a good boy”.

If all went well this coming Monday, I was going to be the proud owner of a motorbike and a pair of tight black sexy jeans.