Tenby
Tenby, South Wales, 1991. An English seaside resort with everything that entails – bright cylinders of sugary rock, rain and flaking paint. This is where I have come with Phillip and his family. We are 14 different brilliant beach. He
years old. Phillip is my best friend. A year ago we went to schools. We have barely seen each other since. He is a geek, in a way I could not understand back then. We are sitting on the says to me:
‘The future is compression.’ ‘What?’ I ask, dubiously. ‘The ability to compress information, that is the most important discovery which we will witness in our lifetimes.’ Nerdy crap, I think to myself. * Phillip’s parents allow us to sit on the windy hill and eat fish and chips for dinner from greasy newspaper. When we have finished eating, we throw the soggy chips to the gulls. Phillip’s brother’s friend is three years older than us. He has a girlfriend. He says to us, ‘When you go down on a girl, you have to keep spitting and spitting. The clit dries out fast.’ We hide our awe. Phillip’s mother is a French teacher. When his brother and his brother’s friend have gone to the pub, Phillip’s mother walks with us to the arcade. The sun is setting over the port. She stops walking and says, ‘Just look at that. You, whose eyes are not blinded by adolescence, don’t you think it’s beautiful?’ I resolve never to let my eyes be blinded by adolescence. * We arrive at the arcade. Phillip’s mother gives us some money. We play the computer games. Then we play the game where you drop a coin onto a moving ledge and hope that it knocks off other coins. It’s almost impossible to win but every time you think you will. Through the glass of the coin machine I see a girl in green leggings. She is spotty and tall but I like her graceful green legs. My heart beats faster. We spy on each other through the glass which is greasy from the noses which have been pressed up against it. * Later Phillip and I talk to the girl in green leggings. She is Welsh. She has two friends. They are dumpy. She suggests going to the bus shelter by the beach. We go to the bus shelter by the beach. It’s next to the dustbins. The girls smoke cigarettes. Phillip and I don’t smoke. Green leggings and I make eyes at each other. She sidles up to me. She whispers in my ear, ‘My mate finks you’re fit. Will you snog ‘er?’ Meekly, I accede. Her dumpy friend leads me out of the bus shelter. We snog by the dustbins. Her tongue thrashes about spasmodically, like a dying fish. The cigarette smoke makes her mouth taste like metal. It’s like when a bit of foil gets stuck to a chocolate but you don’t see it. You put the chocolate straight in your mouth and start chewing. That’s what her mouth tastes like.
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Phillip wastes no time in telling his brother and his brother’s friend about our adventure. I am comprehensively mocked. They spend an afternoon building a primeval earth goddess out of sand. She looks like a recumbent sumo wrestler. They invite me to ‘get my rocks off’. I decline the offer but commit the expression to memory. I never see dumpy again. I must have seen green leggings again, though I don’t recall the encounter. But I do remember writing her a letter once I’d returned home. I cajoled my own brother into taking two rolls of moody black and white photos of myself posing and tensing my scrawny torso. I sent the least hideous to green leggings. I never received a reply, and I pray those photos no longer exist.
© Claus von Bohlen 2009
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