Time to put my foot down. ‘Mum, if you sell me to this man I will never speak to you again.’
She looked at me for a long time, and then turned to the man and told him for the last time:
‘No.’
We left the weird indoor market and got back on a ferry over to Gibraltar. Mum drank a lot of wine. My brother and I stood out on the deck watching North Africa vanish.
I still don’t know whether she actually would’ve sold me.
Angela’s Ashes
I was fifteen years old when after many doctor’s appointments and consultations I was referred to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge for breast reduction surgery. (I’m not really comfortable with that term. When talking about it I am much more likely to say ‘when my tits got chopped off’.)
We travelled down on the train, arrived at the hospital, I was poked and prodded at and then put in a bed on a ward with other women who were waiting for various kinds of cosmetic surgery. Then my family went home and I began to unpack my bag.
The book of choice for this trip was Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt. Before I left home a family friend named Anne had shoved it at me saying, ‘I saw the film of this, it was quite good. You don’t really like films, do you? I got you the book.’ I unpacked this, and my clothes, and my toothbrush, then got in to bed and began to read.
After about an hour, I was visited by the surgeon. He wanted to talk some things through, so we did. He told me that I might lose sensitivity in my breasts, that I may not be able to breastfeed my children if I ever chose to have any, that he was confident that this would fix my depression and sore neck and back, that my breasts may still grow after surgery, and that the worst case scenario was that I could die from a blood clot, but he didn’t think that likely.
This is almost twelve years ago now. I was a lot slimmer but the same height. Standing at a mighty five feet and rocking a size eight figure, my 28G tits looked ridiculous, and made me very sad. I was worried about the operation, of course, but I knew that the feeling afterwards would override any discomfort, and hopefully make me a little bit more confident and social. Maybe my tits would turn black and fall off, who knew? I did feel in safe hands with the surgeon, though. He seemed like a nice enough man.
Now, as you may or may not know, Addenbrooke’s is a teaching hospital. This means that student doctors and nurses from The University will pop along every so often to get a lovely bit of hands on experience.
So there I was, in my hospital bed reading Angela’s Ashes when my surgeon comes back.
‘I’ve got a couple of students that I’m going to bring in, okay?’
I had already consented to this by signing a bit of paper, and didn’t see the harm anyway as soon these tits wouldn’t be mine anymore.
However, when he said a couple, what he actually meant was seven. Five boys and two girls. He unbuttoned my rather fetching hospital gown and pointed at my tits with his pen. I have no idea what he was saying to the students but they were all fucking entranced by my chest as he gabbled away telling them what he was going to do and how it was going to look. Then he got a big pen out and did some scribbles around my nipples. I looked down.
What the fuck is he going to do to me? I wondered. The scribble was an incredibly arty shape.
Mr Surgeon then invited a couple of the student to have a draw on my tits. I watched them – you should always watch anyone who is drawing on your tits. The first one stepped up and drew what looked remarkably like a cock and balls on one tit. The surgeon hmmmmed and the next student came at me, pen in hand and drew an even bigger cock and balls on the other tit. A lovely fat cock, it was. I was vaguely impressed. I’ve always loved drawing penises. He tentatively looked up at the surgeon for approval.
‘Very good,’ he said. He was right. It was very good.
They all left, thanking me nervously, and I picked up my book again and read all evening, right through to the end.
I had my surgery and it was fine. However, twelve years on, the combination of putting on some weight, and the fact that I did a considerable amount more ‘growing’ from the age of fifteen to eighteen means that my tits almost completely grew back. I don’t mind though, they look fucking fantastic now that I’m old enough to appreciate the power of a pair of good tits.
Stark
Like most people I knew at the time, when I turned 16 I started working in a high street clothes shop on weekends and after school so that I would have money for all the important shit I needed like cider and fags and condoms.
Unlike most people I knew at the time, instead of going outside and talking to people on my breaks, I used to stay in the staffroom and read Ben Elton books. I fucking loved Ben Elton. He was my first real dabble with swearing in books. If I finished a book on a break, it was just a five minute walk to the bookshop to get another. On one lunch break I nipped out and bought Stark and sat pissing myself in the staff room at the description of a family eating some bad oysters and then shitting themselves. Teenage comedy gold.
I was still laughing when I emerged from the staffroom to continue my shift. I went and checked the rota, grinning like a fucking moron, and then went to the front of the shop: it was my turn to spend an hour tidying the rails and greeting people and helping customers and doing all the other shit that you’re supposed to do. They tell you that it is a very important job because you are the ‘first contact’ that a customer will have. I didn’t like it so much because it was a bit far away from what everyone else was doing, and I fucking hated talking to customers.
A man walked in. As I worked in a shop that sold clothes for women, men walking in on their own were usually either:
1 Looking for the wife/girlfriend/daughter/mate/mum/sister/mistress they had lost
2 Looking to buy something for their wife/girlfriend/daughter/mate/mum/sister/mistress
These were the men that we were supposed to attack with our knowledge of all things clothesy. We’d confuse them with words and they’d end up spending 200 quid in about five minutes because they were frightened and alone and vulnerable. A quick glance around revealed my manager at the tills, clocking the lonely man, so I thought I’d better do what I’d been trained to do.
‘Hello, are you okay there?’ I asked him.
He looked at me, and then back at the clothes rail he had been touching, and then to the till, and then back at me.
‘Not … reaaaaally,’ he said. ‘I need to buy something for my … girlfriend.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What kind of thing do you have in mind?’
He glanced around the shop, and whispered, ‘Maybe some underwear?’
Not a problem. I knew all about the underwear. I was fucking great at underwear. I led him over to the back of the shop where the stands where all the bras and knickers (that I had tidied fucking beautifully earlier) stood.
‘If
