Dirty Old Man (A True Story) (9 page)

I even managed to find myself a boyfriend there; his friends pestered me until I agreed to go on a date to the cinema with him. He dumped me little less than a week later because he came back to our house that weekend and saw how ‘poor’ we were.

His dad drove a Mercedes and my dad didn’t have a car at the time, was the reason he gave me. He was adamant he wanted to stay friends though. I soon got over him.

I continued to go to the roller disco every week and
I learned to be one of the better skaters there. Because of that, I was fairly popular at school. All the best skaters were. My life was full of ups and downs during this period of my life. Things were always changing.

     Perhaps it was because I’d been through a lot in those few months, but I’d developed a strange eating behaviour. It had been my dirty, shameful secret and this is the first time I’ve ever spoke of it. I used to hoard food.

Packed lunches in particular, regardless of how good they were. I would not sit in the canteen and eat with my friends. I’d go to school with every intention of eating it but when lunchtime came, I’d gotten myself into a pattern of not eating.

At first I threw the sandwiches away, dumping them in the bin at school, then for no particular reason; I started to hold on to them. They gathered at the bottom of my black rucksack for weeks sometimes until they became mouldy.

After my text books began to smell of decomposing food, I decided I had a problem and needed to do something about it.

     I remember a school trip to Sherwood Forest o
ne year when I was much younger (before I was such a disgrace to my family). My dad found my long forgotten sandwich box after the summer holidays and the contents were blue and moving. He told me that if I ever did it again; he would force it down my throat.

I was doing the exact
same thing all these years later, on a bigger scale; and he knew nothing about it.

It was a terrible memory to be sitting awkwardly in the classroom with my rucksack at my feet, wondering if anybody else could smell its mouldy contents.

I really needed to throw the sandwiches away but I couldn’t part with them. That evening I hid them in the walnut wardrobe that was covered with transformers stickers.

I enjoyed a couple of days off from my backpack burden until Beryl complained that the room smelled funny.

I shamefully put the almost liquid sandwiches back into my rucksack which must have provided relief for Beryl’s large nose, and nothing was spoken of it again.

The next day I swore I’d get rid of them, I had ample opportunity but told myself I’d do it later. I’d give myself excuses not to and wondered if I could hold on to them for a little longer but I knew they’d have to go.

The time came at the end of the day when I went into the toilets. It was my last chance to get rid of them. I couldn’t use the bin because they’d be found.

My saving grace came in the shape of a sanitary towel bin and that would be where I’d put them and in the weeks to follow. This went on for months as my hoarding continued and went undetected.

I concluded that nobody ever inspected the contents of the bins, why on Earth would they want to?

     “It’s a power thing apparently,” said one of the dinner lady’s, “to have control over food, I’ve read in one of my psychology books that people control what they eat because their lives are so
out of control. It could be OCD hoarding.”

OCD I though? Not having the faintest idea what she meant. Was it a disease?

My hairs went up on the back of my neck as I walked past her towards the music room.

   “I think we know who’s been dumping them in there anyway, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

I became conscious of my body language and tried not to give anything away, joking with my friends like I was unaffected.

There was never any comeback from that so I thought maybe somebody else got the blame. Perhaps they’d staged the whole thing as to scare me, I don’t know. It worked though because I never did it again. I stopped hoarding and found a new compulsion to ease my anxiety instead.

The hoarding would be replaced with secret rituals, I’ve already mentioned I’m not religious but this particular compulsion involved tracing the shape of the holy cross on my chest with my finger while muttering ‘Please don’t let me be in trouble for anything at all. Please, please, please please’.

It may sound completely bizarre to somebody who doesn’t unde
rstand what compulsions are; however, they’re basically something you know to be irrational; however, you feel the need to follow it through to reduce your anxiety. I suffered from anxiety a lot.

     I walked home from school one afternoon and I was in a bad mood about something or another so I walked on my own. A car pulled up alongside me and asked for directions. I leaned towards the window and tried to point the three teenagers in the right direction. Before my feet had touched the ground, one of them had pulled me into the back seat of the car.

One of the lads looked as if he was being heavily influenced by the two that sat in the front seats. He put his hand over
my mouth and dared me to scream; that nobody would hear me anyway. I didn’t know what was coming, you hear stories like this all the time but can never appreciate the horror of being in that situation until it happens to you or somebody you care about.

I can honestly say that they were just a trio of stupid teenagers who didn’t realise the seriousness of their crime until I was in the car. Apart from one of them putting their hand over my mouth, they didn’t lay a finger on me. They drove a little way down
the road and let me out.

After I called them a complete bunch of wankers, they drove off laughing and beeping their horn.

     I was noticeably distressed when I arrived home and I went to find my dad in the living room. My mum was at work again so he was my only option. I was sure he’d call the police and they might have been able to find the car if we reported it quickly enough.

Through sobs, I explained the whole short ordeal to him, I knew the police would be called but that didn’t bother me. Maybe they’d do it to somebody else next time and that person might not get away so easily.

I may have exaggerated with the tears a little, mainly because he
listened in a sympathetic manner and I thought I was making a breakthrough with him. I didn’t exaggerate the facts though. When I finished recalling the event, he looked at me thoughtfully.

     “Did they penetrate you with their fingers?” He asked me.

I stared at him with my jaw agape, wondering what kind of monster he was to ask me something as disgusting so disgusting.

     “No, they didn’t do anything to me besides one of them putting their hand over my mouth. I’ve already told you.” I said, refusing any further eye contact.

He leaned forwards to my face and lowered his voice.

     “Then don’t bother me with your silly fucking problems. You brought it on yourself dressing like a little tart.
Why I often think, you know; if you weren’t my daughter.”

My head started to ring again and my pulse beat a rhythm
out on my eardrums. It was my old friend panic again. I hated it when he used that term ‘if you weren’t my daughter’ It crossed my mind for a moment that my dad was going to kiss me, my stomach felt as though it was beginning to shrivel up. I knew deep down that he’d never do something like that but he made me feel awkward and uneasy. Like the time he took me shopping with him in town. He’d rarely go out the house on his own, nobody else wanted to go with him and I always found myself with the short straw. I must have been about nine years old at the time and he kept commenting as we walked down the road that people might think I was his girlfriend.

I looked down at my
clothes; they were the same as everybody else’s. I wore jeans and a t-shirt and hardly looked like a tart at all.

     “Oh, and don’t go burdening your mum with this either, she’s been at work all day, do you understand?”

I nodded my head and took my burden up to my room and it was never mentioned again.

     That Saturday the roller disco came around again and we were all excited, we normally played the music we’d taped from the chart show the previous week as we got ready. There was a certain skill required to tape the charts. You had to press pause before the DJ spoke so it wouldn’t ruin the song.

     My dad had taken up photographing wildlife and informed us that he’d be out that evening. He often went on his own but preferred it if somebody went with him. There was no way I was going to agree to give up my night at the roller disco, to sit in a dark woodland with him. He desperately wanted my brother to go on his excursions but he wasn’t at all interested. He was at the age of vanity.

     My dad decided to go to the woods during the day and plan his route through so he’d make less sound at night. I saw how upset he was when Alex flat out refused to go with him so I offered to accompany him. I thought I’d enjoy the roller disco much more if I’d done a good deed and made him happy.

     We left about two in the afternoon, roller disco started at half past six, I had four hours to help him find a trail he could use in the woods and get home to get changed.

It was autumn and the darkness came quickly, it was
cold and my hair became frizzy in the cold air which I disliked because it was so long. I was worried I’d look like a complete idiot later and people would tease me about it. People went there looking nothing less than immaculate every week.

    
“You see these twigs and branches?” he pointed to a long walkway through the trees,     “I need you to pick them all up and move them to the side.”

I stared at the long trail,
it would take me days to pick it all up, even if he returned later on that evening, more would have fallen off the trees so it was quite pointless. There’s no way I’d be back in time for the roller disco and he knew it.

     “If you don’t get a move on then you won’t be going tonight, it’s not difficult to do as I’ve asked, why do you have to be so
goddamn miserable all the time when I ask you to do something?”

I didn’t say anything.

     “Do you think you’re too good to speak to me now?” He asked.

I should have known better than to ignore his previous question, this one was much harder to answer.

     “No,” I said, “it’s just I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”

     “Well I know how to get you where it hurts don’t I? If you don’t get this trail cleared in the next hour then you won’t be going at all do you understand?”

I started to nod my head but thought better of it.

     “Yes.” I said quietly.

     “That’s more like it.”

I carried on moving the twigs and branches solidly for the next
two hours, my hands were cut and bleeding. My hands and fingernails were covered in mud and grass stains. I felt dirty and I wouldn’t have time for a bath when I got in.

     We got home moments before Beryl and Alex were about to leave. I got the third degree from her as I ran upstairs to get ready.

     “We were going to go without you,” she said, “you should put some deodorant on at least.”

I ran into the bathroom and washed my hands, I was too young for makeup at that age so that saved me two hours of getting ready. I threw on my clothes, I didn’t have music to listen to, instead I listened to her constant whining from downstairs, that if I wasn’t ready in ten seconds then they were going to leave without me.

My dad was in a bad mood with me because of the ‘attitude’ I’d shown him in the woods.
There were many days like this throughout my childhood where I just couldn’t win. The sacrifices I made to live a half normal life were incredible.

     An hour passed after we returned home and a police riot van pulled up outside our house.

We watched from the window as they unloaded my dad out the back and walked him to the front door. We listened as they explained everything to my mum, how my dad had been found on the university campus hiding in
some bushes with his binoculars. Somebody had seen him and reported him to the police. He insisted he was looking for exotic animals but I don’t think the police were very convinced.

     Dad decided it was about time he got himself mobile so he applied for his provisional license. It gave him the ability to ride a motorcycle up to a 125cc engine with an L plate.

He bought himself a Honda CM125 in black and
chrome; it was his pride and joy for a long time; though he dreamed of an Electra Glide or a Goldwing.

I remember how he used to trawl the Ad-Mag every week. He’d look for motorbike leathers and once he’d bought a set for himself, he used to buy them to ‘do up’ with black shoe polish to make them look as good as new to sell them on for a profit.