Authors: Calvin Wade
Kiss My Name (33 page)
SIMON – May 2012
Twenty four hours after Joey Neill and the toss of a coin had sent my Stag Do plans down a path I had never intended on going, my mobile phone rang. I am always mildly excited about my mobile phone ringing as it doesn’t ring often. No-one rings a window cleaner to say they need them within an hour for an emergency clean. We just show up routinely, about every four weeks, unannounced and get on with it. Nicky, Will, Chloe and my Dad ring me occasionally, but not very often. The mild excitement soon subsided when I saw it was Joey.
“Hello, Joey.”
There was a lot of background noise, pub-like background noise.
“Any plans you have for this weekend, cancel them.”
“I haven’t got any plans for this weekend.”
“Good, because we’re going to Blackpool!”
As there was a lot of noise in the background, Joey was shouting down the phone. I took the phone away from my ear and shouted back.
“We can’t go this weekend!”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got a cricket match!”
“You just said you had no plans.”
“Apart from cricket, I haven’t.”
“Sod the cricket! I’ve heard you aren’t much good anyway.”
“I’m not, but Will is and I was hoping to ask a few of the cricket lads on the Stag Do.”
“Ask them. They can postpone cricket matches you know.”
“It’s a bit short notice. I’ve got to ask a few others too, like my Dad and Arthur. They’re old. They need a month’s warning before they do anything.”
“You don’t want Nicky’s Dad on your Stag Do, mate. Arthur hates you.”
“I know, but I had to ask him.”
“No you didn’t! He hates you. Anyway, he probably won’t want to come to Blackpool and the short notice might work in your favour too.”
“We’ll see. Why do we have to go this weekend, anyway?”
“There’s a bloke in the pub, Barry, who owns a coach firm. He was supposed to be taking a coach load of pensioners from Croston to the Prince of Wales in Southport on Saturday, for a surprise 90
th
, but the old dear died yesterday, so he has a spare coach this weekend.
As Joey was saying crazy things, I presumed he must be drunk.
“Joey, we don’t need a coach. We’ll only need a minibus.”
“Simon, believe me mate, we’ll need a coach. The way things are going we may even need two. I’ve put you down for eight seats mate, get ringing around. If you need any more, give me a tinkle. I’ll give you another buzz tomorrow with a bit more info.”
Joey hung up. As every minute passed, the decision to involve Joey in my wedding was becoming and bigger and bigger regret. Nicky thought it was all hilarious, but it was alright for her, she wasn’t the victim of Joey’s madness. I just knew this wouldn’t be the end of it, there would be more crazy stunts on the way and by Sunday evening, I knew I would be ready to strangle him.
JOEY – May 2012.
FHM just isn’t what it was. Somewhere along the line, probably earlier this year, all the young, trendy directors kitted out in their John Smedley and Moncler gear, must have been sitting around their swanky boardroom in their ultra-modern office, no doubt overlooking the Thames, trying to establish why their sales chart looked like fork lightning and someone must have said,
“We’ve got too many tits!”
The rest of the board must have looked at each other wondering whether this was an astute observation on their fellow board members or a well thought out analysis of the content of their magazine.
“Think about it,” the genius must have continued, “Nuts has tits, thousands of them and so has Loaded and they’re both cheap as chips relative to us. We’re nearly four quid. We need to lose a few tits. We are the halfway house. We’re the third shelf down. Porn on the top, Nuts and Loaded second top, the
n us, then GQ, then kids stuff. Cookery and Gardening towards the bottom. We need to stop aiming at the late teens, early twenties demographic who haven’t yet found the bottle to reach up to the top shelf and then place their lurid content in front of a smiling Sales Assistant. We need to aim for an older demographic. There’s a credit crunch, graduates are not getting jobs. We need to aim at late twenties, early thirties again. We need to be a bit more cultured. OK, we can keep a few bikini shots and knickers, but let’s leave something to the imagination. Let’s get back into fashion. Let’s have more clothing, more clubbing but not your seedy joints, your £20 entrance fee type places. Let’s have more sport, more icons, more sporting icons, more style, more panache, but fewer tits.”
The board must have done their “hands in the bucket” bit or whatever board members do, don’t ask me, I’m more likely to lead a military junta in Central America
than I am to be given a place on a board, but anyway, no doubt the results were unanimous. FHM would change. Less smutty, more cool. When would this change be implemented? I’ll tell you exactly when, to the second. This change would be implemented the second Joey Neill’s annual subscription cheque to FHM is cleared by his bank.
If my cheque hadn’t already cleared, I wouldn’t have even bothered with FHM.
I’ve taught myself how to dress well. I don’t need to learn from FHM. I can’t influence famous woman to strip off in my bedroom though, but they can
Without a subscription,
I would never have found myself flicking through their advertisements one lazy, end of season Saturday afternoon, when Jeff Stelling on Sky Sports had gloomily announced that Hartlepool had lost at home and my line of ten homes that was set to pay £175 from a £1 stake had gone down. As I read those advertisements, I realised that the companies who advertised had probably paid a twelve month subscription like me, as their products were down in the gutter along with my mind. There was an endless stream of escort agencies, erotic masseurs, supplements to enhance penis size but then I saw it, the advertisement to beat all advertisements. The Holy Grail. It simply said in big, bold letters, “THE PERFECT WIND-UP FOR YOUR STAG”, then in smaller lettering it explained and the explanation was wonderful. It was meant to be. The phone number was even a Chorley dialling code.
Simon Stron
g and I had drifted apart. As kids we had been best mates, but as adults we had headed down different paths. My path was filled with exploitation and debauchery. In my mind, Simon’s path had been filled with that rubber foam that they have in kids playgrounds these days. Simon’s path was steady, boring and mundane. I lived a lot. Simon refused to even live a little. Despite these differences, largely because he was short of friends and his nineteen year old son was crapping himself about doing a speech, I was going to be one of two ‘Best Men’ at Simon’s wedding to Nicky.
Poor Nicky, she was top quality, God knows why she had stuck it out for so long with Simon
’s conservative ways. My eye would stop roving for a woman like Nicky. I always wanted him to let loose and surprise her. To be bold not boring. Now I had the opportunity to influence things. For one weekend only, he would be forced into living the life he was always scared to take on. Proper rock ‘n’ roll. Unforgettable. Crazy. Ridiculous.
There were going to be fifty four of us going on his ‘Stag Do’. They were mainly my mates, my party crowd, who hardly knew Simon or didn’t know him at all, but would never turn down a wild weekend away
. Every single one of my mates, to a man, absolutely pissed themselves when I told them about that FHM ad and what I was intending to do to Simon Strong.
“Legend”, that was the word they used, “Joey Neill, you are an absolute legend.”
It was going to cost a fortune. A grand. When you think about it though, a grand split fifty ways was only £20 a man. £20 a man for the stunt to end all stunts. We would be talking about this for the rest of our lives. When I put it to the lads like that, it wasn’t even up for debate. It just had to be done. We used to cry with laughter just thinking about it. I knew the lads would think I was the best “Best Man” that had ever lived. Simon Strong might not like it, but as I say, we had drifted apart anyway.
WILL – May 2012
I was having a fag. Since the smoking ban had come in, The Bay Horse had put a few flags down outside the pub, put a few chairs and tables on top and sectioned it off. The politically correct could probably spot us from a distance now with their heat seeking devices and avoid us like the plague they considered us to be. Society is becoming divided into the haves and the have nots, but it’s those who have tattoos, have a drink habit or have a nicotine habit (or all three) who are made to feel like the outcasts of our generation. There should have been a sign up to mark the smokers territory which said something like, “Dedicated to the lepers of Modern Day Society”. I wasn’t even a smoker myself really, I just smoked when I drank, ridiculous I guess, but that’s what I did.
That Friday night, Joey Neill strutted out smugly from inside the pub, looking like a man who had just mastered the art of sucking his own knob. I hated him. He was so full of his own self importance. He always had been. The thing that irritated me most about him was the way he looked down at my Dad. Joey always gave me the impression that my Dad was just some commoner to pity, just because my Grandad had been a window cleaner and his family had all been lawyers. That didn’t make him better than us, it just made him think that he was. He wasn’t even a lawyer himself. Joey was a nothing, a layabout. When his Mum died, Joey sold the solicitor’s practice that had been in the family for four generations and proceeded to spend his fortune on fast cars, champagne, fancy holidays, fake tan and moisturiser.
Joey was the same age as my Dad, thirty eight, but he could easily have passed for thirty, whilst my Dad could have easily passed for fifty. Joey looked after himself. He was always heading off to the posh David Lloyd gym down past Botany Bay. Dad, on the other hand, said his days of keeping fit were long gone and his routine involved stopping off at The Talbot for a quick pint on his way home from window cleaning and then nipping across to Spar for a four pack and a slab of Dairy Milk. Joey was thirteen stone of pure muscle. Dad was sixteen stone of pure fat. Dad was balding. Joey had a full head of dark hair. Dad was a great bloke, Joey was a twat.
“On your own, mate?” Joey asked, as if he was my mate, which he was not.
“I’m with Laura, my girlfriend, she went to the loo, ten minutes back, must have spotted someone in there that she knows.”
“Got a spare one?” Joey asked pointing at my opened packet of Silk Cut, with eight fags peering out expectantly.
“You don’t smoke, Joey.”
“I did back in the day.”
“Help yourself.”
Joey reached across and drew a cigarette out the packet slowly, like you would draw a straw when hoping not to get the short one. He tapped it on the table a couple of times, then grabbed my Zippo that had been abandoned next to the packet and lit up awkwardly. Joey put the fag in his mouth and began to smoke like an actor in a 1950’s black and white movie, not someone cool like James Dean though, more like an aristocratic English gentleman, David Niven say.
“Looking forward to your Dad’s Stag Do this weekend?” Joey asked after his first exhale.
“I’m not sure,” I replied honestly.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Stag Do, or quite frankly who to expect. Dad was a family man, a quiet guy, a caring guy, but not a particularly sociable guy. Even when he went for his swift pint at The Talbot, he would just find an isolated corner to enjoy it. If a coach load of men were heading to Blackpool, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be my type of thing, or more importantly, Dad’s type of thing.
“Not sure? Will, you should be sure! It’s going to be the best weekend of your life, matey and that comes with a Joey Neill cast iron guarantee.”
I could mentally picture one of those knobs that kids used to draw on the white board at school before the teacher came into class. A knob with big, hairy balls. Joey Neill, it had underneath it. Prick. Knobhead. Cast iron guarantee.
Laura came out from the Ladies, looking stunning as always. When she had her big, chunky metal brace and all the other lads were taking the piss and calling her ‘Jaws’, I knew she was going to turn out fit. I spotted her potential. I always smiled, always held the door open for her at college and always said “hello” and man was I enjoying the fruits of my labour now. Blonde, blue eyed, perfect smile, Laura was stunning, like a compact Maria Sharapova without the grunts and she did not want to know a single lad except me. Result.
“Wow!” Joey Neill almost fell off his seat in shock, “Bloody hell, Will! How did an ugly mug like you manage to snare a fine creature like this? Underlay, nail, shag, my boy! Underlay, nail, shag!”
Laura gave me a look. A look that spelt out ‘tosser’ in each of her beguiling eyes. I looked back with my ‘agreed’ look.
“Well aren’t you going to formally introduce me to this charming lady, Will?” Joey prompted. I had no choice.
“Laura, this is Joey. He grew up with my Dad.”
“I’m his Dad’s other best man,” Joey added, taking Laura’s right hand in his and stroking the top her hand, underneath her fingers, like some weird pervert.
“Pleased to meet you!” Laura said, smiling like she meant it. I knew she could see through him though. Some girls can fall for the cheesy lines and all that creepy bullshit, but not Laura.
“I guess you’ve been put in charge of organising the Stag Do then?” she added.
“I have indeed. And that my dear, is the very reason I came over to speak to young Willy, here. I need him to do me a very big favour.
I was running out of penis-like words to compare this man to. The W.Anchor one kept bouncing around my head like a hot rubber ball in a squash court. How old did he think I was? Seven?
“What favour, Joey?” I asked stoically.
“Look, Willyboy, I cannot reveal the full extent of my ‘Top Secret’ plan for your father, other thank to say it is beyond hilarious. Stage One, however, will only work with your assistance. I need to smuggle a very important piece of cargo on to the coach next Friday and it is essential your father does not see, ‘Said Cargo’.
All the lads are getting
to The Talbot for twelve thirty. I need you to make sure that your Dad does not get there until one.”
“Will he know that everyone’s getting t
here for 12.30, Joey? If he does, there’s no way I will be able to hold him back until one.”
Ignoring me, Joey looked directly at Laura.
“He gets ever so flustered, your boyfriend, doesn’t he? Is he always like this?”
“He just wants things to be right,” Laura responded. Good answer.
“Fear not, Willy boy,” Joey continued, now turning to me, “your father will think it’s a one o’clock meet. Just make sure he’s not early. You know what he’s like with his punctuality. Just hold him back. If he arrives before any of the lads he could ruin everything.”
“Don’t do anything stupid to him, Joey.”
Warning Joey Neill not to do something stupid was like warning a footballer, pre-interview, not to say “Erm”.
“Trust me, young man, it’s nothing short of amazing. You will piss your Mickey Mouse pants!”
I knew there and then that whatever Joey Neill had planned for my Dad was not going to be funny. Not in the slightest bit funny. My Dad had already told me that he had made the two biggest mistakes of his life and I had a horrible, sinking feeling that lining Joey Neill up as a ‘Best Man’, could well become massive mistake number three.