New boots and hot pants
(Growing up in the Nineteen Seventies)
I had sneaked into my sisters room to steal her mascara. For a boy of almost thirteen that sort of mission can be pretty hairy. Hairiness was the reason I had snook into the other world alone. I did risk a quick inspection of otherworldly items before sneaking back out. I was frightened out of the room by an item of underwear that had been abandoned near the David Cassidy annual. These were not the practical pants or bra that you would expect your older sister to have. They were undergarment such as those furtively glimpsed in the special pages of catalogues or as worn on the pages of Phil Creassey's fascinating stolen magazine collection. A fascinating collection on two counts: First and most importantly these were titles from the top shelf featuring ladies with little on. Secondly Phil himself was four foot three inches tall. The sudden shock I received when confronted by this tangle of orange nylon was equal to the static discharge that had led my sister to their untidy abandonment.
I locked the bathroom door and popped the make up brush out of the tiny bottle. I checked that the door was still locked before I applied the first stroke. A tingling sensation started at the back of my head and in the mirror I watched my face begin to redden. I dragged the black bristles through the pale growth of wispy white down that I had decided was my moustache.
The finished article was as ludicrous to see as it had been before the black paint job.
My reflection mocked me without provocation or empathy. The lips in the mirror moved below the smudge I had created.
“How many blonde haired men have jet black facial hair?”
I replied without moving my lips.”Well, those two I found lower down this morning -They looked pretty dark !”
“Timothy, Will you be long? Food’s nearly ready” my mother’s voice and her unstoppable urge to feed me, invaded my important work.
“Wash it off quickly!” the reflection urged, but quickly was not how the tarry black eye lash thickener wanted to go. The mascara just smeared as soapy water tried, in vain, to remove it from my top lip. The flannel and toilet tissue shifted it around, but not off, my face. It was rubbed high on my cheek bones and around the eyes, finally collecting in sticky glory on my eye brows.
“Hurry up! Come on now, it’s getting cold!” yelled Mother.
“Why don’t you take a cigar with you?” My reflection seemed to say as I nervously slid back the door bolt.
“Take a cigar and pretend you’re Groucho Marks.”
I sat with my head leaning on my left hand prodding an uninteresting boiled potato with my fork . Dad told me to take my elbow off the table and sit up straight. I would have argued that taking away my elbow would only allow my head to crash down onto the table. However Dad’s request had been carefully calculated to avoid such a head and table collision by the inclusion of the ‘sit up straight’ clause.
“Are you alright? You look terribly dark around the eyes” my mother’s usual voice of concern had acquired a sinister hint of over interest. My father looked at me thankfully without close scrutiny. He began his interrogation from a far les pesimistic angle “Too many late nights?”
“Don’t tease him.” Came my mother’s secret signal for father to start teasing me.
“Are you wearing make up?”
“Well of course he’s not wearing make up. What a stupid idea.”
“If he isn’t then he’s got very close to somebody who was”
At that point my little sister joined the ‘make up debate’ with just a funny high pitch wolf whistle. I gave her my hardest stare. The impact of which, though never devastating, had even less effective from a Groucho Marks look alike.
My big sis, Tina, she was quiet. She knew why I had attempted to darken my moustache though she was a little confused about the eyebrows and cheekbones. If I had known she had known, I would have asked her to do the job properly. That was, of course, assuming that girls two years older were as well acquainted with the art of top lip painting, as they were with that blue stuff that made Lesley's eyes look so nice.
Lesley Ricards was one of my sister’s friends from school. She was the prettiest of all my sisters friends and, despite the fact that I wasn’t even at the grammar school, Lesley had invited me to their discotheque. I had tucked the green cardboard ticket behind the Noddy Holder poster in my bedroom on wednesday. I had dreamt of Lesley, (in her yellow hot pants), Wednesday,Thursday, Friday night and today Tina was going to work on mum until she let me have those white and brown platform boots from Trotters.
To a mature man the process of growing facial hair is not complete until it forces its way down nostrils and out of ears. My father would have considered Lon Chaney Junior’s lunar driven efforts as a mere dabble with designer stubble. It was with absolute glee that he spotted the reason for my evasive table manners.
“You’ve got a bit of a smudge under your nose, Son. Mother, our boy is coming of age!”
“Oh Timothy John ,” Mother started using two names to signal her displeasure . “Please don’t grow a moustache I could never trust a man with a moustache.”
Little sister seized on the set up for an obvious punchline .
“But Dad’s got a tash.”
“I rest my case” Mum paused momentarily to gloat. She put her head to one side and whined in the way grown women sometimes do in attempt to gain male attention or empathy. “Oh Timmy don’t grow your mustache. You’re far too young and it won’t suit.”
“Mother don’t fuss. It will grow on you.”
Even before those words had formed on my lips, I knew, I had offered a great chance for unnecessary sarcasm to my whole family.
“ I agree, son, that your mother’s more chance of growing one... But I never trust a woman with a mustache!”
Careful negotiations began in the little shack that served the village as a fashion footwear boutique. I was facing a six month stretch on washing up duty, when, with some neat plea bargaining, my sister got the sentence commuted to a good clean shave. Mother signed the cheque with a victorious flourish.
Arriving back from the shops at tea time. I correctly predicted dad’s first, reaction as he examined my new foot wear with a look of astonished disbelief.
“Are these boy’s shoes?”
“Stop teasing him. They’re all the rage”
“They look dangerous to me. Do they sell bolts, to go through the neck, to match?” And then came the bombshell. “How much were they?”
Mum mumbled the price sheepishly.
“How much? Good God alive! I hope he doesn’t grow out of them before he starts work!”
For two evenings I stumbled about my sister’s bedroom in my new footwear. She played records “This is what they’ll put on at the end.” she told me “We dance like this.” I got the hang of ‘the smooch’ despite the crippling embarrassment of being so close to my big sister.“Oh you’ll be fine.” She reassured me.
“Now you can sit with Lyndon and I’ll make sure Lesley sits down with us.” Lyndon was Tina's secret boyfriend with the secret india ink tattoo that even his mum hadn’t seen. Lyndon was dead cool.
I was full of teenage confidence that night as I sat with Lyndon and his tattoo. Earlier in the day I had even written Lesley is fab on an exercise book embellishing the statement with floral motifs and a heart. Lesley looked wonderful under the coloured lights dancing, smiling and laughing. Occasionally Tina and Lesley came to sit with us and drink from our big bottles of coke. Lyndon told a joke and Lesley laughed for ages and said. “Teen your boyfriend is so funny!” in a very high and over ethuthiastic tone.
I asked Lesley what her favourite group was and she said Mud. I told her Slade were much better . We didn’t speak for ages because the music was so loud and neither of could think of what to say. My sister was right; At the end of the disco they played slow songs so I asked Lesley to Smooch with me.
“Are you asking me to dance?”
“Yes please.” I answered far too egerly to be cool as Lyndon.
“Oh. I didn’t realise third formers danced properly” She said in grudging acceptance of the offer. As I got up I realised that, even in my new shoes, she stood a good four inches taller than me. She led me by the hand out onto the dance floor. In a simple backwards move she slipped out of her shoes and sank gracefully onto her bare feet to be just two and one half inches taller than me. To start with we danced at some distance. Confidence had started to abandon me, my feet felt like lead and I moved like a deep sea diver, ever conscious of her delicate feet below. Then the girl grabbed me and squeezed me closer to her than I had ever been to a girl. She smelt of sugar and spice and Mum roll on deodourant. Somehow her head lolled onto my shoulder and I relaxed to the mood of the music. This was so much better than dancing with your sister in the bedroom. By the end of that night we had smooched through four songs.
She wrote me a very polite note saying that, she felt I was too young and a little on the short side but very nice all the same. I treasured that note in Lesley's own hand writing despite the uncanny echoes of my sister's style in it's wording. Lesley started courting that summer but I wasn’t too dejected. By then I was already shaving twice monthly and I had the coolest boots in the fouth form.