Out: A Schoolboy's Tale

  24: Who wants to live forever?

  Gulping and trying to squelch my fast-flipping guts, I called ''Morning'' as cheerfully as I could and limped into the room. A few heads turned but no-one replied. A hostile, wounded silence crushed me as I went to Locker 17. The word 'GAY' was still on the door and now someone had scrawled 'PEEDO PETERS IS A POOF' on the board.

  ''For fuck's sake, grow up,'' I said irritably.

  ''Oooh,'' said Seymour, camply flapping his wrist, ''Shut that door.''

  My thigh ached. Mum had just said I was 'so immature.' Dad had cried. It was he who had cleaned the several stab-points with tea-tree and Savlon, applied the plasters, given me Panadols for the pain. He had sat on my bed, cradled me and shushed me and pleaded with me not to hurt myself again.

  ''Mum hates me,'' I'd wept. ''Everyone hates me. I might as well be dead.''

  Michael Crooks didn't speak to me and I wasn't speaking to him. The titchy ginger cunt had betrayed me. I just hoped he'd like DIE, you know? Fucking bastard. As Jamie Arnold called him over, I could see our formerly united class fragmenting into factions.

  Inside my locker I found a note, scribbled in blue biro on a torn scrap of graph-paper. It read 'you're gonna hurt today, you bent bastard.' My stomach lurched sickly.

  Christ, I really hadn't wanted to come today. It was one of those dark, filthy, rain-soaked mornings when you just really want to batter that bloody alarm clock as it bangs in your ear. I'd dragged myself from my duvet at half-past six, dressed in the dark, couldn't find my slippers so stumbled downstairs in my socks for half a slice of granary toast with peanut butter, a banana-and-strawberry smoothie and a cod liver oil capsule and trod painfully on a Lego brick which made me yelp then, shivering inside my school sweater and trench-coat, trudged miserably through the dark drizzle to the bus-stop. Neither parent wanted to turn out for the gay son did they? Because the bus was full, I had to stand all the way into town, crushed beneath the sweat-stinky armpits of a massive black bloke in overalls and the jutting mountain-mammaries of a woman who reeked of cheap perfume. My ten-ton backpack dragged at my shoulder and my Walkman faded to static as the battery dwindled to empty. Over the university cityscape, the darkness paled into a scummy grey, dishwater dawn.

  When Bunny arrived for 8.45 Registration, he glanced at the slogan and said ''I believe 'paedo' is spelled with an 'a'? Nice shiner, Jenny. Bobby Rose, I believe.''

  Jenny! Did my form-master actually just really like call me Jenny?

  ''Don't blame Olly, eh, sir?'' called Brudenall. ''Finding out your brother's a sausage jockey can't be easy.''

  On the way to Assembly, Lewis, muttering 'cock-sucker,' jarred my shoulder by barging me roughly into the wall. I couldn't find anywhere to sit. No-one made room for me. Some Sixth Former screamed 'filthy faggot' across the Rises.

  ''Silence!'' roared Willie.

  ''Just sit there, Peters,'' said Hellfire, pointing at a space beside Fosbrook.

  ''Sir!'' protested Fosbrook, ''I don't want him next to me.''

  ''Don't be stupid, Fosbrook,'' growled Hellfire. ''It's not a disease.''

  ''That's a matter of opinion, sir,'' said Fosbrook.

  ''Just sit down, Peters,'' said Hellfire impatiently.

  ''Keep your fucking hands to yourself, you fucking queer,'' hissed Fosbrook as Fred started the hymn. ''So much as look at me, you're fucking dead.''

  Yikes. As if. Fozzie was the ugliest plug-faced kid in the class.

  ''Ah, go get shagged, you pizza-faced little virgin,'' I scowled, trying to locate Alistair on the prefects' row. He wasn't there. Unable to face sitting at the front under two thousand hostile eyes, he'd put himself on late-duty. As it was, Sonning, standing in for Redmond, shared with us some words from Ephesians 1, verses18 to 23 (we'd finished our exploration of Proverbs and were back to the Lectionary): ''I pray that your inward eyes may be illumined so that you may know what is the hope to which he calls you, what the wealth and glory of the share he offers you among his people in their heritage, and how vast the resources of his power open to us who trust him.'' Then we did the usual mumble of the Lord's Prayer - 'forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us' – and Wheezy did this prayer of St Aidan, 'Leave me alone with God, make me an island, set apart, alone with God' and then Hymn 442:

  ''All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,

  All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.''

  'All.' I laughed bitterly. Satan had made me, according to Wilson, Rix and the Christian Union. I was Antichrist, 'cos gay and God were apparently incompatible. While I saw listening to Gallagher and Redmond reading notices, Keighley and Tredwell, sitting behind me with U5S, kept kicking me in the back and making foot-prints on my blazer. Then, when we were waiting for Leatherbridge to dismiss us, Tredwell gave me a push in the back that sent me sprawling into Coleman and Robbins in U5B on the row below. Everyone laughed. Leatherbridge went absolutely bonkers, screaming my name at the top of his lungs, then he spotted my top button unfastened. Honestly, I thought he was gonna have a stroke, like the guy in To Serve Them All My Days. Anyway, the tosser waved away my protest that I'd been pushed and ignored my complaint that I was being bullied. I even showed him the note I'd found in my locker. He just grunted, told me to grow a pair, if I could, and gave me a one-hour detention for 'disruptive behaviour.' Man, I booted the bin all the way round the bogs then slammed a cubicle door on my hand so I could go back to the nurse for a jab. She just jammed the damn needle in and told me to sod off back to class.

  Throughout Monday I was like a rat in a microwave. Vicious comments from all sides, no-one wanting to sit with me, everyone avoiding me, some kids spitting at me, fucking Sumner kicking me hard under the right knee, and this was just getting back to Room 31. Hunched over, I sat alone, staring at the back of my left hand swelling a livid, angry purple, then Bunny swept in, gown black as night, slammed down a pile of orange exercise-books and let rip as we stood up. I knew my homework'd been rubbish. How the hell he expected me to solve equations with all the shit going on in my head, I had no idea. Normally I'd've got someone to help me but that particular avenue appeared closed. Keeping us standing, he tore into Morreson then launched a ballistic missile at Collins for careless mistakes. Shrouded in misery, I braced myself as he told all the others to sit.

  ''Peters, you half-witted dunce!'' he snapped. ''What is the square root of 5?''

  ''Er…'' I thought I ought to know this. It was somewhere between two and three, around two and half. ''Two and a half, sir?'' Someone laughed aloud.

  ''No, you imbecile,'' came the icy retort. ''How the hell can it be two and a half?''

  ''I don't know, sir,'' I admitted unhappily.

  ''Peters,'' drawled Bunny, ''You're so bloody thick it makes me weep. What do you keep in that turnip you call a head?'' Maxton and Stewart laughed appreciatively. ''I suggest you clear out the clutter of music and boys and look in the tables!'' His voice rose to a scream. ''They're right in front of you, boy! Look it up, you imbecile, for God's sake.''

  Scrabbling through the small booklet on my desk, I blurted ''Two point two four, sir.''

  ''So why did you not put that in your utterly wretched prep?''

  ''I must have misread it, sir.''

  ''I must have misread it, sir,'' he mimicked. ''Are you blind? Or just truly truly stupid?'' Squirming uncomfortably, I fixed my teary eyes on the grey table-top and bit my lip. ''Good God Almighty, you're sitting GCSE soon and you don't even have the brains to look the answer up in the tables. You just guess and hope for the best. You're a bloody idiot, Peters. You always were.''

  ''We can't all be good at Maths, sir,'' Bainbridge said suddenly.

  ''But it isn't just Maths, is it, Joe? He swans through life doing what he pleases, breaking the rules, breaking the law, because he can play the piano.''

  It was uttered in the most scathing, contemptuous tone I'd ever heard.

  ''He's pretty good though, sir,'' said
Cooke. ''That Chopin was really beautiful, Jonny.''

  ''Yeah,'' added Huxley, ''You've got a real gift, Jonny.''

  The tears brimmed over. My class-mates were coming to my defence.

  ''Perhaps if he stopped eyeing up boys, he'd develop a gift in Maths too,'' said Bunny.

  ''Sir,'' said Andrew Collins suddenly, ''You shouldn't talk to him like that. It isn't right. You're being mean and spiteful and besides, it might not even be true. It might just be a rumour, you know? Gossip, a misunderstanding. Eh? Jonny? It might not be true.''

  I heard the desperate pleading in his voice.

  ''Well, Jonathan?'' said Bunny, glorying in his moment. ''Is it true? Are you queer? Are you a homosexual? Or is it just a rumour?''

  I felt the whole class, all nineteen of them, tense expectantly, mentally fusing with Collins in begging for it not to be true. Paulus's blue eyes screamed 'Deny it, Jonathan, deny it. We want you back. Just say it isn't true and make us happy again.'

  This was my lifeline. All I had to do was say 'Of course it's not true. I'm straight as a pole-dancer's pole. I kissed Mikey for a dare. There was nothing in it, was there, Mikey? And as for Rosie, well, he's got the hots for me but sod him, the great poof. I'm not interested in a bummer-boy like him. How could I be? I got Claire. I'm just like you guys, you know? I like footie, beer and birds. Grrrrr. And I am definitely not a poof.' There'd be this massive cheer and I'd be welcomed back with love. U5H would be happy again, my teachers would be happy again, my parents would be happy again and life would return to normal.

  Just three little words.

  'It isn't true.'

  Three more little words.

  'I'm not gay.'

  So easy to say.

  I could spare myself a world of pain. I could retreat from the battlefield and hide in the closet. Had I learned nothing from wargaming? Tactical withdrawal from superior enemy-fire. I'd get my friends back. I'd get Tim back. I'd get Mark and Max back. I'd get my life back.

  But I'd lose Leo, and Andy, and Ali, and Shelton and Hill. More, I'd lose myself. I'd condemn myself to a life of lies and pretence. God had created me this way for a reason. I might not know that reason now but one day I would, and to deny myself, to deny what I was, was denying both God and his plan for me.

  ''Tell them it isn't true,'' drawled Bunny.

  Drawing a deep breath, I raised my eyes, straightened my back, dragged myself out of the slump and declared ''No, sir. It is true.'' I turned to my class and repeated ''It's true. I know you don't like it but you're my friends and I don't want to lie to you. So yes, sir, I'm gay. I am homosexual. I can't help it. It's the way I was made.''

  Amid a collective, moaned sigh, Bunny looked vindicated, Gray's head smacked into his palms, Collins collapsed into his seat in despair, Crooks crowed ''I told you he was an arse-bandit'' and Stewart gobbed in my hair.

  ''Right,'' said Bunny. ''So now you know. Peters, sit down. Page 21, exercise 3.''

  Miserable and lonely, I stared at the desk till the bell rang then I went to see him.

  ''Sir,'' I said nervously as everyone else was leaving, ''Can we like talk, sir? About… what's been happening, sir, you know?''

  ''I don't have time for cosy chats,'' he said testily. ''2S are coming. Can't it wait?''

  ''No, sir, it can't,'' I flared angrily. ''It's important!''

  He sighed this heavy sigh, made some crack to these giggling gimps about drama-queens, shoved me into the corridor and snapped ''Well?''

  Looking into his clear blue eyes, I said ''I don't like the way you talk to me, sir.''

  Dropping his hand onto the door-knob, he uttered this guttural laugh. ''Get off to Biology, Peters, and stop wasting mine and 2S's time.''

  ''No, sir, I won't, sir,'' I ploughed on. ''It's wrong, sir. It makes me unhappy and none of my friends want to know me any more.'' Tears were swelling.

  ''That's nothing to do with me,'' he said shortly. ''They don't want to know you because you're a fairy-cake.''

  ''You see?'' I said indignantly. ''You shouldn't say these things to me.''

  ''Why not?'' he shrugged. ''It's true. You said so yourself. Now get off to Biology, you filthy little queer.'' The loathing in his voice was just unbearable. I ran to the toilets, slammed myself in a cubicle and cried.

  When I reached Herbie's freak-show, Stewart, Maxton and the other fuckwits made slurpy sucking noises and mooed 'Gaaaay' whilst Herbie demanded to know why I was late.

  ''I was talking to Mr Hutchinson, sir,'' I said.

  ''Jerking off over 1R's swimming class you mean,'' cried Lewis.

  ''Sucking off Fred in the bogs,'' added Gardiner.

  ''Bumming Trent,'' called Brudenall.

  ''He called me a filthy little queer, sir,'' I said, dazed.

  ''Well, you are!'' shouted Morreson.

  ''You should've got a note.'' Herbie tossed my homework book to me. ''This book is a disgrace, Peters. It looks as though you've been using it as a doormat.''

  ''He called me a filthy little queer.'' I was scarcely able to grasp it.

  ''Sir,'' said Brudenall slyly, ''Why do queers exist? I mean, it's against all the laws of nature, isn't it? I mean, your anus is for expelling stuff, isn't it, not taking cocks and that in, right? An' what about reproduction and that? Rosie's spunk just mixes up with Peedo's poo. I mean, that can't be right, can it, sir?''

  ''Can they be cured, sir?'' said Stewart, ''If you fry their brains or something?''

  ''Don't be ridiculous,'' snapped Herbie as others piled in with their questions, didn't gays cause AIDS and if gays caused AIDs, shouldn't they be locked up so other people didn't get it? And shouldn't they be locked up anyway because they were sick and out to grope small boys' bits? So shouldn't gays be castrated, just in case? If they got their nuts chopped off, they wouldn't fiddle kiddies any more. Herbie went ballistic.

  ''Where did you hear that, you moron?''

  ''In the papers, sir,'' said Seymour. ''It's not like they need their balls, is it, sir? I mean, their sperm's not for making babies, is it? It's just a drink, like a milk-shake, eh, Peedo?''

  They got into this tremendous row as I shrank inside my blazer and Brudenall said castration was right and threw a scissor-cutting gesture in my direction. I felt sick again but what really freaked me out was something I read in a note someone had shoved into my blazer pocket. It said 'We are going to rape you, soak you in petrol and set you on fire.'

  Crying aloud, I clapped my hand to my mouth. Who the hell was this? And why did they want to do it anyway? How could they hate me so much? I sleep-walked to Choral Society where some of the trebles started hissing, imitating the gas of a Nazi gas-chamber. Mark Williams, seated at the Steinway, looked at me coldly whilst Fred Perry's fat, round face bore an expression of mingled sympathy and disgust. Hellfire, from the back row of the basses, bawled at the trebles and told me to sit with him.

  ''It's hard being different in a place like this,'' he began conversationally.

  ''I know,'' I said bitterly. ''I've always been different here. First my dad was a bus driver, secondly I had free school-meals and uniform vouchers and now everyone who's always hated me for being poor has come out to attack me for being gay.''

  ''So you are gay,'' said Hellfire gently. ''I thought so. What about Alistair?''

  ''I love him,'' I said simply, ''And they hate our love even more.''

  ''Peters, shut up, and fasten your collar,'' called Perry. ''Page 91, number 36 two bars before. 'When the Chief Priests and the officers saw Him, they all crie-ye-d out…''

  The Choral Society hit the D as one - ''Cru---ci--fy, crucify, crucify, crucify…'' for five pages. ''We have a sacred law (number 38) and by this same law He should die…''

  The score drooped in my hands as I slumped back into my chair. Then, whilst Perry was yelling that the trebles sounded more like a bunch of farmyard chickens than a baying bloodthirsty mob, the altos saved me.

  ''This is so awful,'' said Leo tearfully. ''I love you both so much
and I hate this school for what they're doing to you.''

  ''My brother's a total cunt,'' Pip declared. ''He's been crowing all weekend, saying you're gonna get what you deserve, and my parents agreed with him! Mother said there's no place for boys like you in a respectable school.'' He choked on his emotions. ''She rang Ash-tray to get you kicked out.'' He punched his thigh. ''It's so shit! I can't believe it's so shit! Like they'd kick people out for being gay.'' Pip looked wildly at Leo. ''I would fire-bomb the fucking school if they kicked you out, Lion, or you, Shelters.''

  Shelton just sat there, frozen numb.

  After the practice, Ali was waiting, his face this mask of angry anxiety.

  ''You look like a hundred year old panda,'' he said. I didn't laugh. ''How are you?''

  ''Not so good,'' I replied. ''I've been spat at, kicked, slapped and pushed into walls, there's graffiti on my locker and someone's sent me a note saying they're going to rape me and set me on fire. Leatherface put me in detention when I complained and Bunny's been a total bastard.'' I told him what had happened in Maths. Shocked and scared, we held each other, shaking with a shared fear and distress, then returned to Hell.

  Mum wasn't speaking to me either. She just slammed this ham salad in front of me, lips so tight they seemed welded together. When I tried to talk, she bit my head off with 'I'm too tired for your melodramas, Jonathan. Just grow up, will you?' then asked all the moose in Canada why I'd left skid-marks in the toilet. My leg hurt. My hand ached. I couldn't focus on my prep, or on Star Trek's search for the Ryetalyn antidote to an on-board epidemic of Rigellan fever or the Captain's encounter with an immortal human and his robot mate, and the news brought the usual bullshit, war in Afghanistan, terrorist alerts at London airports, the American President threatening Iran, our Prime Minister slagging off Europe... man, nothing changes, does it? I was miserable, lonely, frightened and in pain. If it hadn't been for Ali, and Leo, I might've killed myself that night. I counted 21 Panadols in the bathroom cabinet and wondered if they'd be enough. I didn't want to fuck it up after all. If I was gonna kill myself, I was gonna do it right, you know? So I fashioned my house tie into a noose and knotted it firmly round a coat-hook on the back of my bedroom door. I would hang myself. It wouldn't hurt and I'd be doing everyone a favour. Mum hated me so much. Everyone at school hated me more. I was just gonna get more of the same tomorrow, and it would never end, never, 'cos, as Chappers and the agony uncles said, everyone hates queers, and everyone knew now that I was one... I stuck my head through the loop and tightened the slipknot. No way choking to death could be worse than my life right now. 'Suicide,' the MASH theme song claimed, 'Is painless, it brings on many changes… the game of life is hard to play, I'm gonna lose it anyway…' Damn right. I said goodbye to Pickles, New Bear and my bedroom then, just as I was wondering whether my whole miserable life really would flash before my eyes, I changed my mind. I saw the photo from the school mag of me and Ali as the fairies, greened-up, bare-chested and crowned with flowers. Sure, as Lysander said, ''the course of true love never did run smooth.'' And this was true love. I knew it was. Ali, and Leo, needed me to be strong and just get through it. And besides, why should I kill myself because the world was run by twats? As Puck had said, ''Lord, what fools these mortals be.'' And Lord, they were fools, such thick-headed fuckwits it made you weep. Anyhow, I knew that as my life progressed, I would find a way of playing a different game of life, you know? I would create my own game, with my own rules, and nuke the lot of them.

  Tuesday's weather was even worse than Monday's, thick black clouds and driving rain which, even though I turned up my trench-coat collar, somehow squirmed inside. Brudenall, Stewart and Seymour continued their homophobic drivel whilst everyone else just seemed uncomfortable. I really hoped Games would be cancelled. I couldn't face ploughing up and down a field with a rugby ball, not today. I'd rather stay in school, hole up in whatever room I was allocated to, do my homework and shove off home. Games cancellations were signalled by a triple ring of the school bell at 12, so halfway through French, I was utterly dismayed by the silently mocking non-ringing of the bell. Shit. I'd have to go to rugby. Shit.

  Miserably chewing a Ryvita and apple, I added another paragraph to my story: 'He leaned against the bastion of the stone bridge and gazed down into the murky depths. The river bed and surrounding scenery merged in with the rest of the picture, the shades and edges blurred and confused, almost indistinguishable. The lack of colour seemed to accentuate the despondency he felt, and that he felt the whole world was experiencing with him.' Then I walked to the playing fields in the pouring rain by myself, though Tredwell and Keighley kicked a puddle on to my trousers and threatened to push me in front of a bus.

  I felt so fed up as I drifted back into the rain in blue shorts and green shirt to the muddy pitch where Wadey, rubbing his beard impatiently, was waiting to organize the teams.

  ''Can I play in another group, sir?'' said Stewart, licking his chapped lips. ''I don't want Peters looking at my arse all afternoon.''

  ''Your arse is way too fat and spotty for me, Bob,'' I snarled, to some muted laughter.

  Pale blue-shirted Timothy Wilson, on the opposing team, stabbed the air before his own eyes with his index and middle finger then flung the gesture furiously towards me.

  ''JP,'' called Wadey, ''Go scrum-half. I want to see what you're made of.''

  ''He's made of sugar and spice and all things nice,'' minced Wilson to general laughter. ''That's what little girls are made of.''

  ''He'll be fine,'' Maxton added maliciously. ''He likes handling oval balls.''

  ''Bloody knob-jockey!'' shouted Stewart.

  Wouldn't you know it? Wadey asked Tim to be the opposing scrum-half.

  At the first opportunity, from the first scrum, I crashed into him as hard as I could and exulted as he fell heavily into the mud. Feeding Stewart the ball, I yelled ''Go!'' He just stood there, got tackled by a bunch of people, dragged into this maul and lost possession. Grinning fiercely, Wilson kicked for touch.

  ''Fuck's sake, Bob,'' I stormed, ''What are you doing?''

  ''Don't want to get AIDS off the ball,'' he said, trotting back to his position.

  What a twat.

  From the line-out, I got the ball myself and dodged past Robbins and some other wheezers before Wilson brutally shoulder-barged me off the pitch. I appealed for a foul.

  ''Can't take it, Jonny, don't play the game,'' shrugged Wadey.

  Wiping mud and rain from my eyes, I organized the pack and watched the spider-web strands of the backs radiating from the knot. Behind the flankers and the number 8, I eyeballed Wilson angrily as we waited for Wadey's ''Ready? Touch. Engage.''

  ''Ball in now!'' yelled Wilson, but our pack was stronger and, with an almighty forward-heave, the number 8 back-heeled the ball to me.

  Stewart having let me down earlier, I decided to go on a mazy run of my own. No-one cried encouragement as I headed for the try-line, dodging Robbins, dodging Coleman, then Wilson erupted from nowhere, bashing into my chest and knocking me sideways. The ball spilled from my hands. I sat up in the mud, screaming ''High tackle!'' at Wadey.

  ''Play on,'' said Wadey.

  Then, in a ruck, Wilson scraped down my shin with his studs.

  ''He could have broken my leg, sir,'' I protested, blinking back tears.

  ''Play on,'' said Wadey, ''And play the game.''

  ''Having a good time, Jenny?'' snarled Wilson. ''Every time you get the ball, I'm gonna make you bleed, you fucking queer.''

  He was as good as his word. He shoulder-charged me hard in the ribs then, in another ruck, dug his fingernails into my face to scrape off some skin. It stung like fury.

  ''Blood injury,'' said Wade, tossing me his handkerchief. ''Clean yourself up.''

  I stood on the 22 in the hammering rain, my soaked shirt clinging to my chest, my legs and face smeared with mud, my hair plastered to my head, my face sluiced with rainwater, this manky white cloth pressed to my face, yelling at Walton to r
un or fling it wide to Gray. Then, in a co-ordinated action, Wilson, Robbins, Stewart and some others jumped on me. I didn't even have the ball. Wilson stamped hard on my back and I cried out in agony as his boot landed under my rib-cage. Then he kicked me hard in the thigh and dead-legged me.

  ''Penalty-try,'' said Wade. ''Do that again, Wilson, you're off.''

  As I lay in the mud trying to catch my breath, Stewart twisted my hair and muttered into my ear that tomorrow, after school, he and his mates were going to 'do' me.

  ''We're gonna break your fucking legs, Peters. We're gonna smash your fucking ankles with baseball bats then we're gonna set fire to you and watch you burn to death.''

  Suddenly I lost it, you know? Like totally totally lost it. There was this kind of wet smack as my right fist crashed into his cheek, then a left-hand jab knocked him backwards, a knuckle-bruising straight right arm, a punch in his fat, flabby gut and an uppercut to the jaw which lifted him off his feet as the other boys yelled 'Fight fight fight fight' and Wadey feebly blew his feeble little whistle. Furious beyond thought, acting on animal instinct, I leapt at him, kicking him hard in the balls and smashing my fist twice against his skull. ''Come on, you cunt! You wanna a piece of me? Eh? A piece of me?'' Then, as Stewart writhed and squirmed in the mud, I charged after Timothy Wilson, my once-best friend. What the fuck was wrong with him? We'd known each other like forever.

  Dancing in fury, I hammered my right fist against his cheek then against his jaw then into his sick fucking mouth. I felt blood on my knuckles. I didn't care. His nose was mine. I just wanted to break it, break it forever, and drove my fist into it with a liberating yell of absolute Victory. As it burst, and his blood spattered my face, he collapsed groaning on the grass and a red mist obscured my vision. I jumped on his chest, screaming and hitting him over and over again, tasting his blood on my lips, pounding his face, pounding his nose, mashing the bastard's face to tiny little pieces.

  As Wilson's nose broke again under my knuckles, a million people seemed to dive in, Gray, Walton, Robbins, Wadey… I elbowed Mr Wade violently in the ribs as he tried to contain me against his chest then smacked Gray on the side of the head.

  ''Fuck off!'' I screamed, wriggling after Wilson again. He was crawling backwards, blood pouring from his massively mega-busted nose, absolute terror etched on his face. Stewart lay groaning in the mud. Then Hellfire appeared, rugby-tackling me round the knees, sending me crashing to the grass. As I struggled up, he slapped my face. Shocked, I blurted ''You can't do that, sir.'' He slapped me again, then sat on me with Gray while Wadey went ballistic and Stewart and Wilson crawled away, grateful for the intervention. Maxton had run away. The others, a massive ring of about fifty boys, were white with terror. Gray kept muttering for me to stay calm while Hellfire said nothing. Gray, I think, was crying.

  Eventually they let me up but I sat on the grass, breathing hard, a snorting bull in a ring demanding Wilson's brains with braised leeks and a nice Pinot Noir, still furious, still clenching my fists angrily, still wanting that blood wet and warm on my knuckles.

  ''What the hell, Peters?'' shouted Wade.

  ''You saw what was happening!'' I shouted back. ''You saw it all, you bastard. And you did nothing to stop it. Nothing! Because I'm gay, you let them knock me about. You're a fucking disgrace, sir.''

  Choking down my anger, I stalked to the changing-room, feeling the blood drying on my face and a searing ache in my seemingly completely crushed knuckles compete with every other area of pain in my body. I sat on the bench, dejected and angry, and peeled off my sopping, mud-splattered, blood-spattered rugby-shirt then prised off my boots and stripped off my socks and shorts as the First XV hearties gathered around me in a semi-circle and the other kids, the swots, the licks, the keenos, the slackers melted away into the recessed shadows of the changing-room. I squinted up at familiar faces made brutally hard with loathing. My heart turned to lead and the metallic aluminium tang of fear tainted my tongue. This had been years in the making and perhaps, for a million reasons, it had to happen.

  As they beat me and kicked me and lashed me to the metal peg-frame with their ties, like they were crucifying me, the last movement of Mahler 2, which I'd heard with my lovely Alistair, who'd never hurt anyone, ever, resounded in my aching head – rise again, I shall rise again. Though my stomach felt hollowed out and sickness fluttered in the base of my throat, I just prayed they wouldn't break any bones or burn me. Blood trickled from my nose. I heard people laughing, especially when someone pulled down my shorts and someone else took a photo. My mouth was dry as an overheated sand-tray. I squirmed, naked, vulnerable, nausea rising through my throat, my heart thumping like a crazy child banging a tin drum and my stomach floating somewhere in the empty, dead, sucking vacuum of outer space. I could hear the roar of blood in my ears. Some Sixth Former waved his locker key in front of me, said he was going to carve me up, then slashed across my bare chest, drawing an angry red diagonal over my ribs and making me wince. Then he dragged the key down my left thigh. Boys were filming this. My knees wobbled like a windsock in a hurricane. My muscles turned to water. I felt urine dribbling down the inside of my thigh, pooling round my bare foot. I began to cry properly, bloody snot bubbling out of my nose. My chest heaved. I pulled at my bonds, sobbing ''Please please please let me go. I won't tell anyone. Please.'' The metal frame rattled, like the hollow derision of laughing skeletons. Beyond the grins, my class-mates watched in a mixture of curiosity, loathing and anger. ''Someone…'' I whispered thickly, ''Help me… please… help me…'' I rattled the frame weakly as someone returned with a shout of triumph and a plastic cup brimful to overflowing with straw-coloured piss.

  ''Are you thirsty, Jenny? You must be thirsty. Several of us contributed to your afternoon drink, so there's plenty for you.''

  The faces, shiny with sweat and bright with excitement, closed in. Someone chanted 'Drink the piss, drink the piss.' As I tightened my lips and clenched my jaw, someone's bony fingers burrowed into my skull, thumb pressing into my eyeball, and another kneed my balls so I had to open my mouth. The first boy twisted his fingers in my hair and yanked my face upwards so his mate could tip the piss into my mouth. It splashed over my teeth and chin but I couldn't spit it all out. I had to swallow some, or drown. I sobbed frantically, the musty, salty taste clinging to my tongue like fur, then the rest was poured slowly over my head. It dripped down my face as I writhed against my bonds

  Someone slapped my face. ''Say it, you queer. Say 'I'm a fucking little queer'.'' He slapped me again, spat in my face.

  I was almost unconscious now. Every part of me throbbed with an indescribably white-hot intensity. Blood trickled from a dozen cuts. Drunk on pain, I mumbled ''I'm a fucking little queer.'' Another punch burst my nose. ''I'm a cock-sucking, shit-stabbing, shirt-lifting poof.''

  I could feel blood in my mouth, feel it flowing over my face and chin. I heard some of the others telling him to leave me and him screaming ''Say it! Say it!'' My vision dimmed so I could only see him through some hazy fog. My knees buckled. But for the ties lashing me to the metal -frame, I would have collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  ''Say it!'' he bawled, kneeing me viciously in the balls. I felt really sick as another tsunami of agony sweep through my poor, battered frame, and I knew what I had to say. I knew what Leo needed me to say. I knew what Paulus needed to me say, what Shelton and Ali and Niall Hill, what every 'fucking little queer' in the whole wide bigoted world needed me to say, what you, my reader, need me to say. Gathering blood into my swollen mouth, I sprayed it in his face.

  ''Go get a life,'' I said contemptuously, ''You sad, twisted loser.''

  Everyone seemed to go totally mental, slashing me with their locker keys, scoring my skin with angry red lines and someone filming my pain, misery and the terror shining from my eyes. I screamed till I was hoarse and somewhere, sometime, I moaned like a calf on a barbed wire fence and, to a chorus of boos and 'ews,' threw up down my chest.

  A firestorm raged throu
gh my body. My face was swelling, my eyes puffing, my thighs blackening, my chest purpling. I could feel blood, wet and sticky, on my lips, on my gums, on my cheeks, on the places where they had stamped with their studs, and I forgave them. They didn't understand. They were simply following the lead their parents had given them, the lead their teachers had given them, the lead the straight, heteronormative, adult world had given them, the lead their law-makers and media had given them. They were products of their contexts, prisoners of their culture, trapped in a swamp of bile, hatred, vitriol and viciousness. However much money their parents earned, their parents had failed because their sons were frightened, bigoted bullies. It wasn't their fault. They didn't know what they were doing. They didn't understand. They were not allowed to.

  Someone reached up to my blazer, hanging on the hook above my bleeding head.

  ''You don't belong here, you queer little fuck. You never did. You never will.''

  He ripped the badge with the golden wheatsheaf-and-crown from the breast pocket, flung it contemptuously into the urine pooled round my feet and wrote 'QUEER' on my chest in massive letters with a thick black board-marker. I vomited again then closed my eyes while the pain rolled over me like ocean waves.