I accidentally flicked open the blade cover. Dad’s gritty stubble and my almost invisible fur snowed together on to the white porcelain sink.
Lying on my chest, my front ribs sank into my back.
Thirsty now, I needed a glass of water.
I got a glass of water. Water in Lyme Regis tastes of paper. I couldn’t get to sleep on my side. My bladder’d ballooned.
I took a long piss, wondering if girls’d like me more if I had more scars. (All I’ve got is a nick on my thumb where I was bitten by my cousin Nigel’s guinea pig when I was nine. My cousin Hugo said the guinea pig had myxomatosis and I’d die, in foaming agony, thinking I was a rabbit. I believed him. I even wrote a will. The scar’s nearly gone now but it bled like shook-up cherryade at the time.)
Lying on my back, my back ribs pressed into my chest.
Too hot, I took my pyjama top off.
Too cool, I put my pyjama top on.
The cinema’d be emptying after Chariots of Fire now. The lady with the torch’d be going up and down the aisles putting popcorn cones and Fruit Gum boxes and empty Malteser bags into a bin bag. Sally from Blackburn and her new boyfriend’d be stepping outside, saying what a great film it’d been, though they’d’ve been snogging and stroking each other all the way through. Sally’s boyfriend’d be saying, ‘Let’s go to a disco.’ Sally’d answer, ‘No. Let’s go to the camper van. The others won’t be back for a while.’
That song by UB40 called ‘One In Ten’ thumped up through the bones of Hotel Excalibur.
The moon’d dissolved my eyelids.
Time’d turned to treacle.
‘Oh sod soddity sod it and sod Craig sodding Salt too, the sodding sod!’
Dad’d fallen over the carpet.
I didn’t let him know he’d woken me for two reasons: (a) I wasn’t ready to forgive him; (b) he was banging into things like a comedy drunk and pub fumes wafted off him and if he was going to bollock me for using his shaver, tomorrow morning’d be better. Dean Moran’s right. Seeing your Dad pissed’s dead disturbing.
Dad made his way to the bathroom like he was in zero gravity. I heard him undo his zip. He tried to piss quietly on to the porcelain.
Piss drummed on the bathroom floor.
A wavery second later it chundered into the bog.
The piss lasted forty-three seconds. (My record’s fifty-two.)
He pulled out loads of bog paper to mop up the spillage.
Then Dad switched on the shower and got in.
Maybe a minute passed before I heard a ripping noise, a dozen plastic pings, a thump and a growly Sod it!
I opened my eyes a slit and nearly yelled in fright.
The bathroom door’d opened by itself. Dad stood with his head in a turban of shampoo wielding a broken shower-rail. Stark raving nuddy, he was, but right where my sack-and-acorn is, Dad’s got this wobbling chunky length of oxtail. Just hanging there!
His pubes’re as thick as a buffalo’s beard! (I’ve only got nine.)
The grossest sight I ever saw.
Dad’s snorey skonks and flobberglobbers’re impossible to sleep through. No wonder my parents don’t sleep in the same bedroom. The shock of seeing Dad’s thing’s dying down now. A bit. But will I just wake up one morning and find that rope between my legs? It horrifies me to think that about fourteen years ago the spermatozoon that turned into me shot out of that.
Will I be some kid’s dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine? I’ve never even ejaculated, apart from in a dream of Dawn Madden. Which girl’s carrying the other half of my kid, deep in those intricate loops? What’s she doing right now? What’s her name?
Too much to think about.
I s’pose Dad’ll have a hangover tomorrow morning.
Today morning.
Chances of us flying my kite on the beach at the crack of dawn?
Big fat zero.
‘The wind blows north,’ Dad had to shout, ‘from Normandy, over the Channel, smacks into these cliffs and ally-oop, a thermal updraught! Perfect for kites!’
‘Perfect!’ I shouted too.
‘Breathe this air in deep, Jason! Good for your hayfever! Sea air’s chock full of ozone!’
Dad hogged the kite spool so I took another warm jam doughnut.
‘Tonic for the troops, eh?’
I smiled back. It’s epic being up at the crack of dawn. A red setter raced ghost-dogs through the bellyflopping waves on the shore. Shale pooed from the cliffs off towards Charmouth. Mucky clouds lidded the sunrise but today was bags windier and