I was sat on a grass bank with Chris, maybe my first real girl-friend. We were quite alone in the world. I found my hand touching her right thigh and I almost but not quite innocently began to ruffle her skirt. ‘I heard myself asking if she liked me but a familiar voice in front of us broke the spell saying: ‘I think it’s time to go back to the house’. It was the braille teacher who later was to be such a positive influence in my late junior learning life. This sight thing taunted me again as I reflected upon the incident many times with some fear, shame and certainly excitement. Yes, she was a girl and I a boy and we were not supposed to mix although we played openly together in the grounds, on swings, bikes, and even the apparatus where we could hang up-side-down and hope to see the girls’ nickers!!!Smile.. Certainly I was being awakened by a new pleasure interest in parts of my own body, especially between the legs. I wondered what I might have discovered inside Chris’s clothes and why I should even want to know these things.
There was the other side too. I wondered what it would be like if she fumbled into my clothes and how exciting this could be. I carried a conviction that it was all very wrong and dirty and did this mean that I was all wrong and dirty too? I wondered if the braille teacher had seen us, if he had spoken to others about the event, if they all knew and if they all thought I was dirty and wrong. But it was never mentioned again. It was as if I got off physically but struggled mentally to avoid those muddled feelings of guilt and shame. It was becoming part of my being to shut off things because there was no one to share, no books or pictures, let alone TV or films, to help me understand how normal I was; and Chris too, of course.
I felt I had to keep it all within myself, my own created mental unshared stress. Once around that time, I woke up feeling very sick in the middle of the night. I tried to make my way to a bathroom away along two corridors but was sick on route. In the morning, there was a fuss about sick on the floor and I must have looked pale but no way could I admit to having been sick in the night. Pathetic I know and even knew then; but roger was learning to keep his private life to himself , thinking he was unique a special case and, yes, maybe not normal.
