run-of-the-mill sexual assault.

I guess it was a classic run-of-the-mill sexual assault. I hadn’t thought about it in a long while. Until one of my wife’s friends said something, which made me think about it. Back then, I didn’t know any poofs. None of us did. They existed only on the telly, mainly BBC 1. Larry Gayson with his limp wrist and double entendres. Or that guy that was the butt of all jokes in Are You Being Serviced?

He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. His face was hidden. Just his hand was there. Pulling down my zip. The tips of his fingers snuffling around inside my boxers. He squeezed my cock like the wrong-sized, rubber-hose fitting for a washing machine.

I sat quite still. It seemed rude not to. His mouth was open and he stunk of fag smoke and beer as he jerked and tugged. His jaggy silver hair with the too long side-parting that he flicked over his bald spot, bobbled up and down as he swallowed me. He’s pushed his thick glasses up to his forehead. When at last he looked up, his eyes were like that of a strange animal. He got angry because he couldn’t pop the faded Wrangler button. And had to go up and under my boxers and my balls. I gasped as he stuck a finger up my ass and wiggled.

Framed photographs of his son, who was my mate, hung on the wall. And his daughter on holiday. She was laughing and leaning forward in another frame, with an arm around her blonde friend, Vanda. Not often, but sometimes they’d felt sorry for us. Danced the slow weave of a mooney with us at the Guild Disco. I was just up to her chest and she’d hold me close enough to press against her, almost taste her perfume and to dream. I’d carved her name into the bottom board of a fence down the shortcut. L and xxx      

The window was open and outside I heard the lads kicking a ball about. Some dolls in plastic cases, dressed in national costume—his wife collected them, even though she was scared of flying and never been abroad—watching eyes from the top of the wardrobes, threw light back into the room. A hanging scroll and homily that ended with the everyday: There’s No Place Like Home.

For a moment, Mr Ryan sat very still, staring ahead of him. We heard the creak of someone on the stairs and bounce of steps in the lobby. In a hoarse voice, he said, ‘Don’t Tell Any Cunt!’

He scooped up a can of Pale Ale and downed it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as his son burst into the room.

Rab was sunburnt and red faced, a size-four Mitre under his arm. ‘I was lookin for yeh,’ he said.

 ‘I was lookin for yeh, tae,’ I replied, my voice higher than normal.

‘The two of yeh, get oot and play,’ growled Mr Ryan. ‘Gee a man a bit of peace.’

I squinted sideways at him, trembling. He just looked the same. He looked normal. He didn’t look like a poof, or act like a poof. I would never tell anyone, because they’d never believe me. Worse, they’d think I was a poof too, and make jokes about me and try and nip and feel my bum as if I was a big Jessie.

Rab and me played heidy-kicks. Chalmer’s gate was one goalpost and Ryan’s gate was the other. I didn’t usually beat him, but I did that day. I looked up to see Mr Ryan looking down at us, watching the game with a can of beer in his hand.  

‘Yeh were fuckin lucky,’ said Rab, in an offhand way. It was true that one of my shots had ricocheted off the kerb and wrong-footed him. He flung the ball up in the air to start a new game.

‘I wisnae.’

I allowed the ball to hit off my shoulder, and it rolled onto the side of the pavement and went beneath Chalmer’s car.

My voice ranged up and down. ‘Yeh were lucky!’   

Usually when we squared up to each other in the middle of the road in that stagey and self-conscious way, I always backed down. Not now. I poured into him. Flinging punches and squealing, ‘I’ll kick yer fuckin heid in.’

Mr Ryan had to pull me off him, shaking me sensible with one arm. Rab was bawling with a cut nose and lip. He’d also a bit of a shiner. And I felt sorry for him as his dad pushed him towards the stairs, muttering about he was never to play with me again.

Mr Ryan turned on me. ‘Get back tae ye ain house, yah stupid, bugsie, wee bastard.’

‘Yeh’d know,’ I screamed, bent over greeting.

Mr Ryan slapped me so hard, I thought he’d broken something and my legs buckled. I rolled sideways, feeling for the latent heat imprinted in my cheeks. ‘Yer mother is nothin but a fuckin drunken whore,’ he said. ‘And yeh can tell her it was me that said so.’

We sized each other up, before I skulked away. He knew I never would or could.

I met Rab years later in my local pub. He looked like his da did then, and that wasn’t a compliment. He’d come looking for me. All maudlin, because his da had died. He went into the laughing and crying routine of what a great man his dad was.

I kept the drink flowing and nodding along. Asked the usual kinds of questions about his mum and sisters. I didn’t want the hassle of asking any hard questions. He’d been a childhood friend, but was nothing to me now.

‘Yeh’ll need tae say something at the funeral,’ he flung an arm around my shoulder. ‘My da always kept an eye oot for yeh, and he was a great admirer of whit yeh huv done.’

He insisted on taking a selfie of us at the bar. His blue cagoule crinkling as he held his arm up above his head as he tweaked our images.

‘I cannae,’ I said.

‘How no,’ he asked.

‘I’d get too upset.’

He hugged my shoulder, his eyes blurred with tears. ‘I know how yeh feel. I cannae get o’er it either. He was a great man.’