There is a long path from his school to the gate on Home Lane. The path gets shorter with age. His age. Ice cream vans cram there parasitically. His first intimations of love and death live here. He cannot remember her name, much less her face, but his nine-year-old self held her hand as they negotiated the then-long path. He felt that tender fibrillation and knew he liked it.
He has twice been close to death. He once fell asleep at the wheel on the M5. He shudders that memory away. The car rolled. He walked away. The ice cream vans were the cause of the earlier, more tactable passing of the shadow. A dizzying game of tig. Flattered to be included in the game, the fat little boy evades over-keenly and runs behind the last van. Stop me and buy one. A lorry bears down on him, horn blaring. He can still see the driver's terrified face - it is that close. He is not hit. Nor is he tigged. Good at games.
A god who looks over drunks? Could he/she/it tell even then that the fat little boy would become an unfat drunk. An early shift? Thank God.
On that long path, one of the cool boys (he was in the football team) shows him a pornographic magazine purloined from an older brother. It makes no sense, inspires no curiosity. Sex should be a practical matter, not theoretical. It is just like falling through a hedge - anyone can do it. The art is doing it well. Sex, that is.
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