My Street Boy

Our street is, as they say, “bottom of the heap,” you know, in distinct contrast to old Frank Sinatra who proclaimed in song he wanted to be “Top of the heap.”

Back some time in the middle of the twentieth century some politicians and town planners decided they wanted to build a sort of Utopia for us down the bottom people. Utopia, “No place,” was about right.

They looked around and found a big flat area and said, “We’ll build our Utopia here.”

In some ways it wasn’t a bad idea. The aim was to build a town in which not only we of the “underclass,” as I believe we are called could live cheaply, but the middleclass would also live here. You know, people like teachers, bank managers, accountants and other professional people. It would give a “balanced community,” they said.

Do you know, it actually seemed to work for a while. As the town was built they put in not only houses, but a so-called “Model Industrial Estate”, schools, town centre, two theatres, and heaps of churches, and lots of other things they thought we ought to have like local shopping areas and open spaces.

The professionals moved in along with us “also rans,” and they started their clubs and charities and all those things that were supposed to take place in the Utopia, and all seemed to be going along quite nicely.

Then after a while the professionals decided that they had given enough to the town and started to move out from the dusty plain and into new houses in and around the foothills, and the town saw no more of them,

That was about the time Ed and I moved in. We had just got married and were very pleased to get a house straightaway. I was only seventeen and Ed was twenty three. The thing was, I got pregnant to Ed, or at least I thought I had.

My mum and dad always told me if I came home with a “bellyful of trouble” I was out. They were almost as good as their word, except they told Ed if he didn’t marry me they’d report him for having sex with an underage girl. So Ed bit the bullet and we got hitched.

All this happened rather quickly, and it was a couple of weeks into marital bliss when I found I wasn’t pregnant after all. I had what I think they call, “A false pregnancy.”

Ed was rather annoyed about this and gave the distinct impression he wouldn’t have married me if it wasn’t for the pregnancy that wasn’t. That was a pity because I really liked him, and I could have had lots of other boys if I’d chosen to.

What I really want to get to, though, is that the place we got put in was what they called, “A Double Unit.” That meant two small houses struck together, with a party wall so thin you could practically hear the people next door thinking. In fact, as I shall relate a bit further on, you could hear a lot of things through those walls.

In the unit next to us was Glynda. She was single mum with a son called Eric. Eric was about five when I first got to know him and a poor little bugger he was.

Glynda was a peroxide blonde about twenty five years old, and the dark roots of her hair always seemed to be showing. I suppose you could say she was buxom with big boobs that she did her best to show off, much to Ed’s interest.

Her interest in Eric was negligible and the poor little kid ran around dirty with a constantly running nose, and when he started school it was disgraceful the way she sent him off there. I don’t know where she got his clothes from, but they looked like charity shop chuck outs and never fitted the poor little sod properly.

On the other hand, Glynda and her mate Agnes from four doors down the street often went out dressed up to the nines and little Eric would be left on his own. Mind you, Agnes was a single mum as well, and she had three kids that got left.

I didn’t fall in at first what those two got up to, but later I found out. At one stage Glynda had met up with one of those interstate reps, you know, blokes out on the road trying to sell their company’s products.

It seems this bloke took her to one of those posh restaurants down in the city, and then spent the night with Glynda. Word must have got around that there was this bird that would open her legs for night out, and in no time she had lots of them knocking at her door.

Nice company cars would stop outside her place and out she’d trot all dolled up, and off they’d go. Sometimes they wouldn’t be back until one in the morning, and then if I was awake I could hear the bloke groaning and moaning through the party wall, and the bed going squeak squeak. Glynda never seemed to make much noise, not like I did when Ed and I did it. The thing was, I don’t think Glynda was interested; perhaps she didn’t even like the blokes and was only paying them off for her night out.

I think things must have got a bit too much for her, so she recruited Agnes, and then you’d see them both all dressed up getting into the car with a couple of blokes. Sometimes when they came back they’d all go into Glynda’s place, and then there’d be a lot more noise.

I don’t really know how those blokes could stand being in Glynda’s place. I’ve been in it a few times and after the first time I tried to avoiding going inside. The place was a rubbish tip and it stank like a sewer.

I got to know Eric when one day he came to my door saying his ball had come over my place and could he get it. It was a bloody shame. He was a sweet little kid and that was amazing given the way he got treated by Glynda. She’d scream and swear at him and hit him something awful. Then going off and leaving him for hours on his own…well…”

Anyway, I told him to get his ball, and if he’d like a drink and a piece of cake to come in. Well, after that one thing led to another and I got called Aunty Frances and he’d be in my place as often as he could. In fact I often had him spend the night in our spare bedroom rather than have him left all alone while his mum was out whoring.

Glynda had no objection to him coming to my place and was obviously glad to have him out of her way. I even got him a few games and books that were going out cheap at the Salvation Army Op Shop, and he’d sit at the kitchen table or on the lounge room floor playing or reading for hours.

You know, I got to love that kid as if he was my own. I used to wipe his nose and get him to wash. I even fed him most of the time in the end.

Ed didn’t care about Eric one way or another but he did start after we’d been married a couple of years, to moan about us not having a kid of our own. This brings me to my life with Ed.

He may have complained about my not being pregnant when we got married, and accusing me of trapping him, but this didn’t stop him pounding into me nearly every night. Of course, I wanted a baby myself, so I went off the pill I’d put myself on when I found I wasn’t pregnant, but nothing happened.

After a year or so Ed said there must be something wrong with me so why didn’t I see a doctor. I went to see the doctor and he did all sort of things to me and said I was okay, and it must be Ed. Well that really got Ed annoyed and he said, “There’s nothing wrong with me, look at all the stuff I stick in you”, and he wouldn’t go and see the doctor.

I must say my sex life with Ed wasn’t what it might have been. I got this book by a woman doctor in California called something like, “Women and Sex.” She wrote about a lot of things couples could do so I suggested some of them to Ed.

One of the things I suggested was what the book called “Cunnilingus” Well, I got myself where Ed could see my sex organ clearly and he took one look and said, “Yuk, that looks horrible,” and that was that.

As I came to realise, Ed’s idea of sex was to shove it in me, shoot his load, pull out and go to sleep. Sometimes if he didn’t shoot too quick I got that beautiful feeling, but it was a gamble.

To give him credit Ed stayed around for ten years trying to get me pregnant, and then he gave up. Well he didn’t really give up. What I mean is he found himself a woman with three kids whose husband had left her and said he was going to live with her. “She’s already got three,” he said, “So that proves she’s okay, and I’ve got to prove that I’m man enough to get a woman pregnant.”

There was a lot more said than that, but I don’t want to get too sordid. The thing is, he’s been with her for five years now and she still hasn’t got pregnant.

While all this was going on our street and the streets around us started to run down hill. We came to call our street, “The Dumping Ground.” It was here and in the other streets nearby the housing authorities’ dumped single parents, poor old people with no superannuation and people who had lived in the better parts of the town but had got behind with their rent.

In the meantime nearly all those people, the professional ones, had gone from the town leaving behind the semi-skilled and unskilled people on low incomes. Things got worse and worse in our street. People were always in debt; the cops often had to come and break up what they called “Domestics”, and sometimes fights in the street. The houses, even though they weren’t all that old began to look tatty. Mostly nobody had bothered with their gardens, which they used as sort of places to dump unwanted things like worn out cars, and nearly all the cars in our street were worn out.

I’d made a lovely garden and grew my own vegetables and flowers. Ed never lifted a finger to help, and he said it was a waste of time. I suppose it was for him, because he didn’t bother with flowers and hardly ever ate vegetables. His idea of a meal was fish and chips.

Even inside most of the houses were a shambles if not filthy, and that was one of the things that hurt when Ed left. I’d tried so hard to make a good home for us, and that’s not easy when you live in a street like ours and your husband’s on low wages.

So back to little Eric. He started school not long after we moved in. You know what it’s like when you first go to school, you bring home pictures you’ve made and say things like, “I made this for you mummy.” Well from what I could tell when he came home with his first picture Glynda took a look at it and said something like, “Lot of rubbish,” screwed it up and threw it away.

If I’d been Eric I think I’d have cried my heart out, but not him. I think it all went deep inside with him. After that it was “I made this for you Aunty Frances.” I used to have his paintings stuck up all over the place.

As the years went by Eric spent more and more time at my place and when he went to high school it was on my kitchen table he did most of his home work. I almost felt I’d like to adopt him completely, but Glynda was too crafty for that. She got extra welfare money for having him.

Eric had been a scrawny little thing when I first knew him, thin and pasty faced. I don’t know whether it was all the food I gave him or what, but he seemed to fill out and get some healthy colour about him as he grew up.

When Ed left me I had to go on welfare money and I tried to get cleaning work, but the way things were there were a lot of other women after those jobs. I got a couple of offices to clean, but that was all. I managed though, but had to watch every cent.

Glynda made me an offer one day. “You’re a good looking bird, Fran,” she said. “I could help you have a bit of a good time. I’ll find you some interstate reps and you can come out with Agnes and me. Free meals and booze in posh restaurants and all you’ve got to do is open your legs for them. It’s a good night out for just lying there. If they ask you to do anything you don’t like you can tell them to piss off. I mean, you’re not a prostitute, your just being grateful and friendly.”

I said “No thanks.” I didn’t add that I still had a bit of self respect, and if any bloke was going to stick his shaft in me it would be because I liked him and wanted him to.

Glynda got a bit nasty at my refusal and said, “I was only trying to do you a favour, still, if you’re too stuck up…”

We left it at that. I didn’t want any rows with her. Let her live the way she wanted to and I’d live my way.

Her years of neglecting Eric and her continuing neglect began to pay off increasingly in my favour. Even though Ed could be a bit of a sod to live with, at least he’d been company of a sort. Mind you, when he was at home he spent most of his time in front of the tele watching sport or soapies, but at least he was there. It was Eric who was my salvation.

As I said, he spent more and more time in my place doing his homework and sometimes helping me in the garden. He didn’t mind eating my vegetables. Glynda and Agnes went out with their blokes more and more often. I sometimes think that every bloke interstate must be a rep because they certainly kept coming.

It’s strange how people can see the splinter in someone else’s eye but can’t see the plank in their own. One day Glynda poked her nose over the back fence and without preamble said, “Do you know what I caught Eric doing in bathroom this morning?”

I said I didn’t know.

“He was wanking. The filthy little bastard was tossing himself off. Bloody little animal.” The really vicious touch to this was that it was said within Eric’s hearing. Of all the things that boy had suffered at that woman’s hands, this must have been almost the worst humiliation at all.

I said nothing but thought a lot. I’d had to do the female equivalent a few times myself and I bet Glynda and Agnes had too. Anyway, the boy was fifteen, nearly sixteen at the time, so why shouldn’t he relieve himself of sexual tensions? No harm in it whatever the Vicar says. And I bet the Vicar’s has had a go at it too.

What’s more, I already knew about Eric’s masturbating. He’d been doing it for at least a couple of years. I knew because if the party walls between the houses are paper thin, then they are even thinner between the rooms of the houses. I could hear him gasping and groaning as he ejaculated.

Those who know about these things say that masturbating is not only a response to sexual tensions, but a means of self comfort when there are other tensions you have to deal with. Certainly that boy had enough tensions to deal with in his life.

I was afraid that after his mother’s performance that morning Eric would try to avoid me out of shame. I overcame this by waylaying him as he came home from school.

“Listen, love,” I said, “You’re not to stay away from me because of what your mother said. I understand the need for young blokes to relieve themselves, young girls too, and not so young men and women. So you come inside with me and we’ll have a cup of tea and something to eat.”

He sort of leaned his head against my shoulder for a moment and said, “Thanks, Frances. I really love you, you know.” (We’d dropped the Aunty by now).

“I know,” I replied, wanting to cry. “I love you too, sweetheart.”

I sometimes wonder about the way people turn out. I do a lot of reading. Not that I can afford to buy many books, but I use the public library. I remember reading one bloke’s book; he was a psychiatrist and he’d been in a concentration camp during the Second World War. He said that the terrible conditions in the camps brought out the worst in some people and the best in others. “Why that difference?” I wondered.

I’ve heard that kids brought up in bad homes where they are abused and such like, often turn out to be abusers themselves. But not all of them become abusers. There are kids brought up in terrible circumstances who rise above them to make a real success of their lives, and other kids brought up in what look like the best environments who make a mess of themselves.

So I wondered how Eric, brought up in a lousy home with a bitch of a mother, was turning out to be such a sweet kid. I raise this because when he said he loved me and I told him I loved him, I thought perhaps that was the difference; there was someone who loved him.

When he got to sixteen his mother said there was to be no more school and he could go and get a job. What chance did he have to get a job? In our town the unemployment rate was high for everyone, but for youth it was horrendous. There were kids who had dropped out of school hanging around the town shopping centres all day, lots of them getting into trouble with the police.

If Glynda was so keen for him to get work to bring in some money for her, which was her real motive, why hadn’t she gone and got a job all these years? It certainly wasn’t because she wanted to stay home and look after Eric.

This was the time Eric first rebelled. He told her he wasn’t going to leave school, and if she tried to make him he’d clear out and find some way of managing on his own. Glynda baulked at this because even if Eric did go on at school she still got welfare money for him. So she shut up and Eric went on at school for the next two years.

It was hard for Eric because Glynda wouldn’t pay out for a lot of things he needed for school, and just between our selves I did some of the paying on the quiet. Well, I’d had no kids of my own and Eric had almost become like a son to me, so why not strain the budget a bit for him? I mean, if you love someone that’s what you do.

So as Glynda and her mate Agnes carried on with their interstate reps, Eric and I got increasingly close. I don’t really know what those blokes of Glynda’s and Agnes’ saw in them. The years hadn’t been kind to them and they now looked like what they were, blowzy tarts.

Perhaps I shouldn’t judge them. After all, they’d had their woes and their behaviour was probably a way of getting something out of life, and we all have our ways of doing that.

What I objected too was the way they treated the kids they’d brought into this world. It got so that Eric spent almost no time in his mother’s place and more with me.

When he got to the end of his high school years he told me he was going on to do more studies with that TAFE mob (Technical and Further Education). He wanted to be a chef of all things, and they ran a top class course in that.

The only thing was the course cost two thousand dollars. Well, our government is enlightened enough to help out there. The students can learn now and pay later or something like that, and there’s a student allowance.

This was when Eric’s second rebellion took place.

When everything was added up and taken away, a couple of things became obvious. First, at eighteen welfare payments to Glynda for Eric stopped. Second, on the student allowance, when Eric had paid out for all the necessaries, there was going to be precious little for Glynda to get her hooks into.

She told Eric to go and get a job and earn some money or “piss off.” He decided to piss off.

After their row he came in to me to talk things over. I knew what he wanted to ask but was too nervous to, so I did it for him.

“Would you like to come and live with me, Eric?”

“Would I ever,” he yelped.

“Then move in,” I said. After all, he’d practically been living with me for ages, so what was the difference?

He looked a bit abashed and said, “I won’t be able to pay much for board,” he said.

“There are other ways of paying, “I unthinkingly replied.

I don’t think he caught the possible shade of meaning, however.

He moved in a couple of days later, much to my pleasure and Glynda’s relief.

Now if Eric hadn’t cottoned on to the possible meaning to my words about other ways of paying, I had. It had been a long time now since Ed left and I hadn’t opened my legs for anyone.

Mind you, when some of Ed’s work mates heard he’d left me I got plenty of offers, usually along the lines of, “You know I’d do anything for you Frances. Can’t understand why Ed left a lovely looking bird like you,” and all that slimy sort of stuff.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want a bloke. I was still only twenty nine and had plenty of sexual energy, but I didn’t want their sort of bloke. I’d liked Ed, that’s why I let him do it with me in the first place, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever loved him. So if I was going to do anything with another bloke, it was going to be one I was sure I loved this time, and one who loved me, and not one who just wanted to get his leg over.