Please note: this story contains strong language.
It was the way your mouth pulled into a grin and showed off your big shiny teeth when I passed you the ball. It was my first playground match, you scored, and we hit it off from then on. It was only a kickabout with a tennis ball at break time, but it was the place to be. Horsing about, hoping the girls would see us, chatting about whatever film was on the telly last night. There were loads of other lads and we all had a great laugh, but you could say we had a connection: Clint Eastwood. I loved him, but you were the one who did as many push ups as it took to get that big vein to pop in the centre of your forehead, just like Clint’s. You were obsessed.
That was Third Year. Then the summer holidays arrived. I liked to sleep late but you’d wake me up at ten a.m. with a stone chucked at my window. I’d stumble downstairs, open the door and you’d swagger in with your best Mr Fitzpatrick from P.E. impression: ‘Come on lad, get the fuck up, sun’s shining.’ But first, food. My Mum and Dad were divorced, and Dad was never in. He had the fridge of a divorced man. Empty. Except for a block of Lorne sausage in the freezer. I’d prise off a couple of slices and slide them under the grill. In ten minutes breakfast was served, blackened on a bed of Sunblest with a big dollop of red sauce.
Then we’d wander the town, bored out of our brains. This was more than forty years ago, but you were on a health kick even then. It wasn’t just the push ups, you wanted to eat healthy too. At midday you’d insist on the grotty wee bakers on Titchfield Street . ‘They do a magic salad roll’. The roll was one of those crusty, chewy things, rammed with sliced tomato, iceberg lettuce and cold meat. They’d give it to you in a paper bag and there was so much salad cream it was leaking from the corners. We’d walk off down the street, strewn with the empty bags of earlier customers, wolfing these down, yellow cream spurting out of the rolls as we bit into them, dripping on our t-shirts.
Afternoons we’d go to the park and chat more about movies. We’d both taped Dirty Harry and knew it by heart. You’d do Clint’s soliloquy on the Magnum .44. ‘Being this is the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you have to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky? Well, do you punk?’ You always got the right combination of menace and taunting to be exactly like Clint and I’d do the black guy lying in the doorway: ‘I gots to know.’
You loved Arnie as well, but I thought he was ridiculous. I’d grown out of Star Wars and was getting into the arty stuff on you’d get on BBC2 – mostly French movies with naked ladies in them, which I’d watch on the black and white portable in my room. But for you, Arnie was the man. Those muscles were something to aim for and with all those push ups your muscles got big. Meanwhile, I stayed skinny and pale. But we accepted each other’s quirks and enthusiasms and never once took the piss.
There were other boys in the crowd. Dunny, Strang, Parkie and Gordon Taylor. Good guys. One day there was a big rock concert on the TV all day but the weather was brilliant and nobody was going to stay inside to watch a bunch of poncy pop stars like Duran Duran prancing around a stage. Instead we took a stroll to the BMK. This abandoned factory stood open to whoever chose to enter. A locked entrance, sure, but there was an open window round the back that we easily clambered through. Up the stairs we went, running free into a huge empty space lined with massive windows. The floor was covered in chunks of plaster, bits of newspaper that had been used as shite rags by dossing tramps, and up at the far end there was a stack of black toilet seats leaning against the wall. Dunny got to the first, automatically snatching one up and skimming it across the floor. I had to jump to avoid being taken out at the ankles. Then you took one and threw it like a discus, right through a window. Then we all grabbed a toilet seat and within five minutes not a window was left. The clatter of falling glass was incredible, and then the poised silence as we looked at what we’d done, gradually filled by sirens in the distance. We were down the stairs in seconds, trying to stop laughing because it was slowing us down, all scurrying off in different directions as soon as were outside. Me and you headed for the ABC for Clint’s latest. Pale Rider. We couldn’t concentrate though, gripping each other’s arms and gutting ourselves all the way through.
This was the kind of stuff we used to do. Daft adventures, stupid stuff. Time was infinite and the days were long. As we got older, we started attending the local meat markets. I never pulled but you always did. Those push ups really paid off. Finally, I found a girl of my own and started uni. You joined the police and later I heard you’d become a teacher, a development which was fucking bizarre. But we’d lost touch by then, as school friends often do. I thought I’d always see you again, but this was before anyone had mobile phones or even the internet. We both just slipped into different lives. But I still think about you, Tam the Bam, whenever I want to go back to those far-away sunny days.