Graham, Just One Shade

by Guy Lilburne

  I carried on seeing Naomie, but only when I wanted to and we only ever did what I wanted to do. We still had great sex, but from that point on the relationship was only ever about sex. Well, for me at least. We didn’t go anywhere, or do any other ‘couple type’ things anymore. The relationship carried on for another six months or so. Naomie was always trying to be bright and bubbly and was forever hoping that I’d start caring for her again, being just like I used to be, telling her that I loved her again. But that was never going to happen.

  In March 2002 I phoned her at work and just told her that it was over for good. We had been seeing less and less of each other anyway. I wasn’t happy and in truth I don’t think Naomie was either. We had hurt each other too much and too deeply.

  Naomie plagued me for another three months. Phone calls, turning up at my house, sending letters, e-mails, cards. She was making herself ill and ended up moving out of her house to go and stay with her parents because she couldn’t be alone. Her doctor treated her for depression and eventually, after three months, she stopped bothering me when I threatened to go to the police and have a harassment notice served on her.

  Naomie had broken my heart and then I had broken hers. We had both loved each other deeply, but not at the same time. It still makes me sad.

  Chapter Eleven: Holiday Romances! (With my mate Raz.)

  If I could be more like anybody else, I know in this world I’d be more like Raz Dawlins. He’s probably one of the nicest people I know. A lot of blokes his size would be intimidating by their sheer size, but Raz has this gentle giant thing going on. It’s not an act either. He really is as nice as that.

  It never ceases to amaze me why he isn’t dating supermodels! If I’m totally honest I would have to say that he’s funnier than me, nicer looking than me, and more honest than me. The only weak link in his armour is that he’s not as confident as he should be.

  Women are supposed to be more sensitive than us blokes, so why can’t women see these qualities in Raz. If anybody deserves a great looking girlfriend, then it’s Raz. I think the trouble is that sometimes he’s just too nice.

  Raz likes dancing. It’s just a shame that he can’t; at least, not when he’s sober. He still tries, but he has all the grace and natural rhythm of a newly born giraffe that’s trying to stand on its legs for the first time in the moments just after birth. He really isn’t a great dancer, but when he’s pissed he’s magically transformed. He finds some fantastic rhythm and co-ordination. He makes Michael Flattery look like a polio victim in iron leg splints.

  It doesn’t matter what the music is or what the dance is, Raz can do it. He’s a natural mimic, whether it’s with his vocal impressions or his body movements. He stands out on any dance floor because he’s usually the biggest person in the building and he has a constant smile on his face. He knows how to laugh and he knows how to enjoy himself.

  We were in Joe Spoons Irish Bar in the West End in San Antonio, a regular haunt when we are in Ibiza. Raz had drunk enough to have the magical dancing dust sprinkled over him and he took to the floor. I knew he could dance when he’s drunk, but that night he excelled.

  It turned out like some sort of cross between an Irish jig and a modern ballet. He was up on his toes tapping, spinning, jigging and kicking. The dance floor cleared. Some people moved because they didn’t want to get flattened, but most made a circle around Raz and clapped him along, cheering and whistling.

  Raz lapped it up and, of course, attracted a lot of female attention. It’s at moments like that when he’s at his happiest. He shouldn’t be an Area Manager; he should be on tour with ‘River Dance’.

  It was as a result of Raz’s performance on the dance floor that night that we got talking to two American girls. The one girl was really taken with Raz. The other girl and myself were just making up the numbers, but the four of us had a great time and spent the rest of the evening going around the bars together.

  It was obvious from the start that Raz had pulled and I hadn’t but, as a great mate, one of your duties is to keep the other girl occupied if your mate has got off with her friend. Raz has done it for me lots of times and it’s no real hardship, not unless they are a monster of course.

  In the early hours of the morning, the four of us went back to our hotel room. Raz was going to have sex with his American girl. I wasn’t going to have sex with my American girl, but they wouldn’t be separated.

  After a drink in our room, Raz and his girl went out onto the balcony and, after a few minutes, started ‘making out’ as the Americans say. My girl, who I actually fancied quite a lot because she looked like Cindy Crawford and had the same accent, was a bit embarrassed as the sounds of holiday romance came floating into the room on the night breeze. I closed the patio door but the sounds of holiday romance, in England we call them sex grunts, got louder.

  My American friend asked if we could go for a walk or something. So we went back out and walked around the now empty streets of San Antonio. A couple of hours later we walked back into the hotel and went to sit out by the swimming pool. It was a beautiful calm night, warm and still. We had chatted a lot and had got to know each other better. We had even started holding hands as we walked along. It was getting quite romantic. We sat on two sun beds by the pool.

  “Oyy you twat” shouted Raz.

  I looked up and saw Raz and his girl still on the balcony.

  “Hiya mate” I shouted.

  “You’ve fucking locked us out on the balcony. I need a piss, hurry up.”

  “Oh! Sorry mate.”

  We dashed back up to the room and let them inside. Raz really was bursting. He had wanted to pee over the balcony for ages but couldn’t because a security guard was watching them from down by the pool.

  Cindy Crawford shared my bed for the night, but other than a kiss and a cuddle nothing happened. There just wasn’t the chemistry. Six foot away the other girl shared Raz’s bed. There was lots of noisy chemistry coming from their bed all night long. Well, for what remained of it anyway!

  In Corfu we had become regulars in a beach bar called ‘The Diesel Bar’. It was a great place with a very mixed international clientele. We had made lots of friends in the bar and, mostly because of Raz, we were well liked by the bar staff and the other customers.

  One day Raz was chatting up two absolutely beautiful Dutch girls. He had them eating out of the palm of his hand. He was on top form, witty and charming. I sat on a barstool next to him, hardly getting a look in. It was mid-afternoon and we were just wearing shorts. The two beautiful Dutch babes were just wearing G-strings and I have to say they both had fantastic breasts. One of them had inverted nipples and I couldn’t think of anything else other than sucking them to see if they still erected!

  After about five minutes of Raz captivating these two stunners with his easy smile and sense of fun, some thoughtless idiot carelessly discarded a lit cigarette end on the floor without first stubbing it out. OK. It was me, but I didn’t do it deliberately. Raz stood on the cigarette, but he was far too cool to make a fuss or just bend down and take it off the sole of his bare foot. He stuck his leg out behind him and tried to shake it off without the Dutch girls seeing what he was doing, but it had stuck between his toes and was glowing red.

  As the burning pain got more and more severe he started to sweat and shook his leg even harder, all the time continuing his patter for the girls. A few people sitting away from the bar noticed his predicament and people started giggling.

  At this stage, I didn’t realise what was happening, but the pain by now must have been intense. Raz continued to talk to the girls, still shaking his leg out behind him, but his voice started to change. He suddenly started making noises like the old Jack Douglas characters from the ‘Carry On Films’. He was talking almost like a Red Indian chant.

  “So….wayhayyyy ahhh eeee….are you having a good…..hey
yyy ahhhh ohhh….time in Corfu. How….wayyyhayyy ohhh ahhh…..long are you….ohhhh….here for…heyyyy.”

  I thought that he was going fucking mad and by now everyone in the bar was holding their sides and laughing.

  “Do you want to….wayyyyyhaaaaa….ahhhaaa.”

  He was getting louder and the girls just picked their drinks up from off the bar and walked off. Raz reached down and took the burning cigarette from between his toes. I raised a cheek off the barstool and farted. Everybody clapped. I think that they were clapping for Raz’s impromptu performance and not for my fart!

  “Fucking thanks, mate” he said.

  “Sorry mate.”

  In Gran Canaria we decided to go and have a look at the nudist beach in Playa Del Ingles, but not together. Even as best mates there are some lines that don’t need to be crossed. But we had great fun and a huge belly laugh swapping our experiences later on back on the balcony of our hotel.

  Daz said, “Did you notice how many blokes walked into the nudist beach wearing sunhats, sunglasses, short sleeved shirts, camera and binoculars dangling around their necks, socks and sandals on. Just not wearing any pants. No fucking pants. To me that’s not nudism or naturalism. That’s just getting your fucking dick out. In England they’d arrest the fuckers!”

  “And they’re all old fat German people” I laughed.

  “And they don’t just lay there sunbathing like normal people, they stand around in groups pretending to have interesting conversations and looking out to sea with one hand on their hip and one hand shielding their eyes from the sun.”

  “And the blokes come out of the sea with their tackle looking like a stuffed olive sitting on a walnut.”

  “And the women don’t kneel down to sort their towels out. They bend over in front of you so you can see everything.”

  “One woman bent over right in front of me. She had a fanny like an elephant’s arse.”

  We were in fits of laughter and somehow I didn’t think that we had taken nudism very seriously. It was funny really, because Raz and I spend a lot of our time trying to get women naked.

  You might think that waiting at an airport to fly home is boring and tiresome, but I’ve always found that these are great places to have a laugh. You always get a shell-suited family from Manchester wearing white trainers and cheap tattoos.

  You always get the irritating kid that’s driving everybody crazy and his mother keeps threatening him louder and louder, over and over again.

  “You’ll be going straight to bed when you get home if you don’t stop it!”

  And you know damn fine well that the kid will be going to bed at whatever time he pleases, regardless of what he does.

  You always get the bloke who has worn sunglasses every day for the last two weeks and he’s got great big panda eye patches. These blokes usually come from Manchester as well.

  There are always the big beer belly blokes wearing tee shirts with slogans like ‘Benny Hill’s Bar’ or the ‘British Bulldog Bar, Live Sky Sports’ and you know that they have just spent two weeks sitting on plastic chairs at plastic tables listening to English comedians, playing bingo, eating fish and chips and singing ‘Le Viva Espania!’.

  But the funniest thing I ever saw was at Ibiza Airport. I was sitting with Raz having a beer when a middle-aged pot-bellied man in a shell suit and white trainers, with cheap tattoos came and sat opposite us in the departure lounge. He flicked the dark sunglass covers of his thick bottle end glasses up on his forehead. The thickness of his glasses magnified his eyes and the white patches surrounding them. His thick black hair was greased back tight onto his head with either gel or his own natural grease. I think the grease was all natural. I was just being polite.

  Raz squirted a mouthful of beer. We couldn’t look at each other, but the stifled giggles turned to raucous but silent laughter. We were holding our sides and shaking, tears rolling down our cheeks, but in silence and still not daring to look at each other. What made it worse was that the bloke just starred at us without expression. I couldn’t believe it. He must have been used to this sort of reaction, so what was his fucking problem!

  Some girls sitting each side of us also started laughing, but not so silently. But they could always pretend to be laughing at Raz and me if they were challenged. The bloke just sipped his pint and stared back at us. He didn’t flinch. His vacant expression made it all worse. Raz took a huge gulp of air and at that moment couldn’t control his laughter anymore. He put his pint down and curled up in a ball on his seat. He laughed and laughed and laughed. Once he laughed out loud I had to! Then all the girls sitting around us fell into loud laughing fits. People turned around to look and they all started laughing too. The odd person here and there even started pointing at the goggles man, which I thought was very rude of them. The laughter spread and still the man didn’t react. It was overwhelming now. We shouldn’t have been laughing at him like this. None of us should, but we couldn’t help it and because the poor chap did nothing about it, it just continued until people had to move away to compose themselves. I don’t know why I just told you about that. Maybe you had to be there, but it was so very bloody funny. I think people can be so cruel sometimes.

  On another occasion we had a holiday on the Greek island of Rhodes and Raz and I had everyone on the flight laughing at our daft jokes.

  As we were waiting to get on our coach someone pinched my bum. I turned around and a short fat bald headed man was standing behind me. I just glared at him. He looked uncomfortable for a moment and then he smiled a weak smile and said,

  “Hello!”

  “Fuck off you cunt.” I turned back and got on the coach.

  An hour later we were at our apartment. It was now 1.00 a.m. in the morning. The kids went to bed exhausted. Raz and I drank a bottle of vodka, also exhausted.

  The next day everything was right with the world. It was sunny and hot and we were on holiday. The holiday was filled with the usual sexual adventures and we were having a great time. One night, near the end of our first week there, Raz and I were in a bar, well into holiday mode now, when a large, middle-aged lady in a flowery frock and glasses came up to me.

  “We are going home tomorrow. Can I shake your hand?”

  “OK” I said and we shook hands.

  “My husband and I were sitting behind you on the plane. We thought that you were fantastic. Really funny and you made it the best flight ever! You were just brilliant.”

  “Oh right! Thanks.”

  She put her arms around me and we just hugged. It was a strange moment. She pulled away from me again and said,

  “We were behind you getting on the coach as well. My husband said ‘hello’ to you, but you told him to fuck off!”

  “Oh! Sorry.”

  “And you called him a cunt, but we thought that it was probably just that you were tired after the flight.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the dirty bastard had just pinched my arse. “Well, I probably was a bit tired” I said.

  A couple of days into the holiday I had got fed up of cleaning the sloppy poo off the toilet bowel before I could use it myself. I always used the toilet brush when I had finished, so that it was clean for the next person to use - in this case, Raz. I realised that I was the only person cleaning it. I had bit my tongue for long enough, so I picked my moment and, over a brandy on the balcony, I said to Raz:

  “Have you noticed how the toilet is always nice and clean whenever you go for a shit?”

  “Yes. I’ve noticed that” he nodded.

  “Have you also noticed what a terrible mess you always leave it in?”

  “No. I haven’t really noticed that” said Raz, realising that he had walked into my trap.

  “Raz, there isn’t a magical shit fairy that comes along when nobody is looking and cleans
up after you. I have to fucking do it. Use the fucking bog brush in future, will you!”

  After we stopped laughing Raz promised that he would use the toilet brush in future and he always did after that.

  I don’t blame Raz actually. It’s the toilet design in all these Mediterranean countries. The toilet basins have a big slope at the back of the bowl that suddenly drops off into a tiny little hole, about as big as your thumb, in the middle of the pan. I understand now what people mean when they talk about the ‘continental shelf’.

  I have to say though that the design works well in these countries. I don’t know whether it’s the hot weather, the food or the alcohol, or a combination of all these things, but you never do a solid stool when you go abroad. It’s usually just a brown smelly liquid. So, like I say, the toilets work just fine in these countries. In fact I think that if you were born and raised in these countries, then you wouldn’t know what a solid stool was, so you wouldn’t know any difference. If one of your well-travelled friends told you about doing solid stools, you just wouldn’t believe them. You would think that they are exaggerating. Imagine the look of shock and surprise on their faces when they come to England and do their first ever solid stool. They’d be amazed, and phoning home to tell their friends.

  In England the toilets are designed differently and most people in England think that their stools are about 6 to 8 inches long, because that’s all that they can see of it sticking out from the bend before they flush it. Just like the other Europeans, if you didn’t travel around the world, you’d never know any different. I went to America and the toilets there are different again. They have a huge pan and you get to see a lot more of your stool before you flush. Over in the States your stool is about two and a half to three foot long. It’s amazing! I was phoning all my friends back home to tell them about it. It’s a real eye opener. I guess that travel really does broaden the mind.