My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary

by Rae Earl

  Of course Mum decided to have chips tonight, but I saw through it and resisted. But when she wasn’t looking I sneaked in just one chip. I swear Mum could smell curry sauce on my breath this morning. She set a trap and I fell into it.

  11.22 p.m.

  That’s probably a bit paranoid – she probably just fancied chips. I have to be less of a nutter.

  Tuesday 17.10.89

  HAVING TO FILL OUT THE UCCA and PCAS forms for entry to universities and polytechnics. I’m pretty set on American studies and I quite fancy Exeter University – as the prospectus makes it look very green, and there is a very good-looking man holding a test tube on about page 5. If that’s the standard of man you can expect, then yummy! PLUS Devon cream teas – EXTRA YUMMY! At the end of the day – I can’t lie – Battered Sausage is going there, so I’m guaranteed at least one friend.

  Wednesday 18.10.89

  10.02 p.m.

  HAVE TO SAY, I HAVE bullshitted massively about hobbies and stuff on my university application forms, as my only hobbies are sitting in the pub talking crap with my friends. Have said ‘fell walking’ (there’s loads of potholes in Mountbatten Avenue) and ‘horseriding’ (this is what I would like to do and intend to do).

  Have also said ‘current affairs’, as I am very aware of what goes on in the world. Too aware. Worry about everything. Worry that one day some Russian bloke might accidentally fall asleep on a button, launch 60,000 nuclear missiles and start World War III. Fuck the diet – we might all be dead tomorrow.

  In the pub tonight me and Dobber were having a chat when Ryan the RAF Wittering groper came to join us. He must fancy Dobber because we couldn’t get rid of him. He started possibly the dullest conversation about university application forms and where we were both going. He is so insensitive! When I said I liked the sound of Exeter, he said:

  RYAN: Oh, that’s a bit far away from everything, isn’t it? It will be hard to get there.

  ME: Thanks, mate, for that. Where are you going?

  RYAN: Leeds. That’s miles away from Exeter. Are you sure you want to go there?

  ME: Errrr – yeah!

  RYAN: Not a lot there, and it’s full of the green welly brigade. Not very you!

  ME: I’ll bear your comments in mind, guru.

  He didn’t say to Dobber that her college in Canterbury just had a big cathedral in it and nothing else. WHY PICK ON MINE???

  Like I’ve said before . . . knob.

  Thursday 19.10.89

  Late

  THIS COUNTRY IS JUST CRAP. The Guildford Four have been released after being in prison for 15 sodding WRONG years. All they were was Irish, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that bloody sums this place up. If you are slightly different, if your face doesn’t fit, they judge you and consign you and throw away the fucking key.

  They never, ever stop to think that THEY might be wrong, that THEY are making a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been the victim of a massive miscarriage of justice – I’m not saying that – BUT I know what it’s like to be stinking judged before people have even bothered to find out what you are about. They have boxed me off into the ugly group even before I have opened my gob.

  SOCIETY IS SHIT.

  Friday 20.10.89

  JUST BEEN TO SEE Dead Poets Society with Dobber. Roared my bloody eyes out. Brilliant film. Really weird to see Mork from Mork and Mindy do something serious, but it was really good. It was all about feeling repressed in private schools – I know how that feels. One of the main characters kills himself because his dad won’t let him be an actor. Exactly the same thing with me. I want to be a radio or TV presenter, but apparently I have to get my A levels first!! WHY??!! Just because she hasn’t got any, Mum thinks A levels and degrees are the be all and end all. Has Madonna got them? No. Has Simon Mayo got them? No – AND HE DOES THE BLOODY RADIO 1 BREAKFAST SHOW!

  Saturday 21.10.89

  10.02 p.m.

  DAD CAME TO VISIT TODAY. I haven’t seen him for ages. Of course he doesn’t come to the house, so I have to go and meet him at Blackstone’s Club. It feels like the end of the world, with old men drinking bitter, playing dominoes and darts. Fantastic crusty rolls, though, with cheese and onion, AND they do scampi-flavour fries. It’s incredible the amount of women that ring up and ask if their husbands are there – and the barman lies and says they aren’t. These women must have dreadful lives. No wonder Mum divorced Dad after all those years, if this is what happened. At least I am old enough now to go in the pub with him. I used to have to wait outside in the car park. There was a load of us actually, with a packet of crisps and an old-fashioned Coke bottle with straw, and Dad coming out every half-hour with a refill. Is that a good memory, or a bad one? I can’t remember.

  Sunday 22.10.89

  10.30 p.m.

  MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY DAD is so weird. He’s not like a dad – he is like a mate. I can’t ever imagine him telling me off. Mind you, he did make a few comments today like ‘You’re getting like your mum, Rach’ or ‘You’ve put on a lot of weight – it’s not good.’ I’ll be honest – it’s hard to take his health advice too seriously. He said to me after I had had one single vodka and lime, ‘Mind that stuff, Rach – it will rot your liver.’ He said this without any irony, as he sank his sixth pint of the day. It was only about 2 p.m.

  Monday 23.10.89

  9.40 p.m.

  JUST BEEN DOWN TO DOBBER’S house. She has some scales in her bathroom. I couldn’t resist. After the waist size 38 I just wanted to know how bad I had got, without some doctor there shouting at me. Weighed myself. Now fair enough, I’d just had spaghetti bolognaise when I did, but I weighed nearly 14 and a half stone!!!

  Yes, 14 and a half stone.

  I suspected this was huge, so looked it up on my mum’s height/weight chart. I am in the bright-red sector – VERY FAT. I should be a maximum of ten stone six!!!

  So down. I’ve come home and gone to bed with a Wagon Wheel.

  10.33 p.m.

  Mum just came in before she went to bed. Spoke to her about my weight. How did I ever get this way – nearly 15 stone? And then she said, ‘Well, just think about what you have eaten today.’

  six slices of toast with Marmite and Flora

  crisps (onion rings) dunked in a tub of Primula cheese

  jacket potato with cheese

  two make-your-own Morrison’s hamburgers

  spaghetti bolognaise

  cheese and crisps at Dobber’s

  and a Wagon Wheel just then.

  I said, ‘But I walked for 20 minutes – I thought that was enough.’ She said, ‘Not even a marathon runner could eat that and burn it off.’

  What’s the point?

  Wednesday 25.10.89

  11.45 p.m.

  I KNOW YOU ARE PROBABLY BORED with this, but HADDOCK, HADDOCK, HADDOCK! I had a complete attack of adoration in the pub tonight. He is SO gorgeous but seems really, really quite screwed up to hell. Apparently, according to Haddock’s girlfriend, he doesn’t regard himself as attractive at all. I have heard this before but I just can’t believe it. He is so bloody handsome and charming – he is the epic slice! She wanted to tell me more but she wouldn’t because of loyalty to him. But I think some bad stuff has gone on.

  Yes, yes, yes . . . I DO feel like the world’s biggest bitch BUT there is no chance. They could split up and I would be the last woman on his list to snog, I am telling you now. So I keep all this to myself and that’s where it stays and that’s why it doesn’t matter and why I can still be friends with her.

  I told Haddock’s girlfriend that I was thinking about a serious diet. She said, ‘Don’t bother, Rae – you are lovely the way you are.’ She is sweet – but she’s not right, is she? I’m not.

  Thursday 26.10.89

  7.35 p.m.

  YOU KNOW, OTHER WOMEN LIKE fat women because we are ‘safe’. If I lost loads of weight, I KNOW I would find that a lot of so-called mates would sort of fall out with me, even if I didn’t do anything bad. I’
ve seen it happen to Mum – when she lost all the weight years ago people said to her stuff like, ‘You’ve changed,’ and ‘You’re not as much fun as you used to be.’ I remember the woman from Anne Close stopping her on Broad Street and saying, ‘You’ve lost enough now. Any more and you’ll look gaunt.’ It actually means, ‘Any more and you’ll be thinner than me’!

  If I lost weight, everything would change. I couldn’t be friends with Haddock any more. Because if he likes me, AND he wants to do me, well, that’s basically marriage!

  Friday 27.10.89

  Late

  ISUPPOSE I MUST BE happy, because I am not unhappy. Sometimes, you know, I feel so left out – and out of everything. It’s the old ‘end of the night’ syndrome. Like tonight – I don’t really think Haddock likes me now, you know? He didn’t give me the neck squeeze that he normally does. I’m trying to make myself dislike him. Well . . . not dislike him, but . . . trying to dissuade my emotions. When I do speak to Haddock I just feel like I am intruding on his time with his girlfriend.

  Sometimes, you know, I just want to curl up and see if anyone notices I’m not there.

  But I know time is short. Moping around wastes time. I always get attacks of paranoia. Big deal. Fed up of worrying what people think of me and what they feel for me.

  But I wonder what they do feel for me, though. Am I loved? Perhaps in somebody’s bedroom I am secretly fancied?

  Probably not.

  Saturday 28.10.89

  11.45 p.m.

  NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED AT THE pub tonight (Haddock was working). But Mum really annoyed me when Battered Sausage came to pick me up. She started to have a real laugh with him – showing him pictures of Adnan, and making him cups of tea. She made Battered Sausage get the giggles – so I asked her how her hot flushes were. She soon got the message.

  Apparently Bethany has gone for a study visit in Switzerland to Dieter’s college. Sex visit more like. No doubt she will be sucking his neck off up a mountain while he yodels.

  Sunday 29.10.89

  4.30 p.m.

  RIGHT, I AM JUST GOING to write this. I have been thinking about this all day and I have been listening to What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye, and I just want to purge this down.

  I am happy to play the big fat comic joker cow because it comes easy, and losing the weight would take too much hard work, and in the end I just can’t risk not being loved by people. Pathetic, but true. I’m worried if I get thin no one will like me any more. But then I’m worried that if I stay fat no man will ever love me.

  I’m such a total twat. Please believe me – I know I am.

  7.10 p.m.

  JIVE BUNNY ARE NUMBER ONE AGAIN WITH A DIFFERENT PILE OF MONTAGE SONG VOMIT SHIT. WHO IS BUYING THIS UTTER TOSS?

  Monday 30.10.89

  THERE IS A BIG HALLOWEEN party tomorrow. It was the talk of the school today. It’s being held by the fittest boy in our year and seemingly only really, really gorgeous girls have been invited, and they are keeping quiet as to what is going on. This is because it is apparently going to turn into an orgy. The dress code is ‘vicars, tarts or gorgeous ghouls’. There is a lot of talk about garter belts and stockings. The people who have been invited are walking around like Miss World. Everyone else is calling them slags. You can’t crash it – apparently the bloke has got someone on the door rating the girls out of ten!! This is what you are dealing with – public-school wankers with small cocks who will end up running accountancy companies, shagging their secretaries, becoming Tory MPs or doing all three at once . . . And half of them are PIG ugly.

  Yes, of course, part of me is slightly pissed off I wasn’t invited, but it is hardly a surprise.

  Tuesday 31.10.89

  9.20 p.m.

  DEPRESSING TO THINK IF I went trick-or-treating now people would regard me as a beggar. I don’t want to grow up. We have had a few kids round. They always look pissed off when you give them sweets and not cash – especially because Mum buys cheapo versions of everything, including Tesco’s version of a Club biscuit. But they might as well realise now that life is shit, Father Christmas isn’t real, and adults rip you off.

  Funny to think right now some of my friends are wearing stockings and doing who knows what. Might as well be from another planet.

  Mum asked me today if Jive Bunny had an album out! God help us all.

  Wednesday 1.11.89

  7.02 p.m.

  A LL THE GORGEOUS-GHOUL PARTY girls were back in school today and keeping themselves to themselves and whispering in corners looking serious. All the information we can get out of them is that the party went on quite late and everyone was ‘bobbing apples’. This is obviously code for some sort of sex thing but we can’t work out what. We think it might be something to do with oral sex as apparently that makes you bob up and down, but no one can be sure. A few people are going to ask their boyfriends at the boys’ school if they know anything about it.

  Thursday 2.11.89

  9.40 p.m.

  MORT’S 18TH BIRTHDAY. Had no money to buy a present so made her a card and bought a withdrawn-for-sale children’s picture book from the library for 15p called Millicent. It’s about a woman who feeds pigeons in Sydney in Australia. I customised it with cartoons about me and people at school. I was quite proud of it actually, and Mort was creasing herself – so I think she liked it. She got a great birthday present later, though . . . We all did!

  We found out what ‘bobbing apples’ is code for. It’s code for . . . BOBBING APPLES!! Apparently Mr Gorgeous Boy’s parents decided to stay at home at the last minute and organise some ‘silly party games with a few drinks’! He was left with his mates – and a load of his parents’ mates – sticking their heads in buckets of water. BRILLIANT!! The orgy did not take place, and he is a social outcast. No wonder the gorgeous girls were looking serious – they spent most of yesterday working out how to keep this information to themselves. TOO LATE, DEARS – we know the only thing you experienced at that party was soggy hair!!

  Friday 3.11.89

  11.49 p.m.

  MUM HAS PISSED ME OFF majorly twice in less than 12 hours today. Firstly, this morning I was woken up by the theme tune to Hawaii FIVE-0. Mum has bought the new Jive Bunny single and was playing it loud. I couldn’t hear Simon Mayo over the RACKET OF TOTAL SHIT. Shouldn’t it be me playing crap music loudly?? Then, as I was going to the pub tonight, admittedly looking a bit scruffy, she shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Penny for the guy.’ Ha, ha. This is the 80s, dear – you are allowed to have messed-up hair. It’s called ‘come to bed/just done it’ hair these days. That’s what I would like mine to be – but the fact is, I can’t be arsed to comb it.

  Saturday 4.11.89

  ICAN’T WORK THIS ONE OUT.

  I am totally freaked out and I am shaking so much I can hardly write.

  Tonight everyone was hugely pissed. It was just one of those nights. And in the Vaults pub garden somebody had some sparklers and we were all playing with them and having a laugh. Haddock was there, and just to make him laugh I was drawing the shape of a bum in the air with a sparkler, and he was drawing a cock, and we were having a right laugh. He was on great form, but then he had a couple more beers and went quiet and weird. He then dragged me to the window ledge on the stairs between the front and back. He was very pissed. He was acting so weird, and then he goes:

  HAD: There is just something I want to say . . .

  ME: Yeah!

  HAD: I know what . . .

  ME (I was laughing at this stage – I thought he was winding me up): What?!

  HAD (DEADLY serious): I know what you think underneath it all, and I don’t think it will always be like this.

  ME: Pardon??

  HAD: Things will get brilliant, I think. For both of us.

  And things could change like that . . . (Clicks his fingers.)

  Then he just legged it out of the pub.

  Battered Sausage came up to me and said, ‘Oh, what have you said to him now?’ I said, ‘Nothing �
� should you go after him?’ and Battered Sausage said, ‘No. Come and see this bloke out here – he reckons he can make a rocket shoot from his backside with a fart and a match.’

  Things will get brilliant. For both of us. And things could change like that . . .

  What does he mean? Does he mean the fact that we were so pissed? Does he mean how totally crap our lives are? Does he mean how we feel about ourselves? What????

  He looked at me – like – his eyes are like lasers piercing into you. I feel I should know instinctively what he is on about, but I don’t.

  I’m not being superficial – but he is horny as hell when he is intense.

  Actually, that does sound superficial, but believe me it’s true.

  Sunday 5.11.89

  4.23 p.m.

  CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT LAST night. It’s going to be weird when I see him again.

  I am just full with regrets. Big fat doner-kebab regrets. Could write loads tonight about rejection, love and divine retribution, but more earthly issues such as GCSE maths retake loom tomorrow, so sleep is called for. Who wants to be arsed with fractions when you could be thinking about things that really matter? Like what Haddock meant last night, and Haddock’s magnificent arse.

  FIREWORKS

  Haddock is like a rocket

  Exploding in my brain,

  My fat puts out his sparkle

  Like a firework by the rain.

  I wish for bangs and whooshes

  For desire that makes me thud,

  I have to settle for a sparkler

  And a cheese and bean jacket spud.

  8.47 p.m.

  Apparently something is kicking off in Germany. I don’t know the full details, but East Germans are rioting. According to one of the hippies in the front bar of the Vaults, this ‘could be it’. Oh please God – my head is going mad with this. I feel I need to do all the things I need to do to stop war and I know it’s mad but I know I will have to do them tonight. Touch everything. Pray 30 times until I say it perfectly. Check everything.