How Not To Be a Boy - Robert Webb

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on the end just falling off. You can’t be too careful about this kind of thing.

      You also have to be careful about girls. They’re everywhere. At playtime, someone usually starts a game by striding round the playground chanting, ‘All join up for playing . . .’ and then whatever the game is. Any boy who wants to play links up and chants along, so you might get six boys walking about the playground with their arms around each other’s shoulders, shouting, ‘All join up for playing . . . War. NO GIRLS!’ or maybe, ‘All join up for playing . . . Star Wars. NO GIRLS!’ It was a remarkable girl who tried to join in, but she would literally be pushed away. It was, of course, unthinkable that we would join in with whatever the girls were doing. Unless you count the pitiless destruction of anything they were trying to build, like a snowman.

      Because how dare they? I mean, it’s not called a ‘snow-woman’, is it? A seven-year-old in pursuit of the Paramount Objective of Despising Girls finds it all conveniently laid out for him: the culture, the language – it’s really no effort. And if you’re especially frightened and insecure, as I was at that age, or as Donald Trump is now, then membership of the in-group is best secured by showing the maximum contempt for an out-group: in this case, girls.

      *

      Two years earlier, my recently divorced mum had brought me in to meet my new teacher, Mrs Walker. This was during the brief moment after Dad had been kicked out but while we were all still living at Slieve Moyne. I would wake up most mornings in Mum’s bed – the nightmares took their time to get the memo that the danger had passed – and Mum would stretch and yawn and say, ‘Well, this won’t do.’ Maybe she just liked the company: I guess she hadn’t slept alone for a long time.

      One afternoon, we sing along to Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’ on the way over to the new school, but then as soon as we’re in the company of Mrs Walker, the world’s friendliest primary school teacher, I, of course, turn into Mutey McMute-Child, Professor of Total Silence at the University of No Sounds At All. ‘He’s just very shy,’ explains my embarrassed mum. I hear that word a lot. ‘Shy’ is my defining characteristic. Everyone tells me I’m shy so I must be.

      But then, what is Mum supposed to say? ‘He’s just mildly traumatised by all the domestic argy-bargy. He and particularly his brothers were subjected to a level of physical admonishment which in future, more civilised decades, will be quite reasonably described as “abusive”. His father scares the living Christ out of him, I’m afraid. And even though I divorced that guy’s sorry ass months ago and permanently kicked him into touch, the thoughtless durr-heart still haunts Robert’s dreams like an Avenging Demon from Planet Shit. So, y’know, Rob doesn’t talk much.’

      No, that would be unladylike. So I’m ‘shy’. Mrs Walker finds a book with which to assess my reading. When we don’t get very far, she tries another book, and then another. Eventually, we try the kind of book that you give babies to test their gums on. Mrs Walker is making a good job of not looking surprised, but I can sense that this isn’t going swimmingly and I feel embarrassed.

      After a couple of quiet years in the bungalow I’ll become an unusually good reader, so I won’t pretend to you that this was all my fault. Mum, on the other hand, watching one book being swapped for another, is dying a thousand deaths of shame. But the shame doesn’t belong to her either. She’s carrying it for someone else.

      I’m not sure where Dad was that day, but it was about four in the afternoon so I could hazard a guess.

      *

      At the Golf Club, I find a bumblebee on the ground. It looks all wrong because the ground is not where large bees are supposed to be. He’s alive (bees are always a ‘he’) and moving his wings slowly, somehow testing them. We’re on a large, gravel concourse in between the kitchen and the first tee. Golfers wander back and forth. The sky is grey and it’s getting dark.

      I think my bee might be dying. He’s trying to crawl but not really getting anywhere. Maybe he was struck by a lethally big raindrop. Or maybe he just stung someone. I’ve heard that bees only have one sting and they die when they use it. This makes them just as scary as wasps, but much more wise and noble. Stupid, stinger-happy wasps. No, my bee is in bad shape for some reason. I extend a finger, wanting to stroke it, but don’t dare. That’s the other difference with wasps, of course – bees look sort of furry: they remind us of mammals. I can smell the moisture in the air and know that it’s about to rain again. That won’t help. I build up a circle of tiny stones around the bee to offer it some protection, and then wonder if I’m just trapping it, so I make a little gap in the circular wall in case the bee needs to get out. The rain starts to fall and I go inside.

      In the kitchen I look through the window towards my bee in his roofless castle. But the lights are on and I can only see my reflection. Why am I Robert? Why is my name Robert Webb and why do I have curly blond hair? Do other people feel ‘me’ the way I feel ‘me’? It seems unlikely. And why am I crying? I mean, it’s only a bee.

      I try to dry my eyes before anyone notices. I’m not going to tell anyone about this, not even Nan or Tru or Mum. They would be nice about it, of course, but I know the truth about my bee.

      I wasn’t supposed to look after it. I was supposed to stamp on it.

      ________________

      3

      Boys Love Sport

      ‘The thing about football – the important thing about football – is that it is not just about football.’

      Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

      I pick my nose, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. There’s no point trying to deny it: these are girls’ socks. It’s Auntie Tru’s fault, I think, as I bitterly compress a bogey between upper and lower incisors . . . I mean, how could she do this to me?

      Roger Baxter sits on the low school wall next to me. ‘Cheer up, Robert. I mean, y’right, they do look a bit like girls’ socks but . . .’ Roger is being kind but also smiling broadly as he looks down at the offending socks, ‘I must say, it’s not as bad as all that.’

      I shake my head and mutter, ‘It’s the story of my life.’ I don’t really know what this phrase means but I’ve heard Mum say it quite often and it seems to convey the depth of my world-weary sophistication.

      ‘Bloody ’ell, Robert, you don’t ’alf come out with some grown-up things, you.’ I like the sound of this and make a mental note to come out with as many grown-up things as possible in future.

      It’s Sports Day. I’ve been at the junior school for two years and I’m nine. I don’t play with the Guy-Buys any more, but I’ve tried to write stories about them. One of them is entitled ‘Fallen Hero’, in which the Captain of the Guy-Buys is isolated from his gang and being hunted through

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