Amy Gardner - A Life free porn video

AMY GARDNER: A LIFE by dkb I'M GONNA, I'M GONNA God, my life is shit. My life is nothing. I'm 25 and still living at home with my parents, no job, no girlfriend, what am I gonna do? I'm a wreck. My life is disappearing, one day at a time, and it adds up to nothing. I wish I was someone else. I wish I was him. He looks like he knows where he's going, in his flash suit, a young high-flyer. Or him. Or her. In a giddy flash I trip and stumble. I would fall, but Mummy's got hold of my hand and she pulls me up. There's something happening in the street, a crowd forming round a body on the ground. Mummy won't let me look. She pulls me away, but I know what's going on. The driver is out of his car and trying to explain, to himself as much to anyone else, "He came out of nowhere, wasn't looking where he was going, I didn't see him until too late." It wasn't his fault. Everyone sees that. But he still feels guilty. It was his car the young man fell under. He'll never forget that. Someone's called for an ambulance, but it's too late. The boy broke his skull open. His life is over. Mummy chats to me while we walk down the street and she doesn't seem to mind when I say nothing in reply. "We're going to the shopping centre, ok, we need to get you some new stuff for going back to nursery, and then we'll go for coffee, I'll buy you some juice and a chocolate cake. You'll like that Amy, won't you, hmmm? And we're having spaghetti for tea, mmm- mmm!" She buys me new panties and tights and a navy blue skirt and a pink t- shirt with a glittery star on it ("Isn't that cute?") and a hairgrip with a cartoon character on it. And I trail after her on my little legs, saying nothing, thinking nothing, trying just to go with the flow. And before I know it I'm home with spaghetti hoops and a glass of milk inside me and I'm tucked up in bed in my cotton pyjamas and the darkness is closing in. What happened? That man, that man died, run over. That man, that man was me! I'm not dead. So who died? It must have been Amy, little Amy. One minute she's skipping along next to Mummy, the next she's bleeding on the road, dying alone. And nobody knows she's gone. There's nobody to mourn her except me. And it must be my fault. I made some sort of wish didn't I? How the fuck did that happen? I make a wish and Amy dies. She suddenly finds herself in a strange body, she can't control it, she trips and falls. Mummy's not there to hold her, she stumbles in front of a car. Bang! Or maybe, maybe I died and then went into Amy's body. I can't remember. I was distracted, I wasn't looking. Maybe I walked out in front of that car just from damned stupidity and then my soul, or whatever, passed on, into Amy. But then where's Amy? And anyway, re-incarnation doesn't work like that, does it? That's stupid! So what the fuck happened? The whole thing is fucked. And it doesn't make any difference anyway. Either way, Amy's gone and I'm still here and that's not fucking right. I've had a rubbish life and now I've caused so much suffering. The driver of the car didn't deserve to have that happen. He'll never forget seeing that broken body in the street and knowing he did it, even though it wasn't his fault. And my parents, they've lost their son. They must have been disappointed in me, but they'll be grief-stricken. A pointless accident took away their boy. They'll be clearing out my room. God, they'll find my porn. Hey, Mum, I'm sorry. I haven't looked at it in years and I've been meaning to throw it out. And then there's Amy. A totally innocent young girl, dead or gone heaven knows where. Because of me. I can't, I can't handle this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill myself. I've got a wee plastic stool in my room for sitting on. Some time when Mummy's watching telly I can take it to the kitchen and stand on it and find a knife and cut my wrists, or my throat or something. I can't live like this. I'm gonna end my worthless existence properly this time, I'm gonna... Oh, fuck, don't be stupid. I can't do that. What'll Mummy think? Am I gonna cause her the same suffering I caused my old parents? No. That'd be the lousiest thing ever. I can't do that. And anyway she's too careful. She'd never let me near the kitchen unsupervised. There probably are no sharp knives within my reach, even standing on my stool. And anyway, I'm a complete coward. There's no way I could stick a knife in myself. Not if my life depended on it. I'm gonna have to live this out. I'm gonna have to pretend to be Amy, the best I can, for Mummy's sake, maybe for Amy's sake as well. Whatever she could have been, I have to be, the best I can. I'm gonna, I'm gonna manage, somehow. I'm gonna... Right now I'm gonna go to sleep. The days pass quickly. You'd think I'd be bored out of my skull, no decent TV, movies, music. The new Tarantino movie's out. By the time I'm allowed to see it it'll be ancient history. But I don't get bored. The days are short and they pass quickly. And there's constant activity - breakfast, lunch, tea, bed, watching cartoons, going shopping, going to the park to play on the swings. I have many stuffed animals of all different sorts and I carry one with me everywhere I go, something to hold on to. I have toys, building blocks, balls, picture books, a million distractions. I run everywhere, full of energy, and I trip and fall and then get up again and keep on running. I'm so clumsy. It's like this body, the controls are too sensitive, the slightest movement and I've overshot, or undershot, I've fallen down or knocked something over. But it's fun, somehow, a constant physical challenge. I concentrate so hard on everything I do. And Mummy's always there. Everywhere she goes I go with her and she holds me and hugs me and smiles at me and laughs with me and I love her so much I feel like I'm living on love. I breathe it and eat it and sleep it constantly. I never want to let go of her. I like Mummy's magazines, full of women I used to fancy, actresses, pop stars, models. Mummy reads to me from them, "So happy now ... beautiful baby ... wonderful husband ... new project ... I'm so thrilled to be working with ... he's so talented ..." I'm gonna, I'm gonna be like that when I grow up. I can picture it. When I go to school I'll be in the Christmas shows, in the drama club. I'll go to college, but keep up acting on the side, student productions, maybe the odd commercial, then get plucked from obscurity for a TV role, in a soap or a sitcom. I'll become a celebrity and I'll entertain millions. And I'll be happy and fulfilled - new husband, wonderful baby, thrilling project. Pretty soon I'm back at nursery, holiday over. And that's hard. Mummy leaves me there, and it's full of people I don't know, but they all know me, and they crowd around me, wanting me to play with them. I just have to try and be friendly to everyone and concentrate very hard to get people's names. And sometimes I make mistakes - "Donnie? I'm Ronnie. Miss, Amy called me Donnie!" And there's so much screaming and rushing around. And I feel a bit out of it, I stand on the sidelines, not quite knowing what to do with myself here. And that's not how the other kids expect me to be. The Amy they know is as boisterous and energetic and unselfconscious as they are. They want me to be involved in everything, like Amy was. "Amy, come and play in the sand." "Amy, do you want to see my new dolly?" "Come along children, let's sing a song. Amy, would you choose a song for us to sing?" The nursery teacher says to Mummy that I'm quieter than usual, quite subdued even. And Mummy agrees, says I've been like that for a few days now. She hopes it's just a phase and the teacher says it probably is. Quiet, subdued. That's nothing to do with being in a new situation, that's just how I am. That's me, not Amy. I am a quiet, shy person and it is very hard to pretend to be different. But it doesn't seem to matter. The other kids get used to my new mood almost immediately and accept me as I am. And they seem to like me so much. They all want to play with me and share their sweeties with me and sing and dance with me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be popular. I'm never gonna be short of friends. I will always be invited to parties and I will have big parties myself for all my many friends. And I will never need to be alone, never go to the cinema on my own or to bars on my own or on holiday on my own. And the boys'll love me. If I grow up like Mummy I'm gonna be a real cracker and the boys'll chase me. Or I'll chase them first. After all, I already know about the birds and the bees. I've got a head start. Girls mature faster than boys, they say. Well I'll mature so fast I'll knock their socks off. I'll give them what they want before they even know they want it. The instant I hit puberty I'll grab me all the love I can get and I won't let go. I'll make up for, for before. I'll have all the boys, maybe some of the teachers, if there are any young, handsome ones. Maybe some of the other girls as well. I'll seduce my girlfriends. We'll pretend to be practising for our boyfriends. "Here, Mary, pretend I'm a boy and kiss me." But in fact we'll share our passionate urges with each other more deeply than we could with any boy. God, I'm gonna be the school bicycle, everyone gets a go with Amy. Or maybe, maybe I'll be selective. To most people I'll be proper and decent. But a lucky few will feel my passionate fire. I'll pick on the shy boys, like I used to be. I will pick the quietest, geekiest, most sensitive boy and make him happy like he never could be otherwise. He won't brag about me to his mates because he won't have any mates. He will only have me and he will be devoted to me and he will adore me like a goddess. Meanwhile, day after day, I throw myself into nursery activities as best I can, building sandcastles, playing ball, drawing and painting. Luckily I was never any good at art before, so I don't have to pretend to be childishly bad at it now. My daubs in crayons and water-colours are no more recognisable as trees or doggies or mummies than those of any of my classmates. There are lots of posters and stuff with writing stuck up on the walls and there are also blocks with letters on them. But I'm too young to read them so I don't have to pretend to struggle with them. I can just ignore them. But school's gonna be a problem though, when I get there. How will I manage? Can I pretend to learn things I already know perfectly well, reading, writing, arithmetic? If I grip my pencil very hard and try to make big, clumsy movements will I be able to make those big, spidery letters junior school kids make when just learning to write. If I try and phonetically spell out every word ("guh, uh, er, luh, girl,") can I sound just like the other kids learning to read? Can I work out what sort of realistic mistakes I should make in my sums, so nobody realises I can do it already? And, most important, can I keep it up, day after day, week after week? Can I be consistent, not be too smart one day, and go back to making mistakes again the next? If I slip up, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be some kind of infant prodigy if I don't watch out, a freak. I'll have the authorities on to me in no time and they'll be testing me and wanting me to go to a school for gifted children. But maybe, maybe that won't be so bad. I could relax a bit. I wouldn't have to work quite so hard pretending to be an ordinary little girl. I wouldn't get bullied for being a swot. I'd get to study interesting stuff more quickly than I would normally. I always liked science and maths and I was good at it. I didn't drop out of college from stupidity. Maybe this time I can make a go of it, become a great scientist or something, discover new drugs, new stars, new theorems, or something. Or not. I'll be, like, advanced for my age, until I get to first year at college. Then I'll have, like, caught up to my previous self. And I'll be no brighter than anyone else, not a prodigy any more, just an average college kid. They'll say I'd burned out. Hey, I'd be normal for my age then. Nothing wrong with that. I'll not have to pretend any more. And maybe, maybe I wouldn't be normal even then. I mean, if I start out from where I am now, a four year old girl who can not only spell 'differential calculus', but also knows what it means, then who knows where I can get to if I work at it. Maybe, maybe I'm gonna be a real genius, someone important, Nobel-prize winning, doing cure-for- cancer or solving-the-energy-crisis kind of stuff. Maybe I'll do some great service to humanity. Maybe... Oh, who knows? I don't know. I don't know. I think I'll just take it one day at a time for now, just enjoy my finger-painting and sandcastle building while I can. Daddy came home today. Back home from a six week contract, fresh pay packet in his pocket and many beers in his belly, he swept in all at once, pinned Mummy to the wall, squeezed her breast and plastered a drunken kiss on her lips. Then he swept me off the floor and kissed me as well, boozy breath in my face, unshaven cheek on my lips. "Hey baby, sweetie, how are my two favourite girls eh? How've you been with daddy away, eh? Get me a whisky would you babe? Hey, little Amy, look what I got you?" It was a big teddy bear, really too large for me to cuddle properly, though I give it a dutiful squeeze and tried to look happy with it. It was late in the day and I was sent to bed after that, but I couldn't sleep. Life with Mummy was just so perfect I could hardly bear to think of this alien presence coming between us. I'd sort of known he existed. There were a few photos. And Mummy mentioned him occasionally, but kind of distantly. I'd never thought of him as someone who might actually turn up some day. But now here he was. I must have dozed for a few hours because then I was awake again and hearing Daddy clomping up the stairs to bed. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was clearly in a jolly mood. He clattered into Mummy's room and I could hear his drunken chatter and Mummy asking him to shush, don't wake Amy. And then their bed was banging against the wall for a few minutes. And then there was quiet and I was asleep again. The next morning Mummy seemed kind of quiet and distracted. She bustled around the kitchen while Daddy had breakfast and read his paper. Then he went out. Mummy swept around doing housework all day and told me to stay out of her way, so I sat in my room. It was a Saturday, so no nursery. And that's how it was then. When Daddy was here he sat watching telly, sports mostly, and Mummy sat next to him or got him drinks when he asked. When Daddy was out at the pub Mummy was busy, too busy for me. Sometimes I joined them on the sofa, Daddy's arm round me. But it was boring just watching the football. Daddy didn't want to play with me, but he wanted me there. He called it "being a family," the three of us sitting there watching his programmes. He was frequently affectionate. He ruffled my hair or squeezed my shoulders. But he was easily irritated. If I showed my boredom he could turn on me. "Don't you want to sit with Daddy? Well bugger off then. Nobody's forcing you to sit there. Go on, get lost." And I would be glad to get away. He made me jumpy. And late at night, when Daddy came home drunk, he was always noisy, in the kitchen, on the stairs, in Mummy's room, with loud footsteps, banging, sometimes singing. One night I heard shouting, a slap, then the bed banging against the wall. Next morning Mummy was very quiet and her eyes were red. I wanted to comfort her, somehow, but she pushed me away, she wouldn't look at me. "Go to your room. Can't you see Mummy's busy?" One night I woke to the sound of Daddy banging the door and clomping up the stairs. Then he came into my room. "Hey, Amy, how's my little baby doll, eh? How's daddy's little girl?" For some reason I was suddenly struck rigid with terror. I couldn't move a muscle. Daddy ruffled my hair, slobbered over me with beery kisses and tried to tickle me on the chest. "Hey, hey, Mummy's sleeping, shush, shush, let's not wake Mummy, just us two, eh, eh?" And then he pulled down my pyjama bottoms, spat on his hand and started rubbing me between my legs. What the fuck? What the fuck did he think he was doing, foreplay? Did he think he was getting me hot? I was four, for Christ's sake, I wasn't hot. I was sore. Daddy was hurting me. "MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY!" "What the...!" He couldn't believe it. "Shush! Shut up! What are you doing?" "MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY!" "I said Shut! The Fuck! Up!" And he raised his hand and - Bang - he slapped me across the face. "WAAAAAAAAAAA!" "Shut up I said!" And he stuffed his hand against my mouth, desperate to silence me any way he could. And then suddenly Mummy, may God bless her soul forever, is there, in nothing but her panties and her righteous wrath. And she takes one look at me, wailing my eyes out, with my jammies round my ankles, and one look at him, backing off, hands raised defensively, and she starts trying to lay into him, beating her fists off his chest. And he has to physically push her off him, throw her against the wall, while simultaneously trying to get his excuses in. "Calm down, you stupid bitch! It's not what you think." And then the police are around to speak to Daddy. "This really isn't necessary. My wife just panicked a bit. Nothing happened." "Well, ok sir, but we still have to investigate any complaint, so if you'll just open the door sir..." And Mummy has to confess that she didn't actually see anything happen, as such. And I'm crying too much to give a coherent story. And Daddy is contrite and cooperative. "Ok, I was drunk, I blundered into the wrong room. I obviously frightened her.... Her pyjamas? It's warm; she must have pulled them off herself... Yes, I did hit her, just a tap really. I panicked. I thought she was going to wake the whole street up... No, no, I don't believe in it normally. No, we never smack Amy... probably the shock as much anything, she got a bit of a fright from her stupid old dad, she'll get over it... I feel so stupid... never happened before." A nice policewoman interviews me. "Amy, can you tell me, has this ever happened before?" And I cannot tell a lie. "I don't know. I don't know." But really, I do know. That can't have been the first time. It's just that Amy never cried out before. She suffered in silence. And then the police are away again. "Call us again, Madam, any time you need to. And there'll be a social worker round tomorrow, just to check up, ok?" And a medical exam shows no sign I've been interfered with and there's not really enough evidence for further action. And Daddy wonders if maybe he can put this all behind him, get on with life, back to normal. But the look in Mummy's eyes tells him he can't. Nothing she's put up with from him before compares to this. No matter how often she's given in to him before, she will not give in again. Two days later Mummy and me have moved out of our house into a tiny flat in the city. Mummy has to work in a supermarket and I hardly get to see her. When I'm not at nursery I stay with an old lady down the corridor. She's quite nice and gives me sweeties, but her flat smells funny and I feel lonely. I go to a different nursery now and because I'm new nobody's surprised that I'm a bit quiet and shy. I think they must know something about me because they all seem really careful to be nice to me. And when Mummy's home she won't let me out of her sight. She hugs me so tight I can hardly breathe sometimes. She won't let go of me. She looks at me sometimes with fear in her eyes and I can hardly bear it. I feel I would do anything, absolutely anything, to make her happy again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a policewoman, or a social worker, or a doctor or a nurse, or something, something to help people in desperate need, people like Mummy, like Mummy helped me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make Mummy proud of me, for all the love she gives me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna... Oh, God, who am I kidding? I don't know what I'm gonna do. I might do anything, or nothing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna... WHO AM I? "Who Am I?" is, I think, a rubbish title for an essay. But there it is, this is what I've got to do. I guess the teacher wants us to think about what makes us the kind of people we are, personality, social background, all that stuff. So here I am trying to dictate some notes. If I burble away enough maybe I'll get some ideas. But what can I say? I'm an ordinary girl. I'm Amy Gardner, I'm sixteen, my likes are...my dislikes are...blah, blah, blah. I live with my mum, just the two of us since Dad died. I mean my stepdad, not my real dad. Daddy Bastard's still around somewhere, probably. We haven't heard from him in ages. Not that we want to. And I really can't concentrate on this because Aunt Lucy is moving into a nursing home and I'm worried about her. It's not, like, really, really serious yet, but she can't really look after herself any more and it's so sad. She's not really my aunt, but she helped look after me when I was a kid, when we moved out after...after my dad did what he did to me. She was like a granny, always giving me sweets and things, and I could go round any time, whenever I didn't feel like being at home. She was always there and now I won't see her so much. But I'm going to visit her this afternoon. So maybe I'd be better doing this later. *** So Aunt Lucy doesn't think she's ever going to come out of the home. She needs to sell her flat to pay for it and she's getting rid of most of her things and she says she wants to give me a whole bunch of stuff. There's her clock and a whole bunch of ornaments and she's got some old jewellery she wants me to have as well, and it's too much, and Mum says we can't afford to insure it. So I think we've persuaded her to hang onto it for just now. But I've got a big old cardboard box she insisted I have. She was like, "I really haven't any room for it, you know, and I'd hate to throw it away. When you come to visit maybe you'll bring it round again and I can remember all the times we had." So what it is is, oh blimey! I think it's everything I ever gave her. There's a complete collection of Christmas and birthday cards here, everything I ever made for her at school, a whole bunch of other stuff as well. It looks like my whole life's here. There's an old report card here. What's that doing there? I guess I must have handed it to Lucy instead of Mum that day. Results: A, A, A, A. Comments: "Amy is extremely [underlined] bright, but she will not work [more underlining]." Heh, heh! That is what it was like actually. It was all, "Amy gets good marks, but if she is to continue doing well she must learn to start working," and "Amy must realise that good marks are not everything. She must do the work as well." Also I was a "disruptive influence" with the other kids. I was distracted and bored, particularly in primary school, always messing about. I just found it so easy it was boring. I was reading and writing almost as soon as I got to school and arithmetic was a doddle. I always read a lot and I must have picked up a lot of stuff because I never seemed to need to actually learn anything. It was almost as if it was all there already and I just had to remember it. My teachers always worried that the stuff I was reading was "too advanced" for my age and that I would, like, get ahead of myself, but I never did. I think they just didn't like it that I never paid any attention to them. Even now I think I know a whole lot about all sorts of stuff that nobody else at school does. I help Greg with his homework and I know way more physics than he does and I'm not even doing that subject any more. Mum keeps on worrying about that. She's always asking me, "But why did you give up science when you were so good at it?" But I don't think I was good at it, not really. It just always felt like I knew it already. Maths, physics, chemistry just always seemed obvious and easy. Like, I know all that so what's the point? So I've switched to doing modern languages and literature and history and stuff. And I don't know what the difference is but that stuff is actually hard. It doesn't feel like it's there already. I do actually have to work to get it. I don't get only 'A's any more and that's, well, that's all right. I don't feel like such a swot all the time. There's a lot of old pictures of me here. Here's one of me before a school dance, all dressed up, too much make-up. I never manage that right. I never think about it usually and then it's a special occasion and I just slap it on. Greg's with me, so I must be almost fourteen. He looks dazed. I look a bit bored. I want to get going. I think I enjoyed it. I danced with every boy I knew. I even danced with Greg a couple of times. He was totally nervous. He seemed too scared to touch me, except round my shoulders or holding my hand. It seemed funny. He must have been virtually the only boy there who hadn't felt me up behind the bike sheds. When he asked me it seemed like such a joke. He was the quiet one in the corner who nobody noticed. I couldn't believe it when he came up to me and started stammering at me, "A-Amy. W-would you do me the honour...?" I was like, what the fuck? The honour? Who is this guy? And I thought it'd be a bit of a laugh. I'd be all dressed up, all sexy (too much make- up, like I said) and he'd be trailing after me like a dog. I wouldn't have to stick with him when we got there. I could leave him and have my own fun. But, also, I hadn't actually been asked by anyone else up to that point. One of the guys would've asked me eventually, I think. But maybe they all thought I was going with one of the others. Or maybe they weren't that bothered, seeing I was giving it away at school most days. Anyway, I actually stayed friends with Greg after that. We'd hang out after school, walk around a bit, talk about stuff. I slowly realised what a nice guy he was. I still hung around with all the other guys as well, though. See, I was a total tomboy when I was little, playing football, running around in the mud, climbing trees, all that. But when I started growing up it wasn't exactly the same any more. I still hung out with the boys, but they were interested in different things then. They'd be telling stupid sex jokes, talking about snogging, trying to shock me I think, maybe trying to shock each other too. But I just played along. I was like, "Hey, look what I've got. Wanna touch them?" I went through a phase of, "It doesn't matter. They're only boobs. Who cares if some guy wants to play with them?" I thought they were jerks, a bit. They didn't want to play football with me any more, but they wanted to look at my chest. But I didn't care. We hung out. Some guy or other always had a bottle of something or some ciggies he'd nicked off his parents and we fooled around and had a lot of laughs. At parties I was always outrageous, stripping off and dancing around. And we sort of egged each other on. They knew I'd do almost anything if they dared me. One of them, maybe Rob, had some magazines he'd got from his brother. They were just soft-core really, but we'd read the letters out in silly voices and I'd be like, "Oh yeah, I know all about that." We'd get drunk and fool around. I used my hands and my mouth on them and, you know, it seemed quite normal. And when I was fifteen, that'd be a year and a half ago now, I got into school and found someone had written "SLUT" on my locker door in big black marker pen and I felt like I'd been slapped. And it really wasn't fair. It wasn't like I'd actually slept with anyone. I just... I thought people liked me and then I felt like I'd turned inside out. I saw myself in a window. I had felt sexy when I got up and then I felt like a tart. The janitor came and scrubbed it off and he was like, "Don't worry. If I catch the little bastard that did this they'll know what for." But I couldn't look at him. Something shrivelled up inside me and I felt sick the rest of the day. And Greg was like totally oblivious, like nothing happened. "Oh yeah, I heard about that, some little shite messing about. I get that all the time - 'loser', 'wanker' - it doesn't mean anything." Or maybe he wasn't oblivious. Maybe he knew exactly what I'd been doing but he wasn't bothered. Or maybe he just didn't want me to think he was bothered. God bless him. I do not understand that boy in any way, but I think I love him. God, what's this? Old pictures in crayon - me and Mummy, Aunt Lucy, Mummy and Daddy (that's my stepdad). This one's a bit savage, all spiky, red, orange, black. Oh, God! I think it's a car crash. There's a weird looking car. There's a boy or a man lying in front of it with his arms and legs sticking out and there's a girl standing watching. I've written "ME" directly underneath in huge letters. Actually, I've written it under the man, but I guess I'm supposed to be the girl watching. This is really quite creepy because I don't actually remember seeing anything like this. I do remember I used to think about crashes quite a lot. I just don't know why. I remember the psychologist who saw me telling Mum it was a "recurring motif". I was quite frightened of cars for a while. I was totally scared of crossing the road and I guess this picture comes from that time. That was about the time that... Well, I don't remember it myself but Mum says she came in one night and found Dad fiddling with me. So we left. Mum says I had a total personality change then. All of a sudden I was really moody. I just moped around all the time not really doing anything. And I seemed to forget about people and places I should have known. Mum says I had been very friendly and then suddenly I was very shy and clingy. I do kind of remember that. I really hated it when she wasn't there. This is all why I was seeing the psychologist. And of course when my stepdad got run over, when I was ten, I totally freaked out all over again. I felt like my nightmares were coming true and I went totally hysterical at the funeral, shrieking and sobbing like crazy. But why I got obsessed with car crashes in the first place I cannot remember. Maybe that's not so weird. I was only four. But still, I feel like there's some black hole in my life, right there, like something terrible, not just my dad, happened that might, I don't know, explain everything. God, listen to me. I sound like a nutter. Nothing makes sense, right, unless you find the secret. And then everything's clear. Yeah, right! *** I've just had a very strange dream. It started off like some of my old nightmares used to. I'm a wee girl again, in bed, and Daddy Bastard is looming over me, like a pantomime villain with his evil eyes and his big evil laugh, "HA HA HA!" And I know he's going to do something unspeakably horrible to me, but I'm stuck, frozen, and I can't do anything about it. I used to wake up in a sick fear, screaming until Mum came to comfort me. But this time it's different. I look down and I suddenly notice I have... Ok, this is weird shit. I notice I have an enormous cock sticking out between my legs. Look, it's a dream, Ok? Ok. So, anyway, Daddy Bastard takes one look at my big cock and he jumps back, all scared. And then Mum's with me, shaking her fist at him, and he just seems to turn round and run away, a pathetic little coward. And then Mum...this is the weird shit again...she takes my cock in her hand and, gently, gently, she tugs at it until it sort of slides out and my little puss is back to normal again. It seems to shrivel up in her hand, like a dried up worm, and she throws it away. It's like, we don't need that any more. And then she smiles at me and hugs me and I wake up feeling so warm and happy I feel like everything's going to be all right. Greg's parents are out late tonight so I'm going round to watch a video with him. Maybe afterwards we'll... Well, let's wait and see. FLOWERS Amy walked down the street with her menfolk. Little Tommy sat astride her shoulders, holding on to her forehead, little lord of all he surveyed. He was still a constant delight to her, even after three years of being a mum. He was a paradox, clumsy, helpless and dependent and yet also supremely confident, as if everything was there for him and nothing could possibly go wrong. Oh, he cried sometimes, when something startled him or when he hurt himself. But he could forget it in an instant and go right back to rushing around as if nothing had happened. And he could be a terror. He could go into monstrous rages sometimes, when he didn't get what he wanted. Even when he was happy he could be difficult to control. When he got too excited it could be impossible to calm him down without risking grumpiness and tears. People said he was a typical boy, but Amy's mum said Tommy took after her, that she too had been a boisterous child when she was very young, before she turned shy and moody. Tommy liked to be the centre of everything and it could be very tiring being in his orbit. And yet he was, of course, utterly adorable also. Sometimes when Amy felt things getting on top of her all it took was Tommy's sweet smile to cheer her up again. Greg walked beside her, holding her hand. He still sometimes seemed nervous about touching her, as if he was only visiting and didn't want to outstay his welcome. As if he hadn't fully realised she was his to keep now. He'd been an absolute rock at school, always dependable, decent, kind, sensitive. It used to annoy her that people hadn't realised what he was like. He was so quiet that people called him a nerd or a geek, but he really wasn't like that. Amy knew that if you just talked to him he opened up and she had found she could talk to him about anything, almost. When she went to university they'd drifted apart. She'd hooked up with several different guys, but none had lasted. And when she came home there he still was, same old Greg. She had decided not to let him go again. They'd gone to a registry office, nothing fancy, just family really. And so she was Mrs Amy Mackenzie now. That was strange. It made her feel she should be skipping through the heather and hiding handsome Jacobites from villainous Redcoats. Greg said she didn't have to wear tartan if she didn't want to and, sure enough, when they visited his grandparents in Edinburgh there wasn't a kilt to be seen, except on the piper dolls in the tourist shops. "It's off-peak," said Greg. "There's plenty of real ones if you come in the summer." He was a carpenter in the construction industry and she taught English, part-time until Tommy started school. It was like a model of normal life that Amy felt she needed to hold on to tightly. She never felt particularly attached to life and sometimes she was afraid she might just float off somewhere if Greg and Tommy didn't anchor her down. Being a housewife and a teacher, having responsibilities and duties, she felt she needed these to keep her together. But she also missed some of the wildness and freedom she'd had at university. Greg was tender and considerate, but she wished he'd realise that being married meant he didn't have to ask all the time. It was nice that he didn't take her for granted, but she liked to be surprised sometimes, she liked to be taken by a man who knew what she wanted without having to ask. She thought about the other men in her life. There was Dad, a good, strong, gentle, kind man. She'd been pretty horrible to him to start off with. Maybe she hadn't wanted to share her mother. And maybe she had had good reason to be nervous of men. Whichever it was, she'd played up terribly. She'd thrown tantrums when he came round and refused to let them alone. She remembered pretending to be sick one night when he'd stayed over, trying to keep them up all night, maybe trying to scare him away. Then she'd tried to suck up to him. It was embarrassing to remember. She'd tried to be cute and coy, and sit on his lap and cuddle him, and plead for favours, things her mother wouldn't let her have, tried to play them against each other. But he had been sternly unbending. "Ask your mother," he always said. "Do what your mother tells you," had been his only rule. He had refused to be a father to Amy, refused to have anything to do with bringing her up, except in so far as he supported her mother in every decision she made. Instead he became a confidant, a teacher and a friend. When he had died she had felt torn apart. She had felt guilty for not having appreciated every second she'd known him. She didn't really remember her real father. All that was left of him was the faintest feeling of dread, a sickness in the stomach when she thought of him and an occasional shadow cast over her dreams. And then there was Him. She knew nothing about him, not a name or anything. She just knew he was there, somehow, deep down in the pit of her soul. He wasn't like an imaginary friend. He never appeared to her or spoke to her. But occasionally, in certain situations, it seemed he was there. At school, in maths tests, or when she was in trouble with a teacher or got into a fight, it seemed he was there and she knew what to do or say. It was possible that once, a long time ago, he had woken up in her bed, when her father was there, and screamed and screamed until Mum had come to rescue her. Sometimes, when she was still a child, she had dreamed of a little boy. He was always very sad though she couldn't say how she knew this because she never saw his face; he was always looking away from her. But you could also say that they were both looking in the same direction. Sometimes, in these dreams, he was a little girl. Or maybe the girl was really her. But that, it seemed, meant that she was him. Or maybe it didn't. Thinking of these dreams it occurred to her that the face you never normally see is your own. In therapy, when Amy was at university, she had recovered a memory of something she had witnessed when she was very small, a road accident. Her therapist had thought this very significant, that this, along with the other thing, could explain everything. Amy felt then that she could, if she wanted to, tell herself a romantic story about a guardian angel, a spirit that watched over her. But she couldn't believe it resolved anything. She still felt she was left with more questions than answers about what, if anything, had happened to her. She had gone a bit wild at uni, let herself go. She felt quite awkward at first, with people she didn't know, but when a guy persisted, if he was a nice guy, she could just relax and go with it. Then, for all she was never much of a girly girl, she was glad she wasn't a boy. She couldn't imagine being the one to make the moves, having to ask, facing rejection. All she had to do was drag herself out to a bar and wait for some action. There was always a steady supply of smiling eyes, warm lips and strong arms. But sometimes she suffered strange anxieties. There were times when she felt not quite identical to herself, as if there were two Amys, almost, but not quite, exactly the same. She couldn't tell which was the real one. One time she was at a party. She was very drunk and a joint had been passed around. She felt really out of it, kind of drifting. Jakey had his arms round her, stroking her breast and nuzzling her neck. Suddenly, she felt a weird feeling of oppressive closeness. She felt hyper-aware of everything around her, as if everything was pressing against her at once. There was Jake's hands all over her body, his breath in her nostrils, his face right in hers. A panic rose up in her and suddenly she had to get away. "Oh stop it! Get off me!" she mumbled, drunkenly, and pushed him feebly away. She got up, staggered towards the door and tripped over someone's legs. She crawled the rest of the way out of the room, picked herself up and staggered off, into the night. The feeling of hyper-awareness stayed with her, not oppressive any more, but strangely exhilarating. There was the cool night breeze, the glow of the street lights against the black of the sky, people passing, laughing and shouting. She suddenly felt aware of her own body as if it was something new and strange, as if noticing it for the first time - the way her skirt felt on her thighs, the way the wind tickled her calves, her breasts moving under her top, her hair brushing her shoulders, the taste of her lipstick. When she got back to her room she stripped off and examined herself in the mirror and she felt an aching mixture of longing and regret, as if for an unobtainable dream man, as if for a brother who was too close and too far away. She lay on her bed and masturbated for twenty minutes or more and had wild, shuddering orgasms, as if just being who she was, where she was, was the most exciting thing imaginable. She had had to work hard to make things up with Jake. Poor Jakey, his pride had been hurt, in front of his mates. Just apologising wasn't enough. There had to be a lot of public kissing and hand-holding and so on, to make sure everyone knew that, no, there was nothing wrong with Jakey. It had just been Amy having a funny turn. It didn't last. They split up soon after. Amy had wondered if she could maybe do without men altogether. They could be so frustrating, demanding, proud, even arrogant. She wondered what it would be like if she weren't such a sucker for, well, for anything in trousers sometimes. Late night in the student bar a classmate of hers, Sarah, had confessed to being bisexual. Sarah was tall, with a lean, athletic build. Amy could suddenly see herself falling for this rangy, intense woman. She put a hand on Sarah's knee and Sarah looked into her eyes, leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Sarah took her hand and led her back to her bedroom. A few minutes drunken fumbling revealed that Sarah was, in fact, no more bisexual than Amy, which was not at all. "Sarah, haven't you done this before?" "Um, no, not really. I've kissed a girl a couple of times, but... I thought you..." "What? God no! For Christ's sake Sarah, this is ridiculous." They had to laugh about it then, but it was embarrassing in the morning and they drifted apart. Sarah had different classes the next term and Amy never saw her again. After that Amy sort of got back to normal. - Oh look, there's a hunky guy with a wallet. He wants to buy me a drink. Isn't he a nice man. Ooh yes, I would like to see your CD collection. I'm sure it's very interesting. - Same old nonsense. "What are you thinking?" Greg said. "Oh, nothing really. The shop's just here. I'll get the flowers and you watch Tommy, ok?" "Ok." Greg watched her go. She was magnificent. He knew now she was no catwalk model or Miss World. She was more beautiful than that. There was a quite unselfconscious sensuality in the way she moved, so powerfully sexy it made him shiver. At school he had thought her angelic, an unapproachable image of female perfection. He had thought that if he could pluck up the courage to ask Amy to the school dance he need never feel nervous about asking any girl anything. It hadn't occurred to him that she might say yes. After getting to know her as a person rather than as a fantasy he had fallen in love with her and that he was now married to her was something he still found difficult to fully believe. She had a strong, generous, wise personality and it had always been a privilege to know her. Though he had never been part of the in-crowd at school, he had been vaguely aware that she had some kind of reputation, but he had had no trouble ignoring that completely and when he found out about some of her background his admiration for her only increased. This obsession of hers was a bit funny though. She scoffed at ghosts or reincarnation and yet still seemed to think that a stranger dying twenty years ago had had some incredible effect on her life. The latest thing was that she thought she remembered the exact details of the accident and wanted to lay a wreath, or something. He struggled to imagine what she thought she could get out of this. "Is this some sort of exorcism?" "No, nothing like that. Look, it doesn't matter if anything happened. It's just...I might be the only person that actually remembers him at all. I just want to do something in commemoration, ok? Will you come with me?" "Of course I will." Amy emerged from the shop with a small bouquet of roses, lilies and carnations, all of them white or cream, that had a ghostly beauty in the morning sun. Flanked by Greg and Tommy she walked to the end of the road, turned the corner to the right and paused. "Is this the place?" Greg asked. She looked around. "I think so. I've hardly been out here since we moved away when I was little, but it looks vaguely familiar. I think there used to be a shopping centre down the street and I guess that's where we were going when it happened." "You saw a guy get run over." "Yeah." "And he's, what, haunted you ever since?" "I guess. Something like that." He reached out to her, held her arm. "You mean, in your head?" She responded, rested her hand against his body. "Not really. Not like another person, in there with me. Not voices or anything. Not in my head, no. In me. In my arms and legs. In my hands. In my breast, in my heart." "I don't understand that." "Neither do I." He stood back. "So, what do you want to do? Where do you want to put them?" She looked around again. "I'm not sure. I haven't thought about it. Maybe in the railings." "Go on then." Tommy held onto Amy's arm and Greg held her shoulders as she pushed the bouquet between two of the railings by the side of the road and at that very moment she was suddenly unsure whether the flowers were really for Him or for herself or for both of them or for neither. Tommy jumped up, wanting to be held. Mummy leaned over and hoisted him up - whee! - through the air, as if he was flying, onto Mummy's breast. He wrapped his arms round Mummy's neck and held on tight and he wouldn't let go until they got home. Author's Note "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" was the first piece of fiction I completed since school and I was very gratified by the positive reviews I got for it here. I guess I was one of those people who thought they had a bunch of ideas, but who never got to the hard work of developing them. (Mostly I still am.) I had been working on what became "The Orphan of Silverwood Farm" for a long time and had had some other ideas that never got further than a paragraph or two, but when I thought of "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" the words just came straight out and I wrote it very quickly. I think it's a story about what I see as the basic elements in the fantasy of regressing back to childhood. There is the pleasure of being helplessly dependent on Mummy again, of not being obliged to do anything difficult or make any difficult decisions. And there is the chance to start over and make a new life, perhaps better than what has gone before. And what better way of making something new than changing gender? The man at the beginning (for my purposes here I will call him Mike, though that's not his name) is clearly quite passive and depressive. He has given up, or wants to give up. So he makes his wish and most of the middle of the story is a contrast between wishful fantasy of being someday successful, clever and popular and the humdrum daily reality of life as a toddler. A couple of reviewers thought I should have said more about Mike, made him more sympathetic, but I really wasn't interested in developing him that much. I didn't think there was anything interesting to say about him until he became Amy. And I wanted to launch straight in to the transformation, right at the beginning, and not waste time on any build-up. I think the result is a lightly sketched, quite fast-paced story without too much extraneous detail, an impressionistic portrait of Mike/Amy's thoughts and feelings. The abuse motif, like the rest of the story, is just something that came out without me thinking about it. I was aware that the story was turning out mostly light and happy and lovey-dovey (though, looking back I see it is quite dark at the beginning), so I wanted some more darkness to contrast with the light and I thought maybe that would be the father. I got to a point when I realised I had got quite far in and hadn't mentioned Amy's father at all though she presumably had one. There was such a close relationship between Amy and her mother that I didn't want any man intruding on it so I think it just seemed natural to make him a bad father, to contrast with the perfect mother. His personality and behaviour just came straight out without me having to think hard about it, though I have to say I have never had any personal experience of anyone like that. I think now that maybe I went too far. I think the abuse comes to dominate the story and unbalance it. It was supposed to be a balance of light and dark, but it became mostly dark, though, I hope, slightly upbeat again right at the end. But a lot of the reviewers seem to find it emotionally moving, which of course is very nice to hear. I was quite pleased with the climax of the story, when I got to show the mother as a real hero, standing up for her daughter and finding the courage to leave her husband for her and her daughter's sake. And Mike/Amy makes a change as well. She doesn't give up fantasising, but her new fantasies at the end are at least less self-involved and more realistic. And she ends up with a rueful understanding; perhaps that she may find it just as hard to make anything of her new life as he did of his old, and perhaps that in a random world anything can happen no matter what your fantasies. I do feel slightly uncomfortable having written this because I can't help feeling that something as serious as child abuse should really only be written about with care and thought and ideally from some knowledge of the subject. I don't know anything about it and I just put it in at random. So I feel a little guilty that I might have trivialised the issue by putting it into what is basically a bit of self-indulgent, navel-gazing fluff. But nonetheless, I wrote it. It just came out of my head, so I don't feel I can change it now. But over all I like this story. I like Amy and her mother a lot and I like the dreamy, impressionistic style I think I managed, in which reality and fantasy blur into one. I have now revised the story very slightly. Initially the story was set in a nowhere-in-particular everytown so I found myself writing in a slightly transatlantic mix of British and American idiom. However, in the later stories Amy became in my mind definitely English (and of course Greg is Scottish), so I have now gone back and changed "mall" to "shopping centre" and, more importantly, "Mommy" to "Mummy". I had to think about that for a bit because for some reason I think "Mummy" looks a bit weird written down. In Britain when the word is used by an adult person it is seen as an upper-class affectation, but it is still also a standard word to address Mother for all very young kids. So it went in here. And now I've done it and it looks ok and I think I've got used to it. I've made a handful of other changes as well, in all three stories. There's still plenty that I'm not particularly happy about, language that seems clumsy or inappropriate, but I can't think of how to improve it, and maybe it is appropriate for Mike, trying to express quite raw feelings, but not really sure how to do so. The moment I finished "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" I wanted to write a follow- up. I liked Amy so much I wanted to stick with her a bit longer. It seemed immediately clear that she would forget what had happened to her, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it seems to me really difficult, if not impossible, to seriously imagine an adult convincingly playing the role of a toddler. I don't just mean things like constantly remembering not to be able to read, and so on. I mean that everything about the way little kids walk, move and think is too different from adults to be able to imitate successfully. Sometimes adult actors play child characters, Freaky Friday style, but that depends on certain actorly conventions and a lot of suspension of disbelief and it's never really convincing. And it's just for a little while; it's not 24-7 for month after month. I really think no-one could actually pull it off without constantly slipping up or going mad. Maybe that's why stories with characters regressing to childhood or babyhood so often involve so-called "identity death". It's just too difficult to imagine an adult keeping their identity in that situation. I tried to explore all this a bit in the first story, but I didn't really deal with it (though I liked the idea I came up with that Amy/Mike would be physically clumsy, but so full of energy that she would just naturally rush around hyperactively all the time). So we come to realise that some time after the events of the first story Amy/Mike forgot that she was ever anything other than just Amy. The other reason for having Amy forget was that I thought it could make for a dramatic story. I was going to have Amy investigate her past, uncover the mystery of what had happened to her. She would find out about the car crash and maybe track down Mike's parents. There was going to be a dream at the beginning, which would prompt Amy to start her investigation. But the more I thought about this idea the less interesting it sounded. I thought it would be a waste of time to have Amy go around finding out things the reader already knew. So in my mind the story got shorter and simpler until "Who Am I?" became no more than a series of anecdotes. The device of the essay and the stuff from Aunt Lucy meant I could have Amy reflect on her life in a way that commented upon some of the fantasies of the first story. So we discover that Amy is not going to be a scientific genius, despite some prompting from Mike, because she's decided to switch to the arts. Also, she is quite promiscuous, but not in the active, empowered way that Mike fantasised about. We also learn some of the effects the events of the previous story have unconsciously had on Amy, as in her obsession with car crashes, and the dream. I find it a satisfying irony that the reader understands Amy's thoughts and feelings better than she does herself and I think that's the most successful thing about this story. The dream recapitulates the two main events of "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna", the abuse and the whatever-it-was between Mike and Amy, but from Amy's point of view rather than Mike's. To her it seems that Mike, symbolised by an erection, pops up out of nowhere, scares off Daddy Bastard and then withers away and disappears, mysteriously helped by Mummy. Or maybe the erection is just Mike's masculinity and after that goes he's a little girl from then on. I tried to make the ambiguity of Mike/Amy's situation a main theme of the second and third stories. Is Amy now really Mike who replaced the real Amy but only occasionally, vaguely remembers himself? Or was Mike's possession only temporary? Did he take over for a little while, long enough to see off Daddy, and then fade away, allowing the real Amy to come back, occasionally haunted by whatever vague feelings and thoughts remain from Mike? I don't think any particular story about what exactly can have happened can really make sense, even if you believe in a soul or anything like that. But I hoped to create an interesting ambiguity about who Amy really is. I think the introduction of Amy's stepdad doesn't really work. I think that bit really shows up a conflict in my feelings about Amy and her story. On the one hand I wanted to give her a good experience with a father figure to contrast with the example of her real dad (and give her mother a nice man to be with as well). But on the other hand I couldn't help feeling, again, that I really wanted it to be just Amy and her mother together, with no-one else in the way. So, as a sort of compromise I gave Amy a new dad, and then took him away again. It seems strange to me now, that I really do like Amy, and yet I've made all these awful things happen to her! It seems too extreme, now. It's a good thing she's got Greg to look after her. It was only after I finished "Who Am I?" that I realised that Amy Gardner shared her name with a character from "The West Wing". But I don't think that's a problem and I'm sure Amy is really happy to have an intelligent, sexy, politically active woman as a namesake. "Flowers" was by far the hardest of the stories to write. I struggled with it and it never really flowed, as the other two had. Perhaps it didn't really need to be written. But a comment in one of the reviews for "Who Am I" made me want to give Amy a happy ending and I felt I could still develop more variations on the theme. Because "I'm Gonna, I'm Gonna" and "Who Am I?" were written from the first-person points of view of Mike and Amy respectively I decided to write "Flowers" in the third person, though still focused on thoughts and feelings. I had wanted to open it up to some of the other characters. But, like "Who Am I", this story also shrank in the telling and eventually I focused back in on Amy again, although we hear a little bit from Greg as well. Nonetheless, even though the story is mostly just yet more about Amy, I think the third-person style does add something. I don't quite understand how, but it seemed to help me develop Amy's character a bit more fully. I think she feels more like an actual person here than she did even in "Who Am I?" Maybe this is because I can more objectively describe how she relates to people around her. I'm pleased with the way I developed her relationships with Greg and with her stepdad. Mike is obviously still around, in some sense. But he's such an empty character that he seems almost totally submerged. Amy has a vague feeling there's more than one of her, but she can't identify anything that feels like it's part of someone else. She obviously has a little more insight into herself than in the last story, but she doesn't really grasp, except possibly right at the end, that Mike isn't so much a separate person, as an aspect of herself. Only very occasionally can Mike come out as something like himself. When Amy is particularly drunk he's ready to pop up, repelled by Amy's boyfriend, but excited by her image in the mirror. And Amy gets a confused, gender-reversed version of his thoughts. She thinks she's yearning for him even as he, impossibly, yearns for her. And of course this is part of the gender transformation fantasy, the idea that you could look in the mirror and be turned on by what you see there. What I struggled with most in this story was the climactic line, the one about Amy not being sure who the flowers are really for. I worry that it's not really clear what I'm trying to get at. What I wanted was to finish with the ambiguity of identity which has been part of all three stories. There were two people and then there was one. That seems clear enough. But what can be said about the person who remains is not at all clear and Amy, at the end, is suddenly not sure who she is and who really died. But hopefully she can come to feel it doesn't really matter. There is a sense in which both Mike and Amy of the first story are long gone. Surely for all of us our four-year-old self is dead to our twenty- four-year-old self and can't really be recovered except in whatever contribution she or he has made to our adult personalities. And Amy is no different. Amy, like all of us, is made up of all the things she has done and that have happened to her and all she can do is not worry too much about metaphysics, but try to find some contentment however she can. I think she can succeed. There is a hint that Amy and Greg's relationship is by no means perfect, but if they work at it I think they can both be happy and I really hope they manage.