So. Long after the goodie bag of Macaulay Culkin paraphernalia had been shoved deep into the bin, my walls were getting covered with Shane Lynch from Boyzone and Dee-Tails from MN8. I used to get off on black guys wearing white baggy denim – I’m pretty glad I turned gay cause the only guys that wear clobber like that now are sex offenders and Lithuanian basketball players.
Lurking amongst the hunk pin-ups, I had one singular poster of Anna Friel. Casually just slung in there, like it wasn’t a massive concern for a 10 year old girl to do this. My mind has disgustingly memorised the image to a worrying degree, she was wearing a red fluffy cropped jumper (it was the 90’s. fuck off) red lipstick and had a spot on her chin, photoshop wasn’t on the priority list at Live&Kicking Magazine I suppose.
I didn’t know what a lesbian was, well I kinda did, but in the same way I knew what the plague was – it existed somewhere and effected some people but clearly would never touch my perfect life in any way. I honestly had no awareness that my FUCKING GIGANTIC obsession with Anna Friel meant I was a bender, I just figured every pre-teen had the same thing with Zoe Ball or Emma Bunton.
My family all watched Brookside every week because my Nan’s siblings are all Scouse so it was a kind of Liverpudlian duty. I didn’t give a fuck about it, I was normally in the back garden creating my own high-jump stadium with bamboo sticks and pegs. But then one night I was lying on the carpet trying to perfect my headstands and I saw these 2 girls snogging on TV. My Mom was cringing over her custard cream and I watched her face awkwardly frieze in minor disgust, the way you would when somebody elses dog has pissed on your shoe, it’s not devastating but its just a bit rank.
I thought it was okay. It didn’t shock me, or prompt an instant dyke-revolution, or get my barely there nipples hard. It was just okay, normal really. I knew somewhere in the bottom of my guts that this wasn’t the right reaction, seeing these frizzy 20 something females swapping spit in acrylic knitwear should make me scared or repulsed or at least ask my parents some questions about gender preference. But I just carried on doing my indoor gymnastics with one eye on the television.
I thought about the snogging that evening, and from then on watched Brookside better than any Anfield attending, Jimmy Corkhill lusting Scouser. I became deliriously attached to Beth Jordache, starting with my singlular poster on the woodchip wall, and ending up with spending my WHSmith Christmas vouchers on vaguley related products such as ‘Brookside: The Teenagers’ on VHS and ‘Beth Jordache: Her story’ in glossy paperback. I skived off school to sit up from 6.30am watching The Big Breakfast for a 10 minute interview with Anna Friel on a gigantic hot-dog sofa, I wrote fan letters to ‘Brookside Close Company – FAO Anna Friel’ and repeatedly watched a Friel featuring grainy quality recording of ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ the Open University once aired at 3am.
It was all a bit much.
But still, even at this point, even in the midst of being completely obsessed with the only lesbian I’d ever heard of, I still didn’t think for a minute that I could be queer. I had a boyfriend called Tom who I kissed once after school, he tasted of sausages and I thought it was a germ hazard habit for sluts. Which I also thought assumed was normal.
The turning point came at age 11.5, when I was about to start high school and had periods to worry about. The boys in my class all collected football stickers in those branded clip folders, displaying them in the playground like stockbrokers, swapping and hiding their ’shinies’ away from the grasping, desperate year 5’s. I decided if they were allowed to celebrate their fanship with a document folder, I could do the same. So went to Boots and bought an aztec print A4 folder then filled it with magazine cuttings, illustrations, plot-line summaries and my cherished poster. The moment it was complete I took one look at it, felt a wave of heated vomit stinking panic rise in my throat, and burnt in down the local park behind the allotments.
I never spoke about Anna Friel again. My mind wiped out her gleaming brunette hair, the freckles on her lips, the mole on her neck and the angle of her cheekbones. I focused on my crap boyfriend, and cheating on him with his best friend. He was called Matthew and was hot shit. He played football in the first team and had a 6 pack.
I can’t believe nobody realised what a little freak I was. What, do I have to finger my P.E. teacher to be a schoolgirl lesbian now? IS THAT IT?
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