Skip to main content

That Time I Loved a Book



Hi.

It was 2022. I was a hormonal, undiagnosed-depressive teen. I had kept a diary for about fourteen months – and was sixteen – well into it, just tickling the surface of my GCSEs. For the few adults reading this who have socks older than me, it was the year you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the opening drumbeat to Running Up That Hill.

I was sat in the dining bay, and I was thinking about some straight guy I had a crush on. Another straight guy, who I had liked the previous year – but now was slowly becoming insufferable, said:

‘Oi – you seen Heartstopper?’

I said, ‘No.’

He smiled, Mr. Insufferable did, so the dot-to-dot spots on his face went missing in the creases of his cheeks. ‘I would’ve thought you had, considering...’

Tired of the (insert name of animal and name of brown stuff), I said, ‘Considering what, Sufferable?’

‘You’re gay.’

I just left it. In hindsight, I should have given him a round of  b... applause, and wiped the floor with him. But hey-ho (as the Lord said to the maid).

I was hanging about with the guy I liked – he knew – and didn’t care. He made jokes and I laughed. I did impressions and he laughed. But it wasn’t going to go anywhere.

A girl my crush was friends with was texting me on Discord one night (we have since grown up and use WhatsApp), and she was like: ‘Yhh u should totally watch Heartstopper...’

And I did. It was just the one season then. For four glorious hours, I was in a world where everyone was happy. It’s about a boy called Charlie – who, like me, was a depressed, gay teen – who fell in love with Nick, a seemingly straight ‘rugby lad.’

I remember ‘awwing’ at every opportunity and sobbing like a baby at the end. I told my mum and dad about it – and they watched it, and loved it too.

I found out it was a comic. It had pictures that looked startlingly like the actors (Kit Connor and Joe Locke especially). You can read it here. I remember listening to Say You’ll Be There by the Spice Girls on repeat. I remember finishing it at a scene when a mobile got flung down a flight of stairs and feeling seen.

I dislike it in some regards. It made me more open to the idea that the LGBT community is titchy. I have very few gay friends, maybe two off the top of my head. Every guy I ever liked before and since has been straighter than an audience in Songs of Praise.

If Joe Locke or Declan McKenna see this – call me.

Anyway, see you next week. Go back to watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Bye.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Xmas Message

  Hi. Merry Christmas and all that. I like Christmas. It means different things to different people. To some, a religious festival I think it’d be sacrilege to suggest otherwise ( ‘er, yes, Joe, darling, it was an angel …’ said The Virgin Mary.) To others, like me – it’s a celebration of winter, and times gone by. I believe that now – and I’ll tread carefully around this (sorry ‘m a wheelchair user, wheel … skirt?) but in a UK where we have … people who own all night shops and money laundering barbers, and park on the pavement. ( NB To not come across as a Daily Mail writer my gran is Jamaican – and for the sake of argument had a job and didn’t sit watching Real Housewives of New Jersey yet somehow can’t say ‘hello, how are you?’) For new readers, I’m not normally this political but, hear me out. Christmas has lost it’s religious meaning. (Look ‘pon Mariah, would she be allowed in for Midnight Mass like that?) I’d say Christmas is a time for family. For some that’s a granni...
Post a Comment
Read more

Past Encounters

  Past Encounters         Hi.   I visited my old school the other day. My old stomping ground. My college were taking us for a coffee morning. A friend of mine told me. My reaction was this: ‘no-no-nuh-no-no! not going back there – woah!’ or words to that effect. I wasn’t bullied. I wasn’t given six-of-the-best with a belt. I wasn’t given a dunce hat and forced to sing ‘I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General’ or anything. This was because my school had been a part of my life for (pulls up calculator – not even a joke – I think it’s called dyscalculia) fifteen years. Because of that I’d put a line under it … it was the end of that chapter. However, as soon as I stepped into the Primary Hall, the grudge feeling melted. I was particularly in a docile mood that day because it marked six years since I fell in love (I keep   a diary, ok? she wouldn’t date me because I was a wheelchair user and I ended up gay anyway so…) I saw old...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birthday Blues

  Birthday Blues       Hi. Sorry I’ve took a few months off, I have this thing called a life. So how are you? Good. Good. Hmm. Right. So yeah, it was my birthday at the beginning of this month. A few days before we went down to Whitby (me and my family) and came back the night before my 20 th – stopping off at an aunty’s birthday dinner at a posh restaurant. Whether it was the four hour drive, or the beef (it was so pink I asked for a defibrillator) I don’t know, but I … er, saw it again in the carpark on the way out. Proper projectile stuff. In true me fashion I just sat in my vest on the drive home, saying ‘the sticky toffee pudding was rock hard … no, Mum obviously I never ate it, they’re meant to be soft.’ Then I was sick again once home. Proper everything. Just everything. Exorcist looked like CBeebies. I craved water but couldn't drink it. It was a hang over without the alcohol. Four times from four in the evening ‘til eight on the morning of m...
Post a Comment
Read more