Oh René !

Our present day computer knowledge-based internet age gives added impetus to our questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? And, what happens when we die? Suggestions there are a-plenty from accountants, judges, army officers – commissioned or otherwise, mystics, assorted reverends and well-intentioned folks from flocks of faithful of every colour and creed…

Yet, who am I to mock? Long before I’d arrived at the point of wondering what life was all about I’d learned the meaning of the phrase “Know your place!” Actually I realised that ‘Know’ had two meanings: the first meant “Shut up!” or “Speak when you’re spoken to!”; the other concerned really awkward questions about it, you know, puberty, contraceptives and male members. In fact it took some time before I realised that these ‘members’ did not belong to mens’ clubs. They concerned all males, and more pointedly, me personally. Various awkward words. assimilated naturally in or out of school, caused most of my problems because I knew how to say them but was ignorant of what they meant and when not to use them. At first they brought only looks of mild disapproval. Later they were accompanied by a clout round the ear’ole or the toe of a boot aimed at my behind.

So, I learned that these questions were better raised when nicer grown-ups were present, then their reception, and the subsequent reply to them, had the chance of  being softened by a seemingly good-natured laugh or smile. Yet even when I grew older, I never knew whether to blush or duck when I raised those questions again. Like most youth of those times, learning about me and my body meant I was doomed to a world of frustration, humiliation and continued mystery.

If the innocence we are supposed to possess was given in order that it might be lost, my loss would have taken place while I was in the British Army. Not that the sergeant in the Education Corp who took us for a series of lectures was any help. His embarrassment was obvious as he mumbled things about condoms, and screened slides of terrible diseases with horrible names that were just waiting to pounce on the likes of us. But I did admire the way he sidestepped questions that belligerent lads from the cities threw at him, until I realised they were the same questions as mine. As usual, they remained unanswered.

Enlightenment came at a training camp in North Wales with an advertisement in a local paper for a certain booklet by a “René Mac”, or some such name. I blushed as I read, “Sex and the young man,” followed by a short list of words that sent my pulse racing. You would not believe how quickly I made up my mind, with my letter and postal note in the mail the very same day. Perhaps a few of my close mates noticed me breathing more quickly when he parcel in plain brown paper was passed to me at mail call the following week.

Opening it later on my own, my eyes at last told the rest of me what I needed to know. It was such a relief reading that explanation in black and white. I mean, there’s no denying things in black and white, is there? As I read them, I was sure I’d known instinctively what they’d said would happen, wouldn’t happen, as regards my sight. I’ve worn spectacles since I was seven and my eyesight’s just fine. You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve been on much friendlier terms with myself since then.

However, where ignorance is bliss it can be folly to be wise. I wasn’t wise when it came to know who to trust. Twenty-four hours had elapsed before I let one of my mates into the secret of René’ booklet. The following day it had disappeared from under my pillow, never to be seen again. At least, not by my eyes. The teacher in me now suggests it probably did the rounds, passing through many hands and minds, bringing enlightenment before it finally disintegrated. The thought also encourages me to think more highly of myself whenever René surfaces in my mind. Indeed in my musings of late (regarding what happens at the end...) I’ve begun to visualise myself seated in the reserved section of Cloud Nine. I entertain the belief that if the higher level of Cloud Seven exists, I may well have the hope of being invited there in due course. I dream on.

Dennis Crompton © 2000

A good time?

How good it was to be alive,

feeling, enjoying my exuberance of spirit,

slim teenager then, still foot and fancy free...

I strolled with ease the main streets of our city,

looked kindly on those who looked kindly on me.

*

Then there came towards me, smiling,

a slim and fresh teenager like myself.

In the midst of people passing on the pavement,

she came up close, and speaking softly said to me,

Hello. Would you like a good time, with me?

*

I smiled, shook my head, and walked on

before what she'd said had registered with me.

I stopped, turned  'round, saw people watching,

knowing, as I knew, what she'd just offered,

bewildered she'd just propositioned me.

*

A few work mates would have laughed

and mocked my quick innocent rejection.

What they'd have done had they been in my place...

but, oh, how sad I felt as I looked on that maiden,

I never could have used her as she'd suggested then.

*

Where is she today, I wonder?

How often have I thought on that,

that and her thoughts on my refusal that day.

Was it her looks, her form or personality

I disapproved of, rejecting what she had to say?

*

I do wish I'd had

the chance once to meet her,

on equal terms, both innocent and unstained.

How different then would have been our conversation,

leading to who knows? Well, I think a better way.

*

© Dennis Crompton 1985

(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Sometimes...

So many times I have wondered how my mother felt about me. I never knew her; she died when I was one year old. Part of this poem covers those thoughts.

Sometimes I wonder at how I came to be…

From two separate entities preparing parts of me;

mother and father, loving ecstasy,

nine months later then entranced ME!

*

Sometimes I wonder what Mother’s thoughts had been,

the moment her eyes first gazed at precious me;

tired and aching reaching out to me,

held me, kissed me…then whispered, what?…to me?

*

Sometimes I wonder at the sights I came to see,

living earth, clouds and sky, ever changing scenes;

birds and beasts, fish in the sea…

the colours of nature all wondrous and free.

*

Sometimes I wonder at what life is all about;

winter and summer, floods and droughts;

the bitter, the sweet, certainty and doubt;

living and dying, a whimper, a shout.

*

Sometimes I wonder at the living mystery

of skin, blood and bone forming the visible part of me,

clothing the invisible you see as me;

sometimes I wonder…now, which is the real me?

*

Dennis Crompton © 1998

(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

Vices: solitary and conjugal

Since my retirement I’ve taken to wanderings in places I haven’t been before, which I have found can be a bit tricky. On one such wander recently I entered a local Opportunity Shop (second hand shop), and it may sound cheeky but it was like stepping back in time, for in the dimly lit interior I had some difficulty in deciding which was content and which was staff.

I took a look around and found myself amongst a rack of clothes, mostly feminine. As I sifted through them there was a movement, sinister almost, as a person of indeterminate age emerged, her hands fiercely clutching an assortment of bras and skirts, and who shuffled a few steps in my direction. She stopped, eyeing me silently with some suspicion for a moment before looking over her shoulder and nodding in my direction. From behind her appeared several more women of her vintage, and if you’ve ever gone close to a wasp’s nest, you’ll understand how I felt when two sidled towards me in a pincer-like movement. I felt extremely vulnerable being the only male there at the time and had the little scene been filmed it would have provided an excellent opener to a horror movie of the Oscar-winning kind. A quick gulp on my angina puffer had my twinkle toes beating a repaid retreat to the second-hand book corner, at which point they lost all interest in me.

My pulse had hardly returned to normal, when leafing through the tatty pages of an old book I read a few things that had me reaching for my puffer again. It cost me 50 cents, but within its loose binding and worm-eaten pages its text promised a wander down old-fashioned pathways of a sensuous nature. Yes indeed! My puffer came in handy twice on my way up the street just speculating on what the book might reveal behind closed doors.

Safely home, I now found that the first illustration on the right hand page was of a well-dressed couple holding hands in a garden. The young man is on one knee holding the hand of the lady as he speaks to her, and the caption reads, ‘Popping the question in high life’, in what today we’d call a typical Victorian scene. There’s a similar illustration on the opposite page, but this young couple are poorly dressed as they walk down a muddy country lane; the caption reads, ‘Popping the question in love life’.

The first word in the title of the book was missing, it read: ‘… to Health’. It was volume 2, printed in America in 1889. Now just quietly, I’m something of a health freak myself, and I’ve always believed that ‘a little of what you fancy does you good’. I therefore permitted the introduction to lead me further as I read the words, ‘A guide to physical vigour and purity in the conjugal relations’, and if that didn’t grab the reader’s attention enough to purchase it, it boldly added: ‘A description of the human reproductive organs.’ Well!

I took a quick glance at the first illustration, which chanced to be a male and gave me some difficulty. The form’s physical appendages where hidden behind a length of cloth draped over one shoulder of the otherwise naked person. Don’t you hate it when they do that? It was a real let-down for me. Being a male I’d hoped to discover if I was as normal as he was; this was a book which was supposed to make things clear, after all. There was considerable doubt in my mind as to whether the poor chap possessed a set of appendages or not, and as for any female keen on filling in a gap or two in her knowledge of what the said equipment looks like, and how it fits into the jig-saw bit she possesses, she receives no help at all. I began to wonder how folk got on before bikes and bike-sheds, if this was the standard of conjugal information available then.

A series of sketches of both male and female organs was given, but in isolation, one would still be in doubt as to where these bits fitted into the total picture. For example; what should have been the most important male drawing contained the explanation, in brackets, ‘(Parts have been eliminated from the original drawing to avoid offence’). Now you know where the word ‘con’ originated. Here was the ‘con’ but where was the ‘jugal’? I did wonder who the offended party might have been; the one supplying the original parts who’d had them privately removed, or those seeking the jig-saw bit.

A word of caution here; pages 58-63 was headed: 'The Solitary Vice’. Now being the possessor of a fertile imagination and believing it’s never too late to learn, I was drawn to those pages with no further invitation, and wouldn’t you know it, the book fell open of its own accord at page 58. I had to blink watering eyes as I scanned through the sub-headings, such as, ‘A sad subject, exaggerated in some sensational works’; ‘Condemned by Scripture and most eminent writers’, ‘Signs of the habit’, ‘A common cause of insanity’, and lastly, ‘When and how to warn youth’. Most certainly not your average bed-time reading stuff now, but guaranteed to keep teenagers of those days very definitely on edge.
Eager to discover something I’ve always wondered about but never knew who to ask, and with my heart suggesting I keep my puffer handy, I flipped through the pages and found, ‘The young man entering the state of marriage is fortunate if he has not already injured himself by yielding to misled passion’. Not good news for me, if it meant what I thought it meant, but I read on. ‘The nature of the male is so much more sensual than that of the female that depletion of virile force is very likely to have already occurred.’ My stars! I was thankful I was seated. I’d begun to feel quite pale and wan, and was having difficulty focusing my eyes again. Not good signs if I recall my parent’s warnings aright.

Now I understand why Queen Victoria dressed in black for so long. Ideas and beliefs from her time governed the minds of many folk when I left home in my late teens. They were rampant in the family where I found board. The lady of the house was a homely woman and I appreciated her concern for my welfare when she advised me one day, ‘Now don’t go wasting your substance, lad’. I knew what she meant without any more being said. It came to me in a flash; she had a son of her own a few months younger than me and she guessed that he, like me was more than likely keeping a check on this virile force stuff mentioned earlier. She was probably thinking too, that as he had not yet graduated, there was still hope.

I’m pleased that the pallid light of such Victorian misunderstanding has for the most part faded with the past, overpowered by the stronger light of today’s knowledge. And while it’s all very well for us to smile at the beliefs of our forebears, it is not without some humour that prior to writing the book to which I have referred, its author was a physician to a hospital for those of unsound mind.

Dennis Crompton © 1995
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

I could have been...

I could have been…

a speck of dust caught sparkling suspended silver in shaft of sunlight in some slumbering country house late one summer afternoon…maybe

or one in a teaming shimmering shoal of swirling fish fast moving smooth and cool in waters fresh a fathom deep in quiet mountain lake…

now overhead even, in splendorous flight, one swallow in a squadron dipping and turning swiftly in the evening air above some quite ordinary country town…

or chance found on some lover’s summer beach in nature’s delightfully naughty salty air one seductive wriggling sperm, egg penetrated, hey presto! nine months later I am here!

*

Dennis Crompton © 2010

(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)

The delta of knowledge (or, learning about sex)

My best mate when I was a boy was Teddy Birchall, who went under the nickname of Windy, for reasons best not to mention. Enough to say that his Mum reckoned he had a weak fooffoo value and just couldn't help things happening down there when they weren't supposed to. It usually happened when he laughed, which was unfortunate, as he laughed a lot when we were together. While she hoped he'd grow out it, she doubted it, judging by his father, she said.

From Windy I learned all sorts of things, whispered or giggled from the side of his mouth. He'd nudge me, lean his head to one side and wink saying, “Hey, Crompy, did you know that…?” and I'd receive another dose of extra-curricula information. Usually dodgy, based on rumour rather than fact and best not repeated in the hearing of one's elders. Things that most other cheeky snotty-nosed lads in short breeches came to know either by accident, by shared observations of friends, or by trips to the adult section of the public library when a certain lady was not on duty. Sometimes I'd come to a halt, “Never!” I'd say. “You're codding me.” He'd respond in a variety of ways before shrugging his shoulders, “All right. You don't have to believe me. But it's true.” The hurt he could get into the tone of his voice, still in the upper reaches of young boyhood, would have had any Hollywood producer within earshot signing him up on the spot.

You see, I'd paddled around in quiet backwaters of Lancashire for a much longer period than most of my mates as far as certain things a boy should know was concerned. Then Windy came along and this particular day's naughty revelation has stayed with me ever since. It had me trembling on the brink of losing my innocence, which I learned later most youngsters had been given in order to lose. From that day on and for quite a considerable part of my journey up to, into and through what is known as puberty, Windy's revelation to me was never far from my thoughts. A kind of touchstone if you like.

We were walking past a clog repair shop where we'd often stop to watch. One man would pop a handful of brads into his mouth, pick them out rapidly one at a time and hammer them into the side of a clog to hold the leather upper to its wooden base as clever as you like. This time, Windy grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me a few yards further along the street. Then stopped, grinned, looked across the street nodded with his head and said, “That's a nice building, in't it?” I gave it a quick glance. I'd seen it before without it seeming to be any different to others in the street. So I said so. “Tek another look. What can ta see standing at t'top?” His voice hinting, “Look, but don't let folk notice you're looking.” I looked again and on the top left-hand corner was a statue. A statue of a lady. It, or rather she was naked. Windy’s voice broke into my thoughts.

“What's she doin'?” I thought, the daft bugger. (I was beginning to think such words but never dared say them.) “She's not doin' owt. She's just standing there. At top of t'building.” By this time we'd walked a little way past it. He stopped me. “No wonder tha's wearing specs. Tha needs to tek another look. Come on.” And we turned round and walked past again, but slower. This time I saw where her right hand was placed and blushed with embarrassment. I remember thinking, fancy making a statue of someone with their hand there and without any clothes on too. Ted laughed, “You know what I reckon. I reckon she's bursting for a pee and thinking, look the other way ya cheeky monkeys. Tha'd be t'same if tha'd been stuck up there as long as she 'as.”

And that was it. Knowledge, but of a kind bordering on shame. Why? I wasn't really any the wiser, though the statue of the naked lady drew me along that particular street quite regularly for a time. What I hadn't realised was that my thoughts had turned an inanimate object into real life. It also brought me to a delta where knowledge opened before me in a variety of ways.

On the other corner opposite the statue was an admiral with a cocked-hat. I pondered on why the admiral was clothed while the statue was not many times but couldn't come up with a reason that satisfied me. Of course the building was a pub. There was a lovely red light above a side door. It could have been The Admiral Benbow or some such, I forget. It led me to thinking about Nelson dying during the Battle of Trafalgar and him saying: 'Kiss me, Hardy'. Surely the reporter got it wrong! What sailor worth his salt would have said that? But then, what if it was true? I never talked about this you understand. I did wonder if any of my mates were concerned about Nelson asking Hardy to kiss him. Inwardly I didn't really mind. Nelson was a hero. He could ask anybody to kiss him. I wonder what happened to Hardy after that?

By this time I had a fairly good grasp of general knowledge when it came to things above the waistline and below the knee but woefully ignorant about the bit in between. Then one day Windy and I were in the library and found a book about the buildings in our town. Eagerly we flipped through the pages. It was there, but some uncouth lout had defaced it at the place I most wanted to see. Beside it was the word, ‘Homo'. Windy looked at it and said knowingly. “You know, a cross between a man and a woman, or something like that.”

“Gerroff!” I exclaimed, shocked beyond my normal range of shockability. We looked it up in a dictionary. It wasn't there. “It's to do with sex,” Windy said quietly. A three-letter word ringed, high-lighted and glowing with dire warnings of what would happen if you started mucking about with it. “I once heard an old lady say that a certain boy would never amount to much because the crotch of his trousers hung too low for a lad of his age.” He sounded serious, so we both checked the crotch of our trousers but couldn't make out what she meant.

Eventually, we found the word ‘homosexual’; it was in the extra bit at the back of the dictionary. That extra bit contained other words, diverting my interest along many lines for a few more years before other things began to happen. You know, as a lad the delta of knowledge was a fascinating place in which to paddle. Oh yes.

NB. Gerroff! means: ‘Get off’, standing for a very strong sense of disbelief, its origins dating back to just before Stonehenge came into prominence. A man invited a neighbour to view his erection in the backyard, where two big slabs of rock had been set upright in the ground. He was suitably impressed but when told that next week he'd see another one across the top of both of them, he came out with the word, “Gerroff!” then adding, “If you do manage it, it'll be handy to shelter from the rain.”

Some weeks later it was done but with several more stone slabs forming a semi-circle. “It's the kids,” his wife explained. “Like a lot of dinosaurs. One dies they all die. He puts a stone up, they put more up. It's ruined the view.” The story has come down in oral tradition with the first recorded occurrence appearing in a tablet called: 'Strewth'.

Editor's note. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

Dennis Crompton  © 1998
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2012)

Simon Shebden

The residents of Stanmore Crescent in the suburb of Manning’s Heath, Horsham, in the south of England, were feeling rather smug. Two weeks ago the Crescent had won first prize for the best kept gardens in the area, third year running if you please; a conceited satisfaction, if satisfaction it gave, for the affluence of its residents ensured the highest care was lavished on anything sown, planted, blooming or showing in the manicured grounds around their spic and span show houses.

Sour grapes? Perhaps, but my position with a security firm in the district gave access to information barred to most. Recently, I had cause to check the background of the Shebden family, occupiers of number 45, or ‘Cranleigh’ as the old English lettering on the security gate declared. Nothing serious, just one of those checks required by firms who have certain dealings with the government. I found the Shebdens to be quiet, unassuming, affluent and generally well-disposed to the various charities calling on them, receiving the nods, smiles and greetings of others with an amiable enough spirit. And why not? Scientifically well-qualified, Vaughan Shebden enjoyed his exalted position as Director of the Institute of Horticultural Science on the outskirts of the town, while his wife Jane, of the Gaffeny family, gifted intellectually with a PhD in science herself, maintained the family name on the board of the University of Guilford as Registrar.

Her name considered plain by some, could not have been affixed to this Jane. I can tell you that in one of her frequently suggestive but hitherto non-productive playful moods, she presented a certain kind of book to Vaughan, one of her best friends at the time. From that moment on Vaughan felt himself poised on the upper-most level of exciting husbandry, for the contents of the book, being avant-garde, boggled his mind and knees, accompanied by a most pleasant tingling feeling just below his navel, introducing him to a variety of bedroom games with highly erotic eastern flavours. And in case you’re asking if the book that changed their lives was calm and sultry (kama sutra...), I can tell that calm it was never was, but sultry? Yes, indeed!

A week later, the evening of Simon’s conception as it happened, they’d dined together. Jane, as then unfettered by ring or promise, had enjoyed the carefree flings at country hotels over a number of months, and with the oven remaining empty, flings aplenty beckoned her on. Friends later pondered on whether the hotel at Lythe Hill, on the Petworth Road just out of Haselmere in Surrey, could have had something in the water that opened the door. Others reasoned that the prelude was the atmosphere of the Auberge de France, smaller of the hotel’s two restaurants, aided further by the delicious meal they were served that evening. The prime Scottish fillet of steak, pan-fried with a puree of pickled walnuts, Vaughan demolished, or poached rainbow trout with a compote of prawns and coated with a light mustard sauce which Jane consumed together with a most appropriate glass or two of the best white wine . Whatever, the door was opened and delivery made sometime that evening or in the early hour of the following day in the snugly comfort of room 69, adding considerable weight to the saying of estate agents: Location is everything.

However, strange customs are still practised by country folk who gather in wood or vale performing at unearthly hours rituals best not seen by decent clean-living people. I’m certain Benjamin Belchin, elderly kitchen-hand at the said hotel was involved. He insisted that his name Belchin be pronounced following the custom of his forebears, as wind is noisily emitted from the stomach through the mouth, enjoying the discomfort it gave to gentle folk unfortunate to be within hearing. He witnessed what he described as a most dastardly deed committed by Jane as she drove up the hotel drive earlier that fated day and in the process of parking her red two-seater, she’d nonchalantly reduced Spiky, Benjamin’s pet hedgehog, to large dinner-plate size and skipped into the hotel without giving it a moment’s thought. This callous action irked Benjamin’s ire a notch or two beyond his safe working scale, evidenced a short time later as pots, cooking utensils and crockery flew in all directions around the kitchen. You could understand; he’d cared for Spiky as a surrogate parent since finding it a twitchy splodged hog by the side of the road side some months earlier. Mouth to mouth had proved tricky but a straw successfully restored some shape to his small, snail-munching buddy. It ended more your oblique oval than normal I’d say and sadly resulted in Spiky being snubbed by hogs local and itinerate squashing through the area or hitching rides in the treads of vehicle via the by-pass.

Which brings us to the question: Did Benjamin Belchin in a fit of spite pronounce some kind of jiggery-pokery high step spell in the wine cellar just before the arrival of Vaughan Shebden? He accompanied himself with spoons, banging two pan lids strapped to his inner thighs, interspersed with strange cries and mutterings through pursed lips. Whatever, the child conceived the day of Spikey’s demise under the wheels of her car was born safely after the normal time had elapsed, with nothing outward giving evidence that Benjamin’s jiggery-pokery had worked.

Delighted that he was now a father, Vaughan named the boy, Simon, wisely dropping the prefix Karma moments before notifying the birth at the registry office, and no doubt the ghosts of the Gaffney’s of Surrey smiled again.

The thing is, one would have expected the offspring of two very gifted minds to be of similar ability. Sad to say, Simon turned out to be more than a little off-centre, he failed to measure up intellectually, started a commune and took to hippy ways with the result that Momma and Poppa shut their nursery door for good.

One is thus drawn to the conclusion that in chemistry when two substances unite, the new substance is called a Tertium Quid, or a third party which shall be nameless. Vaughan and Jane with all their knowledge ought to have known that. I hope you’ll approve of my writing to the suggesting they change Simon’s name by deed poll; I’ve suggested Tertium.Quid, for Simon is certainly not the full quid, only one-third to be precise.

© Dennis Crompton 1999