The Kissing Game. Jean Ure

for bust and for bra

      Plus in addition of course there are:

      Backside and bottom and bosom and bum

      And some which would certainly not please your mum!

      A nice young lad would not write a poem like that. And three massive cheers! I can forget about being gay! I fancy Lucy West like crazy. She is the one for me! My hormones are beginning to rage and froth. Even just looking at her gets them going. Now I know how Bones felt when he grabbed Nasreen Flynn and pressed his lips against hers. I have made up my mind: by the time I reach Z, I am going to have pressed my lips against Lucy’s!

      I just wish I knew how to begin. I can’t do what Bonesy did as we are never on our own together, and even if we were I am not sure I would dare. Maybe this is because my hormones are not yet raging enough. Maybe if I keep gazing at Lucy they’ll do a sudden splurge and I’ll be like a ravening beast and jump on her!

      I have been made a library assistant. This is great as it means that on two days a week you get to stay in the library during your dinner break instead of having to go out and brave the elements (by which I mean Kelvin Clegg and his gang) along with all the rest. You wear a special badge saying LIBRARY ASSISTANT and you stamp the books when they go out and remove the tickets when they come back in. You can also, if you’re not too busy, sit down and have a read.

      Last term it was one of my greatest ambitions to be made a library assistant, and now it has happened. If Lucy could have been made one with me, I would have been in heaven, but it was not to be. (Mainly because I don’t think Lucy reads books.) The other one from my year is Harmony Hynde. I have nothing against Harmony Hynde, except that I don’t think she will do much for my hormones. She is not the sort of girl to make your hormones rage. I don’t mean to be sexist, but some girls do and some girls don’t and that is just a fact of life.

      When I got home wearing my badge, my sister was there. She said, “Only nerds get to be made library assistants.”

      I have been pondering this. Am I a nerd? I may have been last term. I may have been on Monday. But on Tuesday I fell in love with Lucy and my hormones started up. I lust after Lucy! It makes me feel quite macho.

      But I think Harmony Hynde may be one. A nerd, I mean. Not just because she is a library assistant but because of everything about her. She is just a very nerdy sort of person. I realise, of course, that she can’t help it. It’s hardly her fault she has to wear glasses and have a brace on her teeth. It’s simply a cruel trick of nature.

      Like her hair. Lucy’s hair is smooth and silky, the colour of spun gold. Harmony’s is a mad messy frizz like a Brillo pad, the colour of carrots.

      You can’t expect all girls to have hair like Lucy’s.

      In English, Mr Mounsey told us to think of figures of speech for Monday’s lesson. This evening Dad arrived home and announced that it was raining cats and dogs. I said, “Is that a figure of speech?” Dad said, “No, it’s a damned nuisance.”

      But I think it is a figure of speech. It’s going to be my one for Monday!

      C is for chuck

      As in chuck up, or spew.

      As in, “I’m going to chuck up

      All over you.”

      I only wrote that because my sister said to me this morning, “Throw up!”

      I don’t know why she said it. I don’t know why she says a lot of the things that she says. She is a total mystery.

      I realise too late that C could also be for cup sizes … I have learnt all about them! Stuart Sprague told us. Me and Bonesy. He did these drawings to illustrate. A is small,

      B is medium,

      C is large,

      D is huge

      and E is simply humungous!

      Bonesy asked Stoo how he knew all of this, and Stoo tapped the side of his nose and closed one eye and said, “I know a whole lot of things. Specially about women … anything you want to know about women, you come to me!”

      It is interesting, how people are gifted in different ways. Bones, for instance, is brilliant at woodwork, metalwork, anything to do with making things. I am quite good at exams and stuff. But we are both dead ignorant when it comes to women. Even Bones, in spite of having pressed flesh with Nasreen Flynn. (Which actually was almost a year ago. He’s never done it since and he certainly didn’t know about cup sizes.) Stuart Sprague is Special Needs but he has this incredible wealth of erudition – meaning learning – that me and Bones have entirely missed out on. It really makes you think.

      Now that I have been let into the mysteries of cup sizes I am finding it very difficult to stop myself staring at breasts and wondering what size they are. I wonder what size Lucy is? Maybe only an A at the moment, as she is not yet fully grown. But once she is … whew! I reckon it’ll be about a G or an H!

      Do they make them that big???

      The mind boggles!

      On Monday we did figures of speech. I told Mr Mounsey my one, raining cats and dogs, and he said it was an excellent choice and did anyone happen to know the name for this particular type of phrase? At which old Harmony shoots her hand up and goes, “It’s a cliché!”

      Mr Mounsey said, “Well, yes that is certainly one name for it – cliché. Meaning worn out or hackneyed.”

      I looked at Harmony with some annoyance. What a nerd!

      Mr Mounsey then went on to tell us that as well as being a cliché, my figure of speech was also a metaphor.

      “This is when one thing – the rain – is said to actually be another thing – cats and dogs.”

      Kelvin Clegg immediately shouted out, “How can rain be cats and dogs?”

      Kelvin Clegg is lower down the scale of evolution than an amoeba, but I think he actually had a point there. How can rain be cats and dogs?

      You could tell that Mr Mounsey was at a bit of a loss. He went on about symbolism in a very vague sort of way. Just burbling, really. Obviously didn’t have the faintest idea. He was saved by the bell, as teachers often are. He said, “Yes, well! Why don’t you all go away and try thinking of other figures of speech that are metaphors?”

      I have been trying to think of one but it is not easy at the moment as my mind is on other things. Well, when I say other things … what I mean is sex. What I mean is kissing. What I mean is … Lucy!

      My hormones are positively seething.

      I asked Dad last night when he started going with girls.

      He said, “So long ago I can’t even remember.”

      I