31: Not Being a Proper Boy

I am 32 years old, nearly 33. In my life I have watched football, been drunk, done drugs, touched ladies on their rude parts and generally been a bit of a tearaway from time to time. Yet my family don't treat my escapades as (formerly) youthful exuberance, the actions of a bit of a lad in the prime of his life, oh no. They react in a different way.

My mother simply refuses to believe that I've ever done anything untoward, as she's my mum and she likes to presume that the sun shines out of my posterior. When I told her that I used to be an alcoholic she merely shook her head and went "naah, not my boy" and made me another cup of tea with too many sugars in it (and with a plate of assorted biscuits on the side).

My father accepted the alcoholism confession with a much more direct answer:

ME: Hey dad, I used to drink a lot.
DAD: When?
ME: I my teens, mainly. Like, all the time.
DAD: Ah, explains a lot. I just thought you were a twat.

However, on the few occasions that I've dared tell jokes about my surreal and downright wrong sex life he has stared at me with a look of "yeah, right", rolled his eyes and carried on. No matter what confessions I tell my parents (and my sister) they just seem to wash over them now. And having thought about this recently, I know why my fanciful stories of regret and wrongness are so difficult for my family to swallow.

You see, as a child I was never a proper boy.

I don't mean that I didn't have the required bits or anything like that, it's just that I was a RUBBISH boy. I'm still useless now, and I think it's too late for me to become a proper one.

Let me stress what I mean: This has nothing to do with sexuality or manliness, it's to do with those things that make you a boy or a bit of a lad when you grow up. I was never the sort of child to have scraped knees and muddy clothes (indeed my mother reminds me that I even hated finger painting at school because it got my hands dirty). Let me give you my life history:

Age 0: Born by caesarean section because it was too much physical effort to be born via conventional means and I wanted the extra attention. As I'm whisked away in foil my Dad sees me before my Mother and presumes that I'm a baked potato. Apparently I was emo even before birth and tried to hang myself with my umbilical cord. The Smiths were not even formed at this point.

Age 3: My sister is born. I surreptitiously eye her toys.

Age 5: Start school. First day is dictated by the few moments that I stop crying for long enough to be able to read a book quietly in the corner. One memorable day someone tells me that the toilets in our school are haunted, so I eventually wet myself. That day I was wearing bright yellow trousers. This was not the choice of my mother, but rather mine - and a foolish choice in which to disguise urinary mishaps (but a good colour to stand out from the crowd, it would seem).

Age 6: Discover something called "football" after watching Dundee United play Gothenberg on TV. Turns out that most children wanted to play the sport rather than watch it. I tried for a while but was so bad at it that in the end I would sit at the side of the pitch and provide commentary whilst eating my dairylea sandwiches.

Age 7: Have a massive tantrum when I'm not allowed to wear my favourite bottle green cords to school. Later in the year, parents decide to buy me my first football shirt so I can be like the other lads. Instead of choosing England, Leicester or even Liverpool, I choose West Ham because "their kit is the nicest colour".

Age 8: Too frightened to learn to ride a bike, I spend most of my nights after school running after my friends on their BMXs. I become very good at running, but still look like a pissed giraffe when doing so. I eventually get bought a bike (with no stabilizers) and regrettably have to learn. I fall off one day and cry so much that I'm sick all over my teddy bears (George, Nim and Little Gordon).

Age 9: First swimming lesson. Fall into the swimming pool and nearly drown. Upon being rescued I sob uncontrollably until the teachers give up hope and just read me the last rites and offer me a noose to end it all as soon as possible. Once the crying ends I realise that my skin is ablaze (not literally) and that I'm allergic to chlorine. My 7 year old daughter can swim now and constantly mocks me for this and my dedication to drowning the very second I come into contact with her paddling pool.

Age 11: Move school. Our new school field has trees in that we have expressly forbidden to climb. I stick to this rule, and when mocked for never climbing said tree I run and tell some teachers. Result: I am saved from climbing the tree, which I would not be able to do as a fully grown adult, let alone as a stick thin non-adventurous child. Also, all the other kids are banned from climbing the tree. I receive special attention from the teachers for this, and coincidentally also receive a different type of special attention from the kids too.

Age 12: Discover the Smiths. Uh-oh.

Age 13: Quite like girls. The standard way of showing this amongst my chums is as follows:

1: Pull hair of said girl.
2: Hit said girl.
3: Run off.
4: Repeat until they give you a kiss reeking of marmite and pickled onion monster munch.

My method is slightly different.

1: Admire girl from afar.
2: Send her anonymous notes quoting Smiths lyrics.
3: Realise she knows you sent the notes.
4: Ask parents if you can change schools.

Age 14: Discover booze. Not in the usual way, behind a skip in a park, pretending to be wankered on half a sip of Diamond White. Oh no. Much better to get drunk in my room listening to Morrissey, Nirvana and Joy Division and then really nail home this image of teenage angst by playing Turrican on the Commodore Amiga.

Age 15: First touch the lady bits of a girl. Slightly repulsed by it and have nightmares about losing my hand in an octopus for the next month.

Age 17: Sleep with a girl. Did not lose my virginity in the way most lads do (at a party, pissed) but instead lose it by candlelight to a girl 4 years older than me (who looks 4 years younger than me) whilst drunk on wine and listening to a mixtape that I made her. And one point she paused coitus to stop the tape (midway through a song from the Cure) and put on a Mary J Blige CD. I could not reach orgasm.

Age 18: Experiment with drugs. Not with my friends, sat around in a circle giggling at nothing at all whilst high on weed, oh no. But take large amounts of LSD in order to (and I actually wrote this phrase in my diary) "unlock my deeper consciousness" and be able to write more "heartfelt, yearning and personal stories". Jesus.

Age 20: Quit drinking and drugs just at the point when I should be being sociable at university and doing these things.

Age 25: After being married and divorced, briefly date a lapdancer hoping it will earn me some man-points. It doesn't: I find myself far too eager to give advice on what music she should dance to and find myself terrified that she'll one die run off with Peter Stringfellow.

Age 27: Start doing comedy. Not because I think I'm funny, but because I want to be less shy. Least rock and roll reason to fall into a career EVER.

Age 30: Start getting properly tattooed. My Dad lives in hope that one day I'll have a bit of tribal or the City badge etched into my skin. He rolls his eyes at Princess Peach et al and just lets me get on with it.

I had a conversation with my daughter the other week where she told me what the boys at her school were like (noisy, dirty, smelly and very active) and she - without even blinking - looked at me and said "but I know you weren't like that at school, Daddy". How did she know? I had to ask her. She shrugged and said "I just know. You're a proper Daddy but not a proper boy".

Enraged by this (but not showing it) I decided to take her to a chilly adventure playground and leap about the climbing frames with her. She dashed all around, demonstrating monkey-like agility all over the place while I gamely tried to keep up (I made it look like I was letting her win, I wasn't). Eventually I tripped and fell, hurting my ankle. I made Amelia come and sit next to me on a swing while I tried to not scream in agony. As we sat there swinging, Amelia soon got bored and stood up. She patted me on the shoulder and said the following:

"You just sit there Daddy. The swings are much more your thing."

So I did. Damn her little perceptive mind.

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