Читать книгу Laid in Chelsea: My Life Uncovered - Ollie Locke - Страница 13

As I got older, my relationships with girls turned from fascination and masturbation to an appreciation of the actual friendship you can have with them. We were all hanging around together as a big group, guys and girls together. Every one of us was transitioning into adulthood – pubes were growing, spots were shining, and we’d started to drink and smoke as an outward sign that we were very old. So much so that, at the age of 16, I actually shunned cigarettes for Café Crèmes, which are like small cigars. I hated the taste of cigars but I thought they looked awesome. In my mind, I looked like a Second World War soldier – and a seriously cool one too.

Dating was a fun game back then, and boarding school had never been more enjoyable. My search for my first proper girlfriend had lasted for a year with little – or no – success until I met Joan Lightening when I was around 15 years old. She may sound 75, but I promise she was my age, and hot. She was a tall and very beautiful redhead with a big smile. She was also very funny. After several months of dating, which consisted mainly of hand-holding, trips to the cinema and snogging like a washing machine, I sent her a letter to try to woo her into taking things to the next level. In today’s world of email, text, Facebook, Twitter and BBM, that sounds very old-school and I suppose almost romantic, which it would have been, only I didn’t write the letter myself. I didn’t have a clue what to say so I asked an older and wiser prefect called Simon to pen it for me to increase my chances.

It said, ‘I think it’s about time we made our relationship more intimate.’ To be honest, I had no idea what the word ‘intimate’ meant. I thought it was some grand romantic term, and I basically trusted Simon to write something sonnet-esque that would enable me to get some action. But rather than get me action, it got me in a lot of shit with Miss Blackwell, the head of boarding.

The letter was found by a cleaner, who then passed it on to Miss Blackwell who, to put it mildly, was less than impressed. Of course when she read it, it sounded as if we were planning to have sex on school grounds, and there were few things worse than that. Joan was in the year below me as well, so she was probably only about 14. It was horrific and marked the end of that short relationship.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried as much as when I got summoned to the headmaster’s office to explain myself. I was in so much trouble and convinced I was going to get kicked out of school. In the end my mother had to come and explain that not only was I obviously incapable of being intimate with anyone, but I obviously had no idea what the word meant.

When I was getting towards the end of my days at Embley I had finally started to grow hair down there. It’s amazing to think how a few hairs can carry so much meaning, but they do. Those downy tufts of dark hair populating my nether regions and underarms were a tangible expression of my transition from boy to man. On top of those luscious locks of Ollie Locke pubes, I was getting pretty happy with the size of my ever-growing willy. Now, you may feel that I’m going off on one here, but bear with me. The previous Christmas I had been given a camera phone and it was my pride and joy. So, one day I did what every man does but won’t admit to: I took a picture of my semi-flaccid willy. Without going into too much detail, I made sure it looked as big as possible, and then I left the photo out to be found by the other boys so they would be impressed.

Needless to say they did find it, but the camera phones of 2003 weren’t great, and angles and shapes came out slightly distorted. I hadn’t noticed when I took it, but the photo gave the impression that my manhood, my pride and joy, was cone shaped. From that day on I was nicknamed ‘Coner Boner’, and it has stuck to this very day. Oliver ‘Coner Boner’ Locke. RDA. Thank God Fishy was dropped!

We were always up to stupid things in our dorm, and one thing we loved doing was getting glow sticks and having pretend raves. One fireworks night we discovered that if you cut the tops off the glow sticks and whip the liquid everywhere, when you turn out the lights it looks like a planetarium. But when you turn the lights back on there is no sign of the liquid. Perfect for watchful prefects on duty.

I took my art GCSE very seriously and decided that it would be an amazing idea to take a series of pictures of me with bits of my naked body covered in the amazing glow paint. As you can see, my penchant for nudity began a while ago. All you would see were the highlighted parts and nothing rude, so it didn’t seem too risqué.

I got my friend Slowen to take the photos in our room, and I stood there totally naked apart from some strategically placed glow paint. Digital cameras weren’t really around then, so Dan took the photos on a disposable camera, which I then planned to take to the local town to get developed the next day.

We filled the entire camera, and when we finished we both realised to our horror that Dan had used the flash for the entire thing, so instead of picking up the glowing areas, the photos would show a fully naked me, in poses which made me look slightly arty.

Even worse, I put the camera on his bedside table that night and totally forgot about it. When I then went to find it a few days later, it had disappeared. To this day I don’t know what happened to it, so somewhere out there is a camera of a 16-year-old me in various naked poses. If found, please return it. Thanks.

I was totally mortified but I managed to forget my sorrow when my godbrothers Jack and Tom invited me to go to Vale do Lobo in Portugal for my first ever lads’ holiday. It was a typical public school place to visit, and when we arrived everyone had big blond hair, wore their collars up and had double-barrelled surnames. They all started conversations with the questions ‘What school do you go to?’ and ‘What do your parents do?’ It was like having 10,000 mini Made in Chelsea characters, but with real tans, and slightly less hairy.

On one night when we went out for a drink I was instantly drawn to this unbelievable-looking girl standing at the bar, who I later found out was called Hattie Clarke.

Hattie was beyond cool. She was blonde, slim and was obviously the Queen of Vale do, even though she was only about 16. I had never seen anyone cooler or more beautiful than her.

She had trouble written all over her as she stood there smoking and doing shots, surrounded by admirers. Even from a distance I could tell that she was a proper mean girl, but so much fun. I knew I had to get close to her.

I was on holiday for two weeks and for the first week all I did was look at her, smile like an idiot and bump past her on the dancefloor in the hope she would notice me, take me onto the beach and grope me. In the second week, after a few vodkas, I plucked up the courage to talk to her.

The boys and I used to go to that same bar pretty much every night. One evening I went down there wearing combat trousers and a shirt that was too big for me, because that was the fashion at the time (or so I thought). My hair was extra-spiky and all in all, it wasn’t a cool look. So with Dutch courage in the form of a couple of cocktails, I walked up to her and offered to buy her a drink. She asked for a Squashed Frog, fuck knows what that was, but I confidently ordered one as if I’d ordered hundreds before.

We bonded instantly. I knew she would fall in love with me.

We danced the Portuguese night away and for a whole week we were inseparable. She kept on telling me how cute I was, which I thought was the first step to getting into her pants. Sadly not. But being her friend was such a big deal for me that I persuaded myself something would happen between us back in England.

I went back to school after summer clutching all of my photos from the holiday. I was so proud of them that I displayed them on my dorm wall (Facebook didn’t exist back then). But I had no way of keeping in touch with Hattie so our friendship fizzled out and life, as it always does, moved on. Although little did I know that wasn’t the last I would see of her …

I bounced back from Hattie pretty quickly, and continued on my quest for love and, to be honest, at that point, sex. I was 16 and by then pretty much everyone was doing it. If I didn’t lose it soon, I’d be put in the same category as smelly David Woodwood-Brown, or spotty Freddy Neilson. Much to my disappointment, my subsequent encounters were all very innocent. That is, until I met a girl called Candy. Now Candy is quite obviously a fake name, but this story needs a pseudonym. She was one of my sister’s bigger-breasted friends, which at that time was incredibly exciting. The boobs I first fondled were good, but by no means Candy standard.

My sister and I had travelled down to spend a weekend with my dad, and my sister had brought Candy along for the weekend. Somehow we ended up snogging. I can’t remember the exact events that led up to that kiss but it was preceded by an evening at Hayling Island’s premiere Indian restaurant ‘The Gandhi’, followed by a game of truth or dare with a very old bottle of ouzo.