In the Brown and Smelly by Britguy

[Britguy]

In the Brown and Smelly

First Published 13/5/2014

Part One

It was a cold, windy January day when I fell in the water. Actually, water was the nice part of what I fell into. I’d left school the previous July and got a job at the local sewage treatment plant. That’s not as bad as it sounds. Someone has to do it, the pay was quite good, my workmates were a nice bunch and you soon get used to the smell and the necessity to shower as soon as you get home.

I wasn’t allowed to work shifts, being still under eighteen, so I worked from eight to four thirty every weekday. I thought it very unfair that I lost out on all the extra money from shift rates and weekend rates because of a date on a birth certificate but those were the rules.

I was still learning and, that January morning, I was more focused on my imminent lunch break than on what I was doing. That’s when I learned where the ice forms on the concrete edge of the settlement pond. I learned this the hard way by slipping on it and falling in.

Have you ever tried swimming in raw sewage? The best that can be said is that it beats drowning in it. I swam back to the edge but I couldn’t pull myself out because of the ice so I pulled myself along until I got to an access ladder and climbed up that. I stood there on the concrete shivering violently and cursing.

My workmate Bill rushed over. Bill’s about fifty and a really nice bloke. I apologised sincerely later and I still feel a bit guilty about how I treated him; perhaps the combination of shyness with the unpleasant shock I’d just had explains it.

“Are you all right mate? Come on, let’s get you in the break room and get those wet clothes off you before you freeze to death.”

“No, I’ll be all right thanks” I responded, more embarrassed than cold at this point.

“Don’t be so bloody stupid son” said Bill. “You can’t stand out here in those wet clothes; you’ll catch your death. You need to get out of them. You’ve just been in the pond.” He put a fatherly hand on my arm, quite brave given the state of my clothing.

I shook my arm free and stepped back a pace. “I’ll put you in there if there’s any more of that sort of nonsense! Back off and leave me alone!” I’m sure I said “back” off but Bill disputes it.

Bill’s face visibly changed as he understood the unforgivably insulting implications. “Suit yourself” he snapped and walked away. I stood there regretting what I’d just done. Now I was alone in the wind and starting to really suffer from the cold.

Shortly afterwards the works superintendent Mr Bolton drove up rapidly in a Landrover pickup. He glared at me: “My God, what a sight” he said disgustedly. “Was it really necessary to insult Bill like that? Well get in the back. You’re going to the doctor’s for a check-up whether you like it or not and I’m not having those shitty clothes in the cab.”

I climbed into the back and huddled behind the cab trying to keep out of the wind and feeling sorry for myself as Mr Bolton drove rapidly to the nearest GP surgery. He must have phoned them before setting off because he drove round to the back door where we were met by the practice nurse. She led me inside as Mr Bolton drove off.

“You have been in the wars, haven’t you?” she commented. “This is the staff shower room. You go in there and get those awful clothes off and put them in here” – she held out a yellow plastic sack marked ‘Clinical Waste. Incineration Only.’ “Then you can have a nice hot shower, wrap yourself up in a towel and I’ll come back for you in say fifteen minutes?”

I’ve never enjoyed a hot shower more than that one; it was bliss. I’d finished washing and was just enjoying the feeling of the water running over me when there was a knock on the door. “One minute” I called out. I turned off the shower, dried myself quickly with one of the towels on the rail, wrapped another round my waist and opened the door.

The nurse led me along a corridor to an office with ‘Dr. G. Stevens’ on the door. I went in and saw a middle aged man sat behind the desk looking grumpy.

“Ye’re making me late for my lunch, laddie” he complained in a Scottish accent. “Name?”

“David Jenkins.” He wrote it down.

“Address?”

“38 Alton Terrace, Parmington.”

“Doctor?”

“Dr Crosby, Parmington Surgery.”

“Okay, let’s have a look at ye.” He looked me up and down. “Any cuts or abrasions under that towel?”

“No.”

“Right, well, ye look okay, d’ye feel okay now ye’ve had a shower?”

“Yes, much better, thank you.”

“Hmm, when did ye last have a tetanus shot?”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had one.”

“Well ye must have, but I’ll gie ye a booster, just to be sure, and I’ll send Dr Crosby a note about it.” He approached me with a syringe. I’m not really afraid of needles but I can’t watch them going in so I looked away as he stuck it in my arm. It stung briefly and then it was over. He pressed a button on a communicator on his desk as he wrote a note.

“Mrs Deacon, can ye take care o’ this young man? I’m away to the Crown for a plate of Shepherd’s Pie.”

A middle aged receptionist came in as he went out. She said I could have my clothes if I wanted them but with the amount of germs and filth soaked into them it would be better if they were destroyed with the surgery’s clinical waste. This had happened before and the Water Board would give me a grant to replace them. I readily agreed; the thought of putting those clothes back on made my skin crawl.

“But how am I going to get home?” I asked. “My motorbike’s at work and I can’t ride it wearing just a towel even if I wanted to; it’s too cold.”

“Is there anyone we could call to give you a lift home or bring you some clothes?” she asked.

“No, not really, my parents both work” I began. Then I realised. “Oh, yeah, my brother’s on six ‘til two this week. It must be nearly two now.” I looked at the clock: 1:45. “Can you phone Reid Fabrication and speak to Oliver Jenkins? I’m sorry, I don’t know the number. He can take me home in his car, then I’ll catch the bus back and get my bike.”

“Okay I’ll do that. Why don’t you wait in the AV room, no-one uses it at this time on a Tuesday.” She led me along the corridor to a room with a few rows of seats facing a large screen. I didn’t know why a doctors’surgery needed such a facility. Perhaps the doctors liked to watch daytime TV when it was quiet?

After about ten minutes the door opened and I looked up expecting Mrs Deacon. Instead I heard another woman’s voice in the corridor testily explaining “Dr Stevens is unavoidably delayed because of an emergency.” That must be me! “You’ll just have to wait in here until he comes back.”

“First they change it from Monday to Tuesday at the last minute and then he’s not even here!” complained a girl’s voice.

“Well the longer you’re here the less time back at school. I’d have thought you’d like that!” the woman replied, testier than ever. “Just get in there.”

I instinctively rose to my feet as the new arrivals came into the room. Eight girls and four boys dressed in the uniform of the school I’d left the previous year. I recognised them and they recognised me. These were the rough and nasty group from the year below me. There wasn’t any really serious bullying at my school but if there had been these are the ones who’d have done it. They used to push me around a bit in the schoolyard even though I was a year older. I’d been glad to get away from them.

[Britguy]

Part Two

It turned out these teenagers were here because of a new government scheme. As part of the authorities’ ceaseless efforts to deter people from smoking by telling them what they already know it had been decreed that anyone who’d been caught smoking at school would be sent to watch a film about someone dying of lung cancer and listen to a lecture. Sending them to a doctors’ surgery for this and having a doctor give the lecture was supposed to add realism or something. They were bored and resentful and I was a welcome distraction.

“Hey, it’s Davey Jenkins!” said one of the boys, who seemed to be their leader. I hated being called Davey and he knew it. “How’s it going mate? Like your skirt! What’s the story there then?” The girls looked me up and down and whistled sarcastically.

I explained briefly. They found it most amusing that I was there because I’d been “in the shit” literally, since they were there as a result of being in it metaphorically. The ringleader, Derek something I think, walked around exploring the room and ended up at a sink in the corner. I don’t know why an AV room needs a sink; it was probably a relic of the room’s previous use.

“I feel dirty just listening to that” said Derek, washing his hands. He shook his hands over the sink, looked around, and said “Pass me a towel, Phil.”

He said this so utterly casually that the real meaning escaped me until it was too late. Phil moved like a striking snake and of course the towel he passed to Derek was the one from around my waist. He whipped it off and threw it across the room before I knew what was happening. I clasped my hands in front of me but Phil and another boy pulled them away and I stood there facing the girls.

“Well what do you think girls?” asked Derek, grinning at me as he dried his hands with my towel.

“He reminds me of my sister’s pet gerbil” said the nastiest girl of the lot, five foot four inches of bad attitude named Helen Saunders. She came over to inspect me from close range. “He must be here for tiny cock disease!” She broke up laughing at her own wit and originality.

“Well what are we going to do with him?” Derek wanted to know. He seemed to get bored quickly.

“Let’s get him down on the floor” suggested Phil. “Make him do the crab.”

“Yeah, great idea!” chimed in Helen. “Let’s see him crawl.”

‘Doing the crab’ meant lying face up on the floor, putting the palms of my hands to the floor at my sides, bending my knees, lifting myself off the floor and crawling around sideways on my hands and feet. Moving fast is impossible, moving at all is tiring for the arm and leg muscles, and of course this position gave everyone a perfect view of my private parts. I did it because they told me to. That’s what happens when you’re naked and outnumbered; you do as you’re told.

After I’d crawled around for a while a tarty girl named Tracey stood on one of the chairs. “Let’s make him a happy crab” she suggested. “Crawl over here crab.”

I crawled over to a few feet from her. “No, come closer” she commanded, “Right up to the chair.” What? Didn’t she realise I’d be looking straight up her skirt? Of course she did, that was the whole idea. She pushed the bottom of her knickers aside and I was looking between a girl’s legs for the first time in my life. She started to finger herself, asking if I’d like to put my tiny dick there. I don’t think my dick is tiny; I think they just said that to embarrass me. Those girls certainly seemed to like looking at it.

Anyway I watched Tracey finger herself. The girls watched me as my scrotum tightened and my erection grew to full size. In my position I could conceal nothing. The boys were torn between amusement at my arousal and jealousy of the view that was causing it. A discussion started about who was going to ‘take care of’ my erection, me or Tracey. I hoped it would be Tracey, I certainly didn’t fancy the other option.

Suddenly we heard voices in the corridor outside. Tracey jumped down off the chair and ran to stand with the other girls. For some reason I just remained frozen where I was.

“I thought the room was empty” complained Mrs Deacon’s voice. “I didn’t know you’d changed the date of the cancer film. Why don’t you tell me these things?”

“Well I didn’t know you’d hidden a half naked boy in there did I?” countered the woman who’d sent the school kids in, Mrs Sykes as I later discovered. “Why didn’t YOU tell ME before you rushed off to lunch?”

“Oh that poor boy; he must be so embarrassed” said Mrs Deacon. She didn’t know the half of it. Yet. “I hope he’s okay, fancy leaving him in there with those delinquents!”

The door opened and in walked Mrs Deacon, Mrs Sykes, Dr Stevens and my brother Oliver. It seems they’d all met up in reception and realised the misunderstanding when Oliver announced himself and said he had clothes for me. They all stared at me lifting my body off the floor with my arms and legs, my erection jutting out obscenely, in stunned silence.

“David?” My brother Oliver recovered quickest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

That broke the spell. I jumped to my feet and clasped my hands in front of me. Oliver threw a bag at me. “That’s my football [soccer] kit. I still had it in the car from last night. You can go home in that. Now speak! What’s been going on here?”

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the words, didn’t know what to say. I mutely turned my back to the room and pulled on my brother’s football shorts and jersey. The boots were too big for me but they’d have to do. Unfortunately Derek was not so inhibited and offered his own explanation while I dressed.

“It’s his party trick innit?” he said. “He says he can concentrate so well he can do the crab all round the room and keep a hard-on all the time while he’s doing it. So we said prove it. So he does. Then Tracey said it’s hard to tell, what with that towel in the way, so he threw it away and carries on. We wasn’t expecting that! Then you lot come in.”

“Jesus Christ David! Those are schoolgirls! I’ll bet some of them aren’t even sixteen [UK age of consent] yet! What were you thinking?”Oliver was disgusted.

At that moment I was thinking that just when today couldn’t get any worse I find that my own big brother thinks so little of me that he will believe this dreck.

Dr Stevens looked at the expression on my face. “Is that true son?” he asked in a compassionate tone.

“No!” I was close to tears but I found I could speak now. “No! No. No, of course it’s not true! I never wanted to do that! They pulled my towel off and made me do it!” I was angry, embarrassed, and deeply hurt by my brother’s disloyalty so I probably sounded like a six year old but at least I got the words out.

“They just told you to do it so you did it?” asked Dr Stevens.

“I’m afraid he probably did” said Oliver. “My brother never could stand up for himself. He just does whatever anybody tells him.” (Oh yeah? Tell Bill that.) “I’m sorry I believed that lying little scrote, David, but you were doing it and you wouldn’t say why. I don’t really think you’re like that.”

“Lying little scrote am I?” asked Derek. “Well there’s plenty of witnesses. Why don’t you ask them who’s lying?”

Dr Stevens skewered him with a look. “I don’t think I’ll bother, laddie. I think I already know. Threw his towel from the floor so hard it landed on the counter by the sink all neatly folded did he? I’ll be telephoning your headmaster directly.”

Oliver drove me home in his old Rover 3500. I loved riding in that car, so big and powerful and comfortable. So I used his guilt about doubting me to blackmail him into driving me back to collect my bike after I was properly dressed. We went the long way round, via my favourite stretch of fast open road. So the day wasn’t all bad after all.

The End