When I was 11 years old, I went on a school trip to Belgium. I was sharing a room with two sixth formers because I had few friends my own age. I looked older, both in understanding and form. The sixth formers either liked having me around or were kind enough to recognise that I was a lonely kid who needed some company. On the third night Mr B. the RE teacher entered our room at around midnight. The lights were off and I pretended to be asleep. He proceeded to have noiseless, hasty sex with one of the sixth form girls. After he finished he stood up, pulled up his pants and then noticed me peeping out from under the sheets. Before he darted off he gave me a look that I have never forgotten- one of almost tender desire. Men have always wanted to fuck me or fight me, maybe fuck me then fight me, or possibly fight me then fuck me. The order has, I suspect, always been interchangeable and of little importance. There is something about me that is simultaneously comforting and challenging, and it seems to fry men’s brains. I think that having large breasts forms part of this dichotomy- you are concomitantly maternal and pornographic. It’s the same with my face, which is round and soft but sliced through with Slavic cheekbones. Consequently I look womanly and childlike at the same time, and it makes men horny or angry, angry then horny, or possibly horny then angry. The order has, I suspect, always been interchangeable and of little importance.
The British have a complicated relationship with sexuality. On one hand the red tops are obsessed with vilifying paedophiles, but then you have the Charlotte Church clock, an online countdown that started its sinister tick on her 15th birthday so as to declare when she could be legally fucked. On Church’s 16th birthday, Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles decided to mark the occasion by announcing that he wanted to ‘lead her through the forest of sexuality.’ There seems to be a rule that it is entirely acceptable to hanker after young flesh if the prey in question is deemed ‘fair game.’ The rules of this game are uncertain and complex, but seem to include having an amount of skin on show, any perceived displays of flirtatiousness, looking ‘unrecognisable’ when you grow breasts and most crucially (and dangerously) if you are found guilty of the crime of looking ‘up for it.’
At the age of 13 I spent the weekends at my dad’s almost entirely alone in my bedroom. He owned a small farm in the North West of England where we were surrounded by nothing but bleak acres of windswept land. There was no bus route and he and his new young bride were often otherwise engaged. I divided my time between watching American sitcoms on the little black and white telly in my room; Cheers, The Golden Girls, Frasier; and reading expansive Victorian novels about orphaned, unbefriended girls. I learned that the surname of one of the local farmers was Stuart Mill and I became genuinely convinced that the family must be distant relatives of John Stuart Mill; economist, social and political theorist and one of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism. I would take the latest of my dad’s black Labradors for walks across the denuded landscape and for years I remained convinced that I would meet Stuart Mill’s great-great grandson; a Healthcliffesque, brooding gentleman who could think of nothing more pleasant than to spend his recreational time with a shy, friendless young lass. He would stride toward me (in frock coat and knee-high leather boots of course) and we would talk for hours about political theory and my Economics homework. I have to laugh really, because it is such an outrageous leap to believe that any part of this scenario could actually happen. But over a period of about two years and hundreds of solitary dog walks, believe I did, and I so wish that I could give a huge hug to that lonely girl; my beautiful, tender, hopeful, clever, Romantic teenage self.