A Boy's Guide to Leaving Home
A Flash Fiction by Chris Cottom
Drive to the girl you love at the record shop where she works. As she finishes off, flip through some sleeves: Country Joe McDonald, Boz Scaggs, Jesse Colin Young. Use Denise’s staff discount to get two copies of Harry Nilsson’s ‘Without You’ so, two hundred miles apart, you can listen at the same time.
Walk to the car with Denise still sulking about last night when the landlord at the George had challenged her age, but not that of her sixteen-year-old sister. When a wolf-whistle pierces the afternoon, high from some scaffolding, notice how she drops your hand and quickens her pace, failing to hide her delight.
Understand why your mother has fetched out the posh tea set in turquoise and grey, not the brown and orange stuff she got with Green Shield Stamps. Accept a second slice of chocolate cake and nod when she says you must take the rest with you and ‘can use the tin for biscuits.’ Don’t look at Denise because she’ll crack up.
Disconnect your Ferrograph amp and Tandberg reel-to-reel, ready to wrap them carefully on the back seat of your Ford Anglia where, every night, you and Denise unwrap each other.
Accept your mother’s proffered jar of Coffee Mate, and let her imagine you’ll be entertaining Fionas and Sarahs from Somerville and St Anne’s, who wear Laura Ashley and weep over Keats.
Leave your mother watching Val Doonican and take Denise home early, since you have a long drive tomorrow. Ask when she can get a Saturday off and come on the train. Swear you’ll be faithful and, there in the car, wait for her to promise the same. Instead, let her trace her tongue around your lips and whisper, ‘Bye bye, college boy.’ Say nothing. Take it like a man.
Author: Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. He’s packed Christmas hampers in a Harrods basement, sold airtime for Radio Luxembourg, and served a twelve-year stretch as an insurance copywriter. He liked the writing job best. In the early 1970s he lived next door to JRR Tolkien. @chris_cottom1 chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom
Love the 1970s influences skilfully laced through this - the Ford Anglia brought back memories. Great story.