Jellyfish Tits
Lessons from shame
‘Ew, what’s that?!’
My self-consciously catastrophic attempts at school tennis were immediately forgotten as the teenage girls crowded around the molten-looking, Barbie-coloured mass, quivering limply on the tennis courts. My left hand darts to the right of my chest. Shit! Shiiiiit.
Girls are starting to gather, squealing and fake-retching. Most are still afraid to get too close but Donna’s about to get brave enough to poke at it with a tennis racquet, and if she picks it up, I’m done for.
I want to run away but that’s impossible. There’d be no way to get through the rest of the day without it, never mind the shit that would hit the fan when I got home. A relentless screaming at, followed by more stressful trips to the hospital to be humiliated by mum apologising for my stupidity in ‘losing’ yet another thing - and telling them how I’d lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on. And therefore the inevitable joke about how I could lose that.
‘It looks like a jellyfish…’
‘A fucking Jellyfish on a crappy tennis court in the middle of fucking Derbyshire? What kinda dickhead are ya?!’ someone - probably Leanne - spits back
Once they realise it’s not dangerous then I’m fucked. ‘Cos what the frig will they think of to do with it after it’s been picked up, prodded and passed around to be plastered on windows - used to make more pretty girls squeal, or quiet boys squirm?
I realise I’m already running - arms-crossed and in the wrong direction - towards them. Already imagining myself sprawled and exposed in a heap, and surrounded as I trip over a foot or can’t swerve before the net.
Many years of not running in P.E. paid off - they all stepped back in shock. Already fat, frizzy, ginger and weird, I didn’t tend to shake it all around for further mockery. Running made my painfully-obvious-to-me-at-all-times deformity dangerously obvious to others. Getting even sweatier than I normally was and jiggling about led to shit-show scenarios like this one.
Seeing me hurtling at them, arms wrapped around myself like I’m constrained by my own imaginary straight-jacket, gave me the clearance to only reach out as I got close enough to grab at that fleshy betrayal.
More screams as it squashes, sun-warmed, between my fingers as I grasp it.
‘That’s mine,’ I manage, still explaining myself, whilst running for safety.
Of course, there’s no safety for a good girl.
I didn’t want to get in trouble for being ‘out of bounds’ - have everyone looking at me when Mr Q blew his whistle and pointed at me, bellowing.
I knew the changing rooms would be locked and the rest of the school was chock-full of bored-stiff kids just waiting for the fun of this gem.
I didn’t want to attract any more attention.
So, I swallowed the fat slugs choking my throat. Blinked my eyes to just blurry instead of bleeding spiky tears. Cursed my ‘ginger-skin’ some more for burning so brightly with embarrassment. A beacon of my shame.
I turned my back to all the eyes and the windows - as best I could - and slipped my prosthetic breast back into my bra. Then I turned around and walked back to the tennis courts to face what came next.
With Love,
