Enola Gay………

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I am gay, I have always been gay, it’s just that the body, mind and soul don’t tell you that’s what you are, you have to figure it out and anyway, I was nine I wasn’t really thinking about sex or sexuality then, but the “bigger boys” were and they could tell, and they told me often “queer” is a name I have been called more times than I can remember, to be honest if someone shouted out “QUEER” I turned round, habit I guess, not for one minute that I wanted the attention of the person shouting it out, it was reflex or fear flex! If the word “queer” was shouted I was going to get punched or I needed to get running, either way I had to respond to it! Forest Gump ran because he wanted to, I ran cause I had to. Being corned for the umpteenth time is what I was used to so, when I was I played dead, you know stand there let them get it over with, then when the opportunity came, RUN, AGAIN! During this time, of living in hell, I met a boy, he lived on the caravan site too, he wasn’t much bigger than me and he steered clear of the “bigger boys”, so we gravitated together, his tactic for “staying alive”, was to get up before the others (bigger boys), leave the site and not return until it was nearly dark, so he and I did this most days. Back then in the 70’s you had to keep out of sight of the school truancy officer, so we left the site early, 8:00am and walked around doing nothing being invisible. What we didn’t have was money to alleviate the boredom, so we watched what the others did and they all collected “scrap”, so what is scrap, well it’s anything you can collect that once you have it, you take along to a “dealer” who will give you money for it, so we wanted “scrap”. The way to get scrap is to get yourself a pram; you know the old type four big wheels and a “cot” type body to fill with baby and blankets, well we got one of these, to be honest I think he got it and it just became ours, we had the pram and we would walk the streets with a purpose, the purpose was to find “scrap” to take to the dealer. Now two boys not at school and trying to keep out of sight but still find “treasure/scrap”, was a problem because, people don’t just give you scrap, you have to find it, but where do you look? Well suffice it to say “scrap” isn’t always how the owner of the “scrap” sees it, so we would take whatever from whoever we could as long as we thought we could sell it. A dealer buys most things, but metal was the prize, copper and brass was the biggest prize, and copper nor brass grow on trees, so you have to know where to get it from, and the boy, his name does escape me, but he knew where to get it. Firstly plumbers refitting a kitchen had copper and brass, but they knew its value too, so we would offer to help clear up at jobs, all the while watching where the copper and brass was being kept, then when the time was right, and I’m not condoning this behaviour now, we would steal whatever we could and run, sometimes the brand new copper for the plumbing would finds its way into our pram.