A Quick Pash at the Prison Wall
Do you remember the name of the first person you kissed?
Content warning: Contains groping and saliva.
As a kid, I used to hang out with a bunch of friends who lived in Brixton, southwest London. One of them was the daughter of a prison guard at the infamous Brixton Prison.
That family lived in a high-rise, featureless complex of flats, directly behind one of the prison walls. And I mean directly. We hung out, and did other things I’ll get to soon, in the shadows of those walls.
We were probably the much tougher half of this motley group.
One evening we agreed to meet up with a small band of equally ‘unsophisticated’ boys. We twirled our hair, fluttered our eyelashes, and punched the boys in the stomach. A ploy to woo them gently.
I think the boys would’ve been worried that our dads were prison guards, with a reputation for violence. Mine wasn’t. He was a postal worker and a gentle soul. The worst thing he did to any boy, was tell dad jokes and warn him I was a brat.
We all paired off pretty quickly. I was lucky. My boy was cute, didn’t have acne, and he didn’t smell.
As the sun went down, the shadow of the massive prison wall overtook everything…
