Handy Andy

I should go to college today but I’m lying low. I’ll get some reading done instead. I’m pretty down and don’t know what to do – maybe I’ll have to move away from here. This is what happened.

Saturday was busy again at Old Stuff, but I enjoyed it. We even had a couple of trannies coming in to mince about in front of the mirrors wearing Dior stilettos and Max Mara – so camp you wouldn’t believe it. Jo was pleased with me too. So I wasn’t expecting what hit me when we’d locked up and I’d said goodbye to Jo and got around the corner into the alley. Crazy Calla and some other bitch stepped out from a doorway and pushed me up against the wall, started saying all this stuff about me and Pete. Seems she thinks we’ve got something going.

‘So you thought dying your hair would make you invisible, did you?’ she hisses in my ear, her spit on my cheek, ‘well think again, cos you can’t hide from this baby.’ I’d have laughed in her face if it hadn’t been two against one in a dark alley, but it wasn’t too hard to keep my mouth tight shut. They punched and kicked a bit, pulled my hair as if they were still in the bloody playground, then she ran her fingernails down my cheek. That was the worst. I panicked then, thinking I’d probably caught Christ knows what – hepatitis, aids, who knows what the hell. The other bitch’s hand was over my mouth but I bit it hard and started screaming and they ran off. I was in a right state. A man was running towards me but I didn’t like the look of him so I buggered off. I got part way home before I fell to bits – tears and everything. And I don’t cry too often, me.

Then I noticed I was outside PC Plod’s block. I remembered what he’d said about not coming again, but I needed someone like bloody oxygen just then, so I sort of staggered under the overhang and leaned against his bell. I was still crying. ‘Who is it?’ comes this voice, and I just manage ‘Jazz, help me.’ There’s a pause before the door buzzes and I’m in and he’s coming down the stairs with ‘I thought I told you…’ before he clocks my face and ‘Shit, what happened?’ and he’s holding my arm and guiding me up and through the door of his flat. And maybe that’s the biggest mistake of all, cos I start to cry again and he comes over all protective.

He holds me for a bit and it’s sort of nice, and all this stuff wells up like a tsunami and I cry and cry and can’t stop. Then I do, but these gasps keep coming for a while. Then we just sit for a long time. At last he gets up and goes to get a bowl of warm water and some TCP and cleans my face, and then he says do I want to tell him what happened and I say No. But I tell him anyway, and he says I must come to the station and make a complaint, and I ask him if he wants me dead, cos it’ll be worse next time and we argue and argue and I cry again and he holds me and we stop talking. And I’m there a long time, and he asks me why I’ve dyed my hair and I tell him about Danny. And his expression is weird, as if he can’t believe it, and he says to leave Calla to him, he’ll give her an unofficial warning and she won’t touch me again. So now I’m thinking that I really am dead, but I’m too tired to cry or argue any more. So I lie on the settee drinking tea while he cooks fish fingers and peas and mashed potatoes and tries to get me to eat some, but I can’t, and after a while he walks me home. And this time he gives me his mobile number and says I must call if I need help, and to ignore what he said before about not coming to the flat and his face is so sort of serious and pleading, like a puppy almost, that I say I will. He told me his name too. It's Andy.