Black Lipstick Kisses by Monica Belle Page B

message, remaininga virgin until marriage and all that shit. You can imagine how that went across with my hormones starting to kick in.’
    â€˜What about your dad, and Chris?’
    â€˜Dad was foreman at the local factory, and where home was concerned he’d do anything for a quiet life. My main memory of him from childhood is that he was always tired. Not mother, she never stopped, sampling different creeds as if they were brands of washing powder and never satisfied with the results. We couldn’t just be part of the congregation either, she always had to try and take over the whole thing. Every time it happened it was always the great life-changing event, the crucial revelation that immediately had to be preached to the unenlightened, and of course everyone else in the family had to tag along. I’ve been anointed, dipped and dunked. I’ve been a choirboy, an altar boy, an acolyte, a supplicant, and several other things I can’t remember, one of which involved kissing the toe of some seedy old sod’s sandal.’
    â€˜You’re lucky that’s all you had to kiss. You rebelled, yeah?’
    â€˜Inevitably. It used to scramble my brains at first, but by the time I left school I had come to understand who I was, and my creed. School was another problem. It changed every time mother’s religion changed. I kept myself sane by drawing, first mixing up all the imagery I was picking up, with pretty much the entire range of Christian myth at my disposal and some very peculiar ideas about priests, death and ritual. When I hit puberty I started to explore the dark side of it all, revelling in everything I was told was wrong, devils and sins expressed as anthropomorphic beings especially. I can’t have been more than thirteen when Ibought Isaac Foyle’s biography. I loved horror comics too, and anything dirty of course, but as much because it was utterly forbidden as for the thrill. Mother used to burn them if she could find them, and I was for ever being sent to priests to discuss my “problem”. It only made me keener.’
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜By the time I was seventeen Chris was doing well for himself – he’s ten years older than me – and so I moved in with him and began to try my hand at professional art. Then there was the flat, and well, here I am. And you?’
    He was being very open with me, and for once in my life I felt I could be equally open. For one thing his mother sounded worse than anything I had put up with, and I could guess that the casual way in which he had said it ‘scrambled his brains’ hid a lot of very real pain. It was a pain that had been echoed in myself.
    â€˜Where shall I start? Like you my mum’s religious, and she had converted, but only once, to Catholicism. I suppose new converts always tend to be more zealous than those who’re born to it, because that was a long time before I was born but it hadn’t worn off. When I was little it seemed like we were always going to church – St George’s on the Island?’
    â€˜I know it.’
    â€˜Yeah, it’s a great church, but I hated it then, or at least I hated the services. It was so boring, and I’d spend my time staring at the architecture and making up little stories about the gargoyles and angels and saints. The big stained glass of St George and the dragon behind the altar was my favourite. I always sided with the dragon, and wished he could have eaten stupid St George. I never really used to take in whatthe priests were saying until I was maybe nine or ten, and when I did it was terrifying. There was this dreadful place called Hell, where you got tortured for ever and ever unless you were good. It wasn’t just good, either, but very, very good, far better than I could ever be. I used to get terrible nightmares, imagining myself spitted on a pitchfork for pinching biscuits from the cupboard, or tossed into a lake of