Cock O' The Walk
No.378 in 'A Story a Day for a year - and then some!'
COCK O’ THE WALK
Pretty he is, my mammie says. Almost as pretty as a girl, and he moves real easy, like a cat. And cock o’ the walk, my mammie calls him. Says if he was chocolate he’d eat hissel and no one cain’t love him more than he loves hissel. She says I wanna be real careful there. Boys like that, well they is only trouble with a capital ‘T’ and all the other letters capitals also, and she says she worries ‘bout my young heart.
‘Hearts break and they mend,’ I says to her, which is something she once told me.
His name’s Cord. And the thing is I get it. I knows what he is and I knows I aint the only girl Cord’s got dancing for him, and more than dancing, too, for sure. And I should just tell him to go take a flying leap, or a flying fuck if my mammie wasn’t listening, or at least call him to heel like calling a good dog to order, and I should ask him to be faithful to me sometimes. But the thing is, I’m a little scared to do that. I’m scared ‘bout what would happen if I did.
Cord don’t need me, see. He don't need nobody. And he’d likely just shrug and walk away if I said something. Plenty other fish in the sea, my mammie is allus saying, and I reckon as how that goes for Cord, as much as it goes for me, and Cord’s fishing with some real tasty bait.
My mammie says he needs me more than he knows he does, and she lists all my qualities that any boy'd be lucky to have in a girl, but that don’t count for nothing. And, well, I need him. We been goin out together for maybe three months and I’m somebody now. And other girls stop and give me the time of day and they ask me to go shopping with them or we sit in one another’s houses drinking vodka cocktails and just listening to the latest music. And they ask me what I think and they really want to know.
And there’s this one girl in partic'lar and she’s called Fen and she never did speak to me before Cord. And now she’s got all the time in the world for me. And we get so drunk sometimes that we don’t know right from wrong. And the music playing so loud her mammie shouts up the stairs to turn it down and we don't do nothing but laugh. And we’re laughing and dancing all the time, and holding each other closer than close. And it’s ‘bout the best thing when Fen’s holding me – maybe better than Cord holding me.
So when my mammie says Cord is just so much the centre of his own world and there ain’t room for no-one else at that centre, well I get it and it don’t fret me none, cos now I'm the centre of Fen’s world and all on account of Cord and me being something together. And maybe he is cock o’ the walk and fucking Tracey last Saturday when he was supposed to be with me, like everyone says he was – but I can live with that, see, cos I was with Fen last Saturday and that was just sweet as syrup that is scooped from the tin with two fingers and all sticky and running all places and me and Fen licking and kissing and dripping – but I can’t tell my mammie none of that so I just tell her how hearts break and how hearts mend and she aint got no answer to that.