MY MATE
THE FLASHER
The following story is totally true. One detail has been changed, the name of my friend, Tony Yarden. I wrote this at a creative writing workshop when I was given the prompts 'rusty pipe' and the name of an old friend. It immediately brought back the memories of these sad events.
My best friend in my teenage years (1974-79) was Tony Yarden, who turned out to be a flasher towards the end of that time.
We were neighbours. I could see his house from my bedroom window, and we both went to the local junior school. Neither of us were handsome lads. Tony was nicknamed Urko, after the Gorilla in the Planet Of The Apes TV series, and he had worse luck with the opposite sex than I did. Even my sister found him repulsive.
While I would sulk for days when a girl turned me down for a date, Tony persisted in begging them, and making passes. He sometimes didn’t get the message. He was briefly suspended from school when one girl’s parents complained that he was stalking her. Somehow he avoided getting expelled.
Tony told me about that, when we played football, and generally hung around. I never read much into it at the time – I just thought it was just bad luck for him that things hadn’t worked out.
His parents were lovely – his father used to take him, myself and another mate of ours to Morecambe or Tatton Park for days out, and I was always welcome at their house.
Then one day, in the early summer of 78 or 79, our cosy innocent silly little World fell apart and something snapped in Tony. There had been reports about flashers for months, and living close to a public park, it was not too surprising. Whether all the incidents had involved Tony is unknown. When he got caught, he wasn’t exactly using stealth or cunning. He just dropped his pants in the street in front of a trio of teenage girls, and silently started playing with his cock. He said nothing. The girls screamed and ran to tell the parents of one of the party, and Tony’s fate was sealed. .
The girl’s father, living a few streets away, started out immediately to unleash Hell on the Yardens. As he headed their way, he rounded up a posse by knocking on the doors of every able bodied man in his path, and all in the streets joined the slowly growing mob. I was in the street when I saw them coming by. My friendship with Tony was irrelevant to them, and I just joined the back of the procession to see what all the commotion was about. As I was clued in, my heart sank. This was serious. I wondered if I should go along at all. I actually felt like telling Tony to run for his life, or get away, but if the story was true, as I suspected, I wondered if he deserved what was coming too. It was like being with the villagers heading to Castle Frankenstein to complain about the monster.
Tony was in the street, near to his home. He had no shirt on. It was the same spot from which he had surprised the girls, and it seems likely he was hoping to perform the same stunt on the next passing young lady. As the offended, frightened girl’s parents were at the front of the procession, with their daughter’s in tow, he knew what the men wanted. He went pale in the face, and fled, unwisely rushing into his house and up stairs. We could se him looking through the bedroom curtains and trembling as the calm, slow moving rabble surrounded the house.
The father of the oldest girl walked to the door and pounded on it hard, ignoring the doorbell. . Pete’s father, who had a heart condition, listened in shock, and initial disbelief as the charges were laid before him about his son. Tony’s Mum looked close to fainting.
Tony seemed to be looking at the rusty old drainpipe outside the bedroom window, contemplating climbing down it and making a dash for freedom. It was obvious, even to a young man who was slightly thick, (once trying to spell Nought ‘Nort’ in a game of Scrabble at my house), that the escape route was impossible. The pipe was not going to take his weight even if he didn’t fall trying to clamour on to it, and he would have come down right into the heart of the crowd that had come to bring him to some kind of justice anyway.
His Dad grew infuriated, and accepted the charges relatively easily. The evidence put before him with lots of swearing seemed too strong for any kind of denial, or ‘My son wouldn’t do such a thing’ comment. Tony was called upon by his Dad to come down at once, and slowly, he walked down the stairs, like a man going to the electric chair. His parents seemed content to let him just wander out into the heart of the mob and take whatever was due to him. There was a gasp. Tony wasn’t being brave or brazen about his approach. He just seemed resigned to his fate. That seemed to take the heat and tension out of everyone. Even the men whose daughter’s had been sexually compromised and who looked as if they might rip him apart, limb from limb seemed to develop an instant sense of pity and humanity. Tony just looked totally wretched and pathetic – a pet dog about to be quietly put to sleep by the vet. I was glad he never noticed me watching. I wanted to see without looking like I was part of what was going on.
As Tony reached the door, as if on cue, the police arrived. There were no sirens blazing, and just a Panda car with two uniformed bobbies in it. They’d been called by one of the neighbours as the mob had passed their house. After a few words with the main accusers, the police ordered us all to go away. I went home, and told my Mum what was going on. She was as stunned as I was, and disappointed not to have seen events unfold for herself.
I watched the remaining activity from my bedroom, peeping out from my curtains, aware that Tony had also watched from the curtains as the unarmed militia had approached. The police had gone inside to talk to the family, and they stayed there for some time. The main accusers, who never got to cross the Yarden threshold, had gone after a few statements had been taken. Tony was finally led away in the police Panda car. His older brother, (aged about twenty-two) who I hadn’t seen at the house, but who must have been present, went with him. Tony wasn’t handcuffed. He went quietly. He arrived home again later that night. I rarely saw him in the next few weeks, when he never went out unaccompanied by his dad, and I never saw any of the family close enough to talk to them. They became elusive, prisoners in their own home, ashamed and closeted. They moved out within months, and I never heard from or about any of them again.
Nowadays, flashers seem to provoke laughter, or contempt – I just think they are likely to be like Tony – poor wretched creatures, brought up well, but somehow, desperate and lonely enough to do anything for attention. I just think ‘poor bastard’ whenever one gets caught.
Arthur Chappell
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