Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [3]
I also felt that sending me to school was just a way of getting me out of the house, and I became very resentful. One master, quite young, a Mr. Porter, seemed to have a real interest in unearthing the children’s gifts or skills, and becoming acquainted with us in general. Whenever he tried this with me, I would become extremely resentful. I would stare at him with as much hatred as I could muster, until he eventually caned me for what he called “dumb insolence.” I don’t blame him now; anyone in a position of authority got that kind of treatment from me. Art was the only subject that I really enjoyed, though I did win an award for playing “Greensleeves” on the recorder, which was the first instrument I ever learned to play.
The headmaster, Mr. Dickson, was a Scotsman with a shock of red hair. I had very little to do with him until I was nine years old, when I was called up before him for making a lewd suggestion to one of the girls in my class. While playing on the Green, I had come across a piece of homemade pornography lying in the grass. It was a kind of book, made of pieces of paper crudely stapled together with rather amateurish drawings of genitalia and a typed text full of words I had never heard of. My curiosity was aroused because I hadn’t had any kind of sex education, and I had certainly never seen a woman’s genitalia. In fact, I wasn’t even certain if boys were different from girls until I saw this book.
Once I recovered from the shock of seeing these drawings, I was determined to find out about girls. I was too shy to ask any of the girls I knew at school, but there was this new girl in class, and because she was new, it was open season on her. As luck would have it, she was put at the desk directly in front of me in the classroom, so one morning I plucked up courage and asked her, without any idea of what the words meant, “Do you fancy a shag?” She looked at me with a bemused expression, because she obviously didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but at playtime she went and told another girl what I’d said, and asked what it meant. After lunch I was summoned to the headmaster’s office, where, after being quizzed as to exactly what I had said to her and being made to promise to apologize, I was bent over and given six of the best. I left in tears, and the whole episode had a dreadful effect on me, as from that point on I tended to associate sex with punishment, shame, and embarrassment, feelings that colored my sexual life for years.
In one respect I was a very lucky child. As much as there was fairly confusing stuff going on at home and dynamics that were difficult to understand, outside there was another whole world of fantasy and the countryside, which I lived in with my pals. Guy, Stuart, and Gordon were my best friends, and we all lived in the same row of houses on the Green. I don’t know if they knew the truth about my origins, and I don’t suppose it would have meant anything if they had. To them I was “El Capitán,” sometimes shortened to “El,” but mostly I was known as “Ric.” Once school was over, we would be outside all the time on our bikes.
My first bike was a James, given to me by Jack after I’d pestered him to give me a Triumph Palm Beach, like the one he had, which was metallic scarlet and cream and was as far as I was concerned the ultimate bike. Because it was a proper grown-up bike, however, and they didn’t make them for kids, he bought me the James instead. Though it was basically the same color scheme, it wasn’t the real thing, and however hard I tried to be grateful, I was really disappointed, and I think I probably showed it. I didn’t let it get me down, though, because by taking one of the brakes off, removing the mudguards, stripping it down, and giving it different tires—the kind for riding over mud—I turned it into what we call a “track” bike.
We’d all meet on the Green after school and decide where we were