Andrew Leopard starts college in 1983 near London full of hope but weighed down by his father’s low expectations. Brothers Tom and Brian Hill befriend him. They have confidence to spare despite having not seen their parents since a fatal crash seven years ago. Andrew desperately wants to meet girls, Brian desperately wants to sleep with girls and Tom can’t make up his mind which girl to stick with. If Andrew can break free from his father’s suffocating hold over him, he might get somewhere with Pink Socks, the girl he falls in love with, and he might fight back when he’s bullied.
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As Tom Hill slipped into an extremely short green dress he had picked up at a jumble sale for The Drag Disco, Andrew Leopard opened a couple of cans and sat looking at his beer through the small opening in the top of the can. He had spent most of the afternoon, as usual, thinking about Pink Socks and had reached the conclusion that Tom would not have had the same problems he was having. And not just because he was better looking, but because he knew what to say and do and when to say and do the right thing. In short, if Andrew were Tom, he and Pink Socks would now be a couple. If he could think like Tom, he could make the next step. With this in mind, he had decided to try and be more like Tom.
He watched Tom apply his lipstick in the mirror above the sink in the corner.
‘Tom!’
‘Yes Andrew.’
‘I think I need a new approach … I do.’
‘To what?’
‘Pink Socks,’ he said assertively before expanding. ‘Well. Not just Pink Socks. Everything really.’
‘Sounds like a good plan.’
‘If you fancied Pink Socks, you would have done something about it and she would be your girlfriend by now.’
‘Not necessarily. But, yes, I would have done something.’
‘My mother always tells me that the right girl is out there waiting to meet me and I’ll know she is the one when I meet her … I will.’