Where can I find a woman like that?

My time with Rachel was short lived. For some reason, the most obvious being that I was not all that satisfying, our relationship seemed to fade away. I left her place the following day, and I did end up on her arm at the dance, dressed in a begged borrowed and stolen dinner suit and bow tie. But even then, things became more and more distant as the night progressed, and my sister who shared our table got more inebriated. The night finished at the after party, hosted at some other school-friend's parents' house in the leafy suburbs, with me keeping an eye on my sister after her date abandoned her, and eventually, taking her home to put her to bed.

And after that, there was no real contact between us beyond a strange knowing friendship we shared. Sure, we talked, and we still had plenty to say, but I guess my novelty as a lover had worn off somewhat, and it was years later, after we had both finished school I heard she was married and living in England. Exotic, romantic, and probably the kind of thing I had imagined for her. Again, from my observer's post, it was the exact sort of thing that other people did with their lives. People who had direction and ambition, who got university degrees, and bought houses, and had children and careers. People like me were just swept along in the course of history, not leaving a mark, or making a dent, or influencing the turbulent stream's path.

Not long before Rachel, my brother had found himself a girl. She was part of the amorphous gang of kids we had begun to associate with. Not defined by school or locality, but a roaming pack of us from all over the north, east and southern suburbs. Defined by what we did and where we went more than where we had originated. It was no kind of subculture, either, but a motley assortment of rockers, punks, stoners, skinheads, bogans, jocks and glamour girls. Each of us, I suppose, trying to find out place in the world by carving a niche in the historical rebellion and normality of youth in last half of the twentieth century.

Michaela was from a less regarded Catholic girls' school closer to the city, and was friends with a punkish type of girl who had begun seeing a floppy haired stoner friend of ours who went to the local tech. She started to drop by our afternoon congregations at the local railway station shopping centre, and found her way along to the pub with a group of us one night. Going to the seedy Richmond Club Hotel was something we got away with back then, we blended somehow with the inner city crowd of grotty students and unemployed bohemians. There were no bouncers, and most of us had forged proof of age evidence of some description. And it was easy enough to get someone older to get drinks from the bar and hide up the back of the pub out of sight to drink them.

I started talking to her after a particularly noisy and talentless band had relieved us of their art and were packing up. She was cute, and freckles on her face gave her a look of having just been dusted with cocoa. Her skin beneath was very pale, and her hair long, straight, and the same chocolate colour. She squinted at my terrible jokes and laughed with a tooth-baring smile while we drank beer and smoked cigarettes and tried to act mature in the smoky darkness. Before the next band had set up, we had found a seat in a quieter alcove to the side of the main band room and continued to talk.

Then my brother appeared from across the room and sat with us briefly, before the band started up and drowned any hop of conversation. We had been drinking jugs of beer quickly, as we had learned to do in case the police decided to show up, as they would clear us all out and end our sheltered revelry. So my brother motioned that he was going to watch the band, who happened to be friends of ours on this particular occasion. We followed, and bobbed our heads, and bent our knees, and raised our glasses to the messy rock rhythm of the band. I suddenly felt the urge to relieve my bladder after the six or eight pots of beer I'd swallowed decided it was time to leave me. So I shouldered my way through the mainly disaffected and surly loking crowd to the back door where I stumbled my way down a long corridor along the side of the band room.

There is nothing quite like breaking the seal after drinking beer, the relief is intense, and sometimes makes my teeth ache in a strange kind of relaxing of pressure. But after I had finished and made my way back, my brother and Michaela were nowhere to be found. Not in the band room, not in the front of the bar, I yelled into the ear of a friend who was about six-foot-and-a-bit if he'd seen them but he looked around then shook his head and shrugged and mugged over the noise of the band. I decided to get some more beer and grabbed a jug from the nearest of our party and a glass someone else had been using, and filled it.

I watched the end of the band and was numb enough to have forgotten about them. Helping my mates lug their gear up a narrow sticky carpeted hallway behind the bar I carried an amplifier out on to the bitumen pavement and saw in the yellow streetlight, the two of them against a corner of the pub, pashing with drunken abandon. I felt a twinge of something. Something green, and ugly, and as far from brotherly as could be imagined. So I jumped in the van with guys from the band and got myself closer to home without him, despite our earlier arrangements. I would be home in time, it wasn't my problem. Fair's fair.

Wham! Bam! Thankyou Ma'am

After two and a half hours, the film had finished, though neither I nor my companion had taken much notice after the first twenty minutes or so, engaged in other distractions as we were. Despite my strong desire not to leave her alone, Rachel slept on a mattress in my sister's room, no doubt after an interrogation from sis regarding our activities under the blanket. I reluctantly found my way to my bedroom, and though I was excited in a way I can't remember experiencing before, I did get to sleep, after scratching a particular itch until it was soothed.

The following morning I awoke after ten, which, considering I had only gone to sleep at five a.m., was an astounding feat. But as soon as I was even close to conscious, I remembered Rachel's smooth skin and soft lips; her warm, receptive flesh; her insistent kisses. I was up, dressed and in the kitchen earlier than my parents had ever seen on a Saturday morning, at least since I had hit puberty and somewhat lost interest in pre-dawn cartoons. And there she was, at the table, eating breakfast with my sister, who rolled her eyes when she caught the cheeky smile Rachel was giving me.

"You're up early" my mother commented "Though I don't think your brother will be joining us any time soon". She was only half angry, I think she was more amused at his incapable state, and I suppose hoping he would learn some sort of lesson from his unenviable condition. I don't think he did. Not that night. Not for years afterwards.

I joined my sister at the table and sat opposite Rachel, who concentrated on her breakfast, sneaking sideways looks at my sister, and occasionally headlong looks at me. Mum was not oblivious to her gaze, and I thought I caught a smirk on her face at one point, then she excused herself and took herself outside into the garden. I assume she remembered being young herself, probably the first time I'd really considered it in my life. A strange thought that was interrupted by my sister's voice.

I'm going over to Rach's tonight..." she said, looking at her friend

"Do you want to come too?" Rachel blurted out before my sister could reconsider her position

"Yeah, sure" I said, with what I thought was an appropriate level of nonchalance "that would be cool"

We made our way from our middle-suburban home to that of Rachel's mother, in a far more expensive and much older suburb closer to the city. Her mother was divorced, and was entertaining her boyfriend at home that evening, because it was late in the day when we arrived. Her mother seemed quietly detached about her eldest daughter bringing home a gawky teenage boy, but I think her interest was focussed on her other male guest for the night.

We ate, and I did my best to make "adult" conversation during the meal, eventually we retired to Rachel's bedroom, and we were entwined in each others' arm and legs on her double bed (which had secretly impressed me, as none of my friends had "grown-up" beds). Meanwhile my sister tried to ignore us by watching the TV in the corner of the room. She eventually announced her retirement, and after finding her way to the guest bedroom, Rachel deftly covered our bodies with her quilt that had been pushed up against the wall.

I was busy getting my sweaty hands inside her clothes, and was surprised that she not only offered the apparently obligatory resistance I was used to, but made similar efforts with mine. Older women were a foreign country to me. By this point I was on a hair trigger, and after exploring this unknown territory for what must have been an hour or more, I was pretty sure I was providing her with appropriate stimulation. She reached into her bedside table drawer and her hand returned with a small plastic envelope, containing a small latex envelope which was for me to use.

I'd like to say it was wonderful. I'd like to say it was the most amazing experience of my life. I'd like to say I took her to places she'd never been in hers. But I'd be lying. Once I was actually in position, it took only a few thrusting contractions of my over-enthused hips, and the pulsing sensation of her pelvic floor, the prophylactic was firmly in the "used" category. I rolled off her, and she stroked my hair, and sighed, and I snuggled my head into the crook of her arm. And drifted to sleep, with one thought in my head. I wasn't a virgin any more.

Spiceworld

My sister is older than me, I suppose I've mentioned before, as is my brother. She had, at my parents' insistence, begun to attend an all girls' school in an attempt to improve her grades by removing certain distractions. A peculiarity of single sex high schools is that members of the opposite sex are still expected to attend imitations of adult events in each others' company. My sister had such an event approaching, and while she happily had a date for the evening, one of her good friends had recently ended a relationship, and was not willing to rush around seeking a partner just for the sake of appearances. So it was arranged for my brother to escort her to the formal end of year dance. Of course, they had never met, but this was a minor inconvenience, apparently.

So, my sister's friend Rachel came over to meet my brother, so they could get to know each other before they were to make a public appearance. It had been decided that we would all go to a party, at least that was the official line to my parents. For some reason, and probably unusually, my siblings and I often went to the same parties, at least, I went to their friends parties, they rarely came to mine. But on this particular night, there wasn't actually a party, there was just a gang of us meeting in the local park, mostly equipped with cheap, potent alcohol.

So, my brother, my sister, Rachel and I arrived in the park, and met the other teens in the dark. There was a small playhouse, which would have provided scant shelter if the weather turned inclement, but did allow a degree of invisibility from the nearest road, even with candles burning on the green pine floor of the cubby. The rest of the park was "bush" - a tangled mess of old native vegetation and weeds, with a creek twisting through the middle of it all, so it was only being spotted from the road we had to worry about, and escape was a simple matter of disappearing into the drooping curtain of a willow tree, if necessary.

My brother seemed in a hurry to get drunk, and wasted no time in getting through half a dozen cans of beer in about 90 minutes. I suppose he may have been nervous, with the pressure he was being put under, though he may not have even recognised it. I had not much to drink, basically because that week I couldn't afford it. So, as my sister had wandered off with her boyfriend to some secluded hollow by the water, I was talking to Rachel in the playground. The conversation was wide ranging, covering everything from our political views, to music, school, work, and religion; which was interesting, as I had never spoken to anyone Jewish about the subject before, being a strange Anglican/Presbyterian/Church of Christ hybrid.

It was not exactly easy to see her, but we did look at each other for the whole time we talked. She was about my height, though how tall that is I don't even remember. Being as I was fifteen and she nearly eighteen, I suppose she might have been a little smaller than other girls her age. Her skin was olive, and smooth, and clear, and her eyes were brown, like cocoa powder. She had long, very dark hair, with tight curls, though I had no idea if they were natural. She was exceptionally well developed in the bust, without being anything like overweight, and it was clear that if she was interested she could have easily found someone to attend the dance with her. And her voice was deep, I suppose, but flowing. The way she formed words was rhythmic and soothing, and I would have happily talked to her for hours more.

But my brother returned, drunk after another three or four drinks. I wasn't keeping track, and he certainly wasn't. He was slurring his speech and said something to Rachel about going fo a walk, which she, having drunk as little as I had, declined, suggesting he sit down for a while. He joined us on the wooden floor, and after a few garbled sentences, fell silent as we continued to talk. After ten minutes or so, he groaned and hoisted himself up with apparent urgency. He crawled out on to the grass nearby and emptied the contents of his stomach, loudly. We waited until the worst of it seemed to be over and went to see if he was okay.

After getting him back home, and cleaning him up (luckily my parents were at a party of their own) he was put to bed, with a thoughtfully supplied bucket in easy reach. And Rachel and I decided to watch some TV. As usual, there was nothing of note to watch, so I put a tape of the movie "Dune" in the VCR. I'm nothing if not romantic. We sat and watched, as I explained the various intricacies of the plot which were left out of the film adaptation. We sat in a bean bag, and as the temperature decreased, shared a blanket, under cover of which, her hand found mine.

I looked across and found her looking at me already with her dark eyes, and slightly smiling. I smiled back, unable to look away from her, despite the climax of the movie approaching rapidly. She leaned forward, still smiling, and kissed me. One kiss on the lips first, then a longer kiss, then she kissed me hard and her tongue made its presence known. Meanwhile, she had rolled me on to my back and was straddling me at the waist, her skirt high up her legs. I just didn't want to stop kissing her. Until she started to grind her hips into me. Then I wanted to start doing something else.

Our attention was caught by the sound of the front door closing down the hall. It was my sister, she came and asked what had become of my brother, and we laughed and told her, having composed ourselves in the few seconds it had taken her to come in.

She gave us a strange quizzical look as she left the room, probably as we were still both in the beanbag and almost invisible under our blanket. Rachel whispered "So... do you want to come to the dance with me?" and bit my earlobe. I grinned idiotically and kissed her again, and slid a hand up her thigh. "Um... Of course!" I assured her, "but... Who's going to tell my brother?".

Somewhere over the rainbow

And so Dorothy had found someone else. And we had, in spite of it all, remained friends. Or more truthfully, I couldn't bear the thought of not being around her, so I maintained a close relationship with her, accepting the slow pain of a thousand tiny cuts watching her with her arms around her new beau, kissing him in that overly-zealous teenage fashion at every opportunity, and generally rub in the fact she wanted someone else. Not that she ever realised. At least I hope not.

But as all adolescent relationships do, this one ended. And as they tend to, it was accompanied by floods of tears on Dorothy's part. Of course, you can see what comes next. The trusted, reliable friend, the knight in shining armour comes rushing to the rescue, offering consolation and words of comfort and reassurance in her time of need. It is at such times one comes to realise this is more the role of a serf than a knight, and the act is one of subservience, in a very real way. But I didn't see it that way then.

Dorothy accompanied me to many a teenage social activity at that time, especially the much revered house party, where most of the taboos of society were broken by people generally below the age of responsibility in a legal sense. It was at one such party, probably a month or two after her heartbreaking separation from her former lover (for it became quite clear from her emotional outpourings he had taken her off the list of potential mothers for the second coming) that a seed of guilt was planted in my mind that has since grown into a vast forest of regret.

There was much alcohol consumed at the party. A vast quantity, and even more astounding considering the age and body size of the consumers present. Not a single person there was over the age of seventeen, which is hardly surprising considering a drivers' licence was a ticket away from such juvenile entertainments. An access all areas pass to even more predictable and socially condoned behaviour patterns, like going to the pub. Dorothy and I were no exceptions to the drunkenness. We drank and laughed and mingled and danced and drank some more.

At one point I didn't see her for possibly half an hour. It may have been more, but of course, in the foggy state I was in, it could easily have been less. My face was flushed, everything I said was hilarious, as were the utterances of my fellow revellers. And while being regaled with yet another hilarious anecdote of inappropriate regurgitation, Dorothy staggered into view, her eyelids shading her glazed eyes, and each step requiring a swaying attempt to regain her balance.

I broke away from the cluster of kids crowded around the half drum of fire, and made my way toward her. Putting my hands on both her shoulders, I asked if she was okay, receiving a reply in a sing-song drunken voice to the effect that "of course" she was fine, but maybe she needed to "sit down for a bit". I looked around and saw a rectangular table against the wooden fence, and put my arm around her shoulders to guide her towards it. It was an old classroom table, and was easily low enough to sit on, so I sat first to steady myself and slid across the table until my back was against the fence. I pulled her up onto it with my chest against her back and my arms around her waist. Her head lolled back against me and she was talking to me animatedly, though it was all nonsense.

After a period of maybe half an hour, and a glass of water or two, supplied by an equally concerned girlfriend, she began to behave more coherently. Still drunk, but not spouting gibberish any longer. A mutual friend of both of ours came and crouched in front of her, I was still holding her around the waist. He spoke to her quietly and close, but at some point, his hand touched my arm and I realised he was kissing her. A rush of jealous blood to my head made me almost involuntarily kick him in the leg, accompanied with an "Oi!"

He stood up, and though he was surely hurt at least a little by my shoe, just gave me a strange smirk and walked away, I think he laughed as he turned away.

"Who was that?" she asked, and I realised she was far from coherent. Or was it none of my business? I extracted myself from behind her and leant her against the fence, explaining I was going in search of her concerned friend. I frantically searched the party for her, and found her chatting to the usual gang of girls I saw each morning on my way to school. I asked if she thought maybe they might look after Dorothy, or take her home, and they all walked back to where I had left her.

But she wasn't on the table, she was up against the fence, standing up, and yet another guy was kissing her, and had his hand well and truly up her skirt, and was grinding his hips between her legs. I saw red. I grabbed him by the shoulder and growled "wathafuggayadoin?!" He gave me the same slimy smirk as the first guy, and staggered off toward another part of the yard. Her friends formed up around her and she was gone.

Was this my fault? Could I have prevented any of this taking place? Did I make too much of it because of my feelings for Dorothy? Can she have held it against me forever afterwards? Should I have told her earlier to click her heels and take herself home? I remember this night vividly, twenty years later, and I still have no answers to those questions.

Hear my train a-comin

My school was not even close to walking distance from my parents house, which necessarily meant I had to take public transport to get there and back again. A bus, then a train, then another train meant I had to leave home around 7.30 in the morning, or earlier, if I was to be in class on time every day. My general lack of enthusiasm for education, combined with the shifted sleeping patterns of a teenager meant that many times, this just didn't happen.

But when it did, I was quite happy to take the trip, as at least it gave me the opportunity to talk to some very lovely girls while waiting for my train. I am not sure exactly how we were introduced, somehow they were friends of friends in some convoluted manner, and when I first met them, they were all attending the same eastern suburbs Presbyterian girls' school. They were all pretty in their own way, I suppose, but I was smitten almost immediately by Dorothy.

Dorothy was slim, with dark curly hair that she mostly kept tied back in a pony tail, but which easily hung past her shoulders when she let it out. Her skin was occasionally marked with transient spots, as most teenagers are, but for the most part it was smooth and unblemished. She had deep brown eyes that I could have gazed into for hours, had she let me, and the most endearing gaps between her front teeth. I have an idea that because our sexuality emerges during our school years, there is something fundamentally attractive about a girl in school uniform, especially the formal fashions of the private institutions.

So Dorothy was the object of my attention, and my one reason for hauling myself out of bed on cold winter school mornings. I caught the bus with Tom, who lived nearby my house, and met the girls on the railway platform. This was back in the days when smoking was still allowed on the station, and they would come down to smoke, away from the eyes of their prefects who generally patrolled the bus interchange, not the trains. And for a few months, that was how it was. Tom and I showing off, and generally being teenage boys, the girls laughing at our jokes and responding to our posturing.

I tried to figure out a way to ask Dorothy to be my girlfriend. It was difficult. I tried to arrange meetings and dates with her, but it always ended up being a group outing, as I never had the opportunity to talk to her alone. The girls travelled in a pack. I eventually managed to get her phone number, and I would call her every other day, and we'd talk for hours. Luckily, I had a phone connection in my bedroom, and I would unplug the phone form upstairs and take it with me so no one could hear our conversations. It was during one of these long sessions I asked her, in the most awkward way possible, if she would go out with me.

"I have to ask you something" I said. The worst possible introduction to an important question, and guaranteed to put someone on guard. When she asked what, I basically just said "Will you go out with me". She didn't respond. That's when i realised this was a bad idea. I knew what was coming, too. I was starting to expect the standard response "But we're such good friends"

This pretty much spelled the end of the friendship, of course, because no woman wants someone around who really wants something else from her. Especially not as a friend. The whole issue of trust becomes sharply defined. I was crushed, and I didn't get the train to school for the rest of the week, preferring to take a longer, more difficult route, in order to avoid the embarrassment of facing the pack each morning. It was clear when I next returned to the station why Dorothy had refused me. When Tom and I arrived on the platform, he kissed her on the cheek, and they held hands until it was time to board the train. I guess it was wrong of me to feel betrayed. I wasn't owed anything by either of them, but things between all of us changed after that.

In the desert, you can remember your name

At some stage, somewhere between permanently and comprehensively destroying any chance I had with Emily, and conveniently providing a babysitting service to allow neighbourhood harlots the peace and quiet of an empty house, I changed schools. This could at least partly explain the date with the young, cute redhead, as the lack of eligible ladies at my new school was basically set in stone. It was boys only.

The new school was a fair hike from my house, about an hour every morning to get there, and a similar trek on the return journey. It was a centrally located, traditional, selective school, where we were made to wear ties, blazers, shiny shoes, and the whole old-boys-secret-handshake package. The school itself resembled nothing if not an early twentieth century prison, complete with watchtowers and rusty-but-solid spiked cast iron fences surrounding it. And it was into the prison cells that the twelve hundred odd boys aged fourteen to eighteen would file each day, and attempt to absorb the wisdom of the ancients.

I use this turn of phrase particularly because not a single member of staff appeared to be younger than half a century's vintage, except perhaps the limber and moustachioed Physical Education staff. They were also predominantly male, with a few notable exceptions. The matronly teacher of "modern history" (which really showed her age, as it started with the English Civil War) had a forties style hair-set, which we assumed was an original from the period. She was married to another teacher, who also taught history, and was about as warm and loving as a glacier slowly grinding a rock face into fine powder.

The art teachers were also female, and while one was, we were convinced, a friend of Sappho, the other was somewhere between twenty five and thirty five, a very difficult period to gauge accurately for a teenage boy. It's neither within the realm of still being desirable to them, yet somehow not quite to the level of "old". She was one of the favourites, and at least gave us some kind of female influence, but she was never an object of schoolboy obsession. Unlike the Australian History teacher.

Now, here was a woman, easily within range of our own age, that is to say; less than a decade fit comfortably between her birth and our own. She was also very attractive. Now I have to say, in retrospect, that attractiveness is so highly contextualised, that were I to see her on the street in any other period of my life, in any other context, I may not have looked twice. But to a room full of hormonal lads, colonial history was never so enthralling. She was mid twenties, I'd guess, when I started there, with no real age lines in her face to speak of, aside from some laugh lines at the edge of her eyes. She had deep green, large eyes, but not the kind that pop out when irritated, like some teachers', but expansive, like deep, calm lakes. And her lips drew your gaze, as they related the stories of the early settlement of the country we call home.

Her auburn hair was wavy, not curly, down to her shoulders, and she had been spared the humiliation of fashionable hairstylists, most likely by her low teachers' salary than by choice. The same limitation was put on her manner of dress, though she never looked less than stylish, she was neither a flashy dresser. But her clothing fit her very well, and accentuated the youth she had, which was sorely lacking in the rest of the faculty. And when she spoke it was with a clear, lyrical voice, which never cracked in anger, nor bellowed in accusation. Certainly not to the degree I had become accustomed in other classes.

So here she was, an oasis in the desert of masculinity. The sex symbol of a whole generation of schoolboys, and sure enough the subject of more than one of "those" dreams in my four years there. And it was all I had, for a long, long time. You have to remember your name when no one calls you.

Shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you...

The funny thing about being a fourteen year old boy and becoming aware of the opposite sex, is that, as we are often told: girls mature faster than boys. So it's no surprise to find our early unsophisticated attempts at romance are all too easily brushed off by the inscrutable objects of our desire. They know what we wanted, and they know we had no idea how to get it. The girls our own age, that is.

So, there are many periods of adolescence in which a man is just a man. Or more accurately, a scruffy haired, fuzzy lipped teen is a scruffy haired fuzzy lipped teen. In other words, there are droughts. Extended periods of no love and attention from the ladies of our world. Times when our attention may be trained upon younger girls, who still fall for the corny lines of the "older man". Of course these girls all too often had older sisters who would warn them off our clumsy attempts at luring them to the movies. Or worse, they had brothers, whose methods of dissuasion were somewhat less subtle.

Having younger and older sisters put me in the unenviable position of having their friends surrounding me at this age. The older girls had the stigma of me being their friend's little brother, while the younger one's listened far too carefully to their older siblings for me to have any hope of getting them alone for five minutes, let alone out on a "date".

Not that I recall actually dating very often, certainly back then. Once only was it officially a date, and it was, indeed, the sister of a friend of my own sister who was the lucky contestant. We actually went to see the "delightful Julia Roberts" in Pretty Woman at the local cinema. Clearly it was Ladies Choice that night, as Julia has about as much appeal as a candidate in the holding yard at the local glue factory. So, we sat in the back row, eating popcorn, watching the film. Then the popcorn ran out, and I rested my hand on her knee.

She did nothing to prevent this, despite it being bare below the hemline of her short, retro-style a-line dress. I decided to try and slip it further up her thigh, but as I had left my hand in the same place for so long, it had become sweaty in the warm cinema, and sort of dragged in a jerky and completely unsexy manner along the top of her thigh. Until she quickly and firmly, but calmly placed her hand on my wrist to signify "No Entry".

Undeterred, I rearranged myself in my seat, and successfully deployed the world famous "yawn and stretch" routine, encircling her shoulders with my right arm. For some reason I had been given the impression by some over chivalrous male role model that the gentleman always sat closest to the aisle in a theatre or cinema, such advice is probably less useful nowadays, or may have been completely misleading, even then.

During the closing credits of the film, I somehow maneuvered myself into a position where I was able to kiss her on the lips, and even for a brief moment got my tongue into her mouth, which she seemed to feel was about as desirable as being force-fed raw eel meat. But didn't actually push me away. But she held my hand, meekly, as we walked back to her place. Her parents were, for some reason, not at home, and her older sister had obviously taken the opportunity to invite her boyfriend over for something more unsavoury than what I had experienced at the flicks.

And we sat, in the dimmed lights of her lounge room, for a couple of hours, speaking hardly a word, watching music videos on late night TV, until, about two o'clock, I made my excuses and left. The whole episode confused me at the time, but in retrospect, I think I made a big mistake.

I had mentioned her name to my brother, and said she was cute, or whatever it was I used to describe attractive girls in those days. And she was attractive, I had met her at a party a couple of weeks before our date, and was taken by her strawberry-blonde bob and washed out blue eyes. She had had very fair skin, and a light sprinkle of freckles, which I still find somehow charming and innocent. Then I got a phone call from her sister, asking if I wanted to go out with her. I think she did want to go out with me, as she did actually call me herself once I had confirmed, but at the same time I think her older sister had her own agenda.

And I think she pushed her sweet, shy, little sister into going on a date with me so she could have her boyfriend over. And over. With no interruption. Shame I didn't give her some more of my time. She really was cute.

If you can't be with the one you love, honey...

The show ended, as always, with the usual "cast party". Having been to several in my adult years with "professional" actors, an overnight stay in a local scout hall is possibly not quite on a par with such debauched soirees. The most exciting activity involved, beginning with the current year's extravaganza, videos of the show from years gone being replayed on a clunky, ancient, top-loading VCR, in reverse chronological order. This ritual was intended to last all night, for those who could stay awake that long. The charming tradition allowed all who remained conscious to witness themselves getting progressively younger and gawkier, and the new cast members to see that everyone, even if they are now cool semi-adults, is retarded, spotty, and awkward in their teenage years. Okay, admittedly they were in scouts in their early twenties, which is probably not the coolest thing to be doing, but at least they had rusty Land Cruisers to take their scouty girlfriends overnight to the mountains in. That was cool enough.

Mostly people arrived with their sleeping bags, and propped themselves up to watch at least the performance from which they'd just finished. Even though we had heard all the terrible jokes, sung all the choruses, and our legs were still tired form the dance routines, we had not seen our show before this point. It was at the same time joyful, seeing all our work complete, and sad, knowing that we would never, ever repeat that performance. After the final curtain, the plan was to make it through the previous year, and the one before that, until breakfast. In reality, most were asleep before the first tape was rewound and those that were still awake had little interest in the colourful antics of yesteryear, and a great deal of interest in how much they could feel through two layers of sleeping bag. Not much, I'll admit, but there were real adults supervising, so it wasn't even remotely possible to actually get down to anything obscene. Much. The prospect of a wristie with a happy ending in your own sleeping bag was less than appealing anyway.

But Emily wasn't there, anyway. Not that I think she would have even contemplated such a thing. Her parents were apparently concerned about her spending the night in a dark room full of teenage boys. While she protested at length that it was no big deal, and nothing would happen, and it was all supervised, they were right. A room full of teenage boys, ramped up on red cordial and chocolate and cake at three o'clock in the morning is no place for a young lady. But after our kiss, I am not sure she would have even spoken to me, as she barely had for the rest of the production. But Emily was not the only girl in the cast.

Bernie was freckly. Put simply, that was the first thing anyone would notice when they first saw her. Her entire face, and presumably most of her body, though I never got to see much of it, was covered in a layer of reddish brown freckles, so thick it was easier to count the places where her pink skin emerged than number the actual spots. But she was pretty, despite that. Not that anyone paid much attention. She was also loud and boisterous, I guess it was a defense against the cruelty of adolescents. She was always around, making loud and obscene jokes and generally making the boys laugh, and the girls whisper behind their hands.

Bernie decided to camp next to me, rolling out her sleeping bag between mine and a mate's while we were scoffing supper, and slipped into her winter weight bedding when we began to watch the show. Her commentary was hysterical, and soon I was laughing a familiar over-tired, wheezy, childish laugh that began to hurt my ribs and bring tears to my eyes. As the night turned into morning, her volume reduced, and as those around us slipped into heavy sleep, we found ourselves whispering and chuckling through two or three tapes. Eventually, even the minders were asleep, and we lost interest in the video, talking about various random, important and trivial topics in hushed tones, and giggling intermittently at jokes which would not have raised a laugh at any other time, or to anyone else.

I found myself laying side on, facing her, my head propped on one elbow, she mirroring my reclining pose. She made some joke, and I laughed my head off it's perch, and onto my now outstretched arm. She slowly dropped hers so her hand was stretched out above her head, and her fingers entwined with mine in the dark. I rolled slightly forward and kissed her on the lips. They were soft, and moist, and as I drew back I looked into her eyes in the flickering light of the dancing chorus on the TV. She looked back, and leaned forward to kiss me back, properly. I flicked my eyes up for a moment, and spied the windows over her shoulder The grey light of the pre-dawn illuminated them quietly, and the rush of cars passing occasionally on the road nearby echoed quietly in the empty old hall. Then I closed my eyes, and focussed on her kiss, not wishing to end the moment.

She did it for me, drawing away slowly and rolling onto her back, resting her head on her faded pillow slip. I moved slightly toward her, and still holding her hand, snuggled in next to her. She released my free hand, and I put the other over her as she rolled away from me, pulling me with her. She turned back toward me and kissed me again quickly, but gently.

"Goodnight" she said. And we slept. And I was smiling.

Emily tries, but misunderstands...

Emily. Rose-hip cheeked, coil-spring haired, Sunday-school pure, unspoiled, lovely Emily. At this point I had not even kissed her properly. She actually didn't seem like she had kissed anyone much, but she was so pretty I didn't mind just holding her while we sat around waiting for our curtain calls at rehearsals, or entwining my fingers in hers as we stood and sang among the chorus. Her blue eyes were flecked with green and gold, and when she turned them to mine, and smiled, it was enough to satisfy me.

It was, for a long time, anyway, enough to satisfy me. But something had awoken in me after my night with a red haired beauty at a non-sanctioned party somewhere in the suburbs one weekend. Something I suppose I have come to know well over the years since, though in the knowing there is no mastery. I am a slave to that passion as much now as I was then, when I first tasted it's intoxicating syrup. And so it was, during a weekend long dress rehearsal, Emily was to have a taste of my passion, and decide for herself if she found it to her palate.

We had been rehearsing since early morning. We had rehearsals both Saturday and Sunday, including a full technical dress rehearsal on Sunday night, as the show was due to open the following week. Aside from us, the University was deserted but for a few diligent but desperately lonely students using the library across the campus. We would see them sometimes in our breaks, eating solitary, sensible lunches from desperate plastic lunch boxes. They would sometimes smile at us, especially if we were partially in costume, dressed as chiffon draped fairies, or sequined sea creatures, or raggedy torn pirates, as we laughed and joked from scene to scene outside the stage doors. We would call out to them, and sing bits of chorus, to hold their attention, which was easy, before abandoning them to their sandwiches and books.

On the Saturday night, as we were drawing toward the curtain for the first song of the show, we had a catered dinner, supplied by mothers of the kids and various sundry "volunteer" sibling who were clearly working under duress. Good stodgy sausage casserole glistening with pale brown gravy served on top of a mound of slightly chunky, floury, salty, milky mashed potato. As much orange cordial as we could drink, and jelly and home brand ice cream for dessert. This was not gourmet food, but armies have marched on less, and it was guaranteed to be a damn sight better than the poor bloody book worms were having for dinner. Not least because we were all eating together.

After dinner, we were given an hour to relax while final preparations were made with the "orchestra". This consisted of anyone slightly musical who was remotely related to a scout or guide, past or present, in the whole of the surrounding region. A tinpot orchestra if ever there was one, but led by an ageing, white-bearded gentleman whose claim to fame was that he had conducted, in earlier days, the Melbourne Symphony, though some said only as a fill in. He wasted no time in donning full tails for any occasion he was required to wield the baton, however. We milled about outside the theatre, listening to the drawn out notes of the brass and strings tuning in, as some of the younger kids ran around playing chasey games. We in-betweens played games of a different kind, though I suppose only the rules varied from the simpler pursuits around us.

I was wandering along, talking to Emily, holding her hand, and we stopped for a moment by a wall of windows, behind which the set dressers were busily painting the South Pacific Ocean, complete with uncharted palm islands, as a backdrop. We stopped and I leaned against the window, and I put my arms around Emily's waist. She stepped into me and her head pressed into my chest. I spoke her name and she looked up at me and our lips met for a kiss. I tightened my arms and kissed harder, she opened her mouth slightly and our tongues touched each others' tentatively at first, then more insistently I opened her mouth with mine. The kiss only lasted for a couple of minutes, I was doing my best to make things interesting, while she was shyly going along, it seemed to me. Our mouths parted and she again put the side of her head against me, but said nothing.

The bells called us back to the backstage area and she went off to find her small part of the girls' dressing room, while I went off to mine, quite happy I was not, as I had been earlier in the day, wearing tights. The rehearsal went well, only a few minor mistakes, the same repeated fumbles we had been expecting since we started learning our parts. But throughout the show, I could not catch her eye in the chorus, nor did she speak much to me afterwards. She simple left when her parents came to get her, only a quick kiss on the cheek and a fleeting "See you tomorrow".

Something had changed, I could tell, but I'm pretty sure it stemmed from me, not her.

Is this love, baby? Or is it just, uh... confusion?

Here I was on the one hand being the epitome of a good boy scout. In actual fact, I literally was a good boy scout, going to troop meetings every week, filling another evening a week with rehearsal at the jolly-good-old-fashioned-stage show, which was rapidly approaching. My winter evenings were basically chock full of home style goodness. That is, the evenings of the weeknights. As a fourteen year old boy coming of age in the post bicentennial Australia of the nineteen eighties, there were other influences on my development. The "teen subculture", though I would never really belong to any particular one, was beginning to distract.

Having older siblings at the local school meant there was a ready suply of less than savoury events scattered among the nearby houses every other weekend. Okay, they were relatively low key by comparison to later experiences, but a parent free house where a variably sized group of bored youth could drink their six packs and fruity lexia was about as sophisticated as we were looking for at that age. So it was that one weekend, my brother and I set off for our local non-hotel affiliated bottle shop and purchased a dozen cans of Vitamin B, the vernacular for our local brand of cheap nasty beer, and a $2 bottle of Spewmante for "the ladies". This bottle shop was rather desperate for business, and while my brother and I looked every bit our mid-teen age group, we were never questioned about our possession of valid identification. Just a knowing nod as we handed over our pocket money for the evenings entertainment.

And as the moon began to rise in the east, we set off for another of the nearby post war houses where a genuine Pacific Island princess was turning seventeen. While her billet family were away on a Church conference, we decided to drop by at her invitation, and trash their house. For the most part, the party was confined to the backyard and the garage. And it was in the garage that I saw a girl that helped crystallise my ongoing thing for redheads. She had the palest complexion, decorated lightly with a scattering of pinkish orange freckles, deep green eyes, and a flowing veil of fiery red hair, which tumbled over her shoulders and down her back. She scanned us briefly as we walked in, but her gaze didn't linger while I was watching her, and she turned back to her friends and their cask of cheap nasty sweet wine.

My brother and I got started on our cans of beer, and the party gradually descended into the usual melee of drunken stunts, amateur passion, bad dancing and general irresponsibility that teen parties are liable to. The night was clear and cold, and the air was full of steaming breaths, combined with cigarette smoke from heavily rugged up teenagers lit by an almost full moon. A nearby neighbour of ours had introduced me to the red haired girl at some point, and I found myself dancing with her to some hair metal classic, the name of which eludes me. I'd hardly have said it was "our song" but still, it may have been significant. I would hazard a guess at "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi, but more through elimination than tangible memory. Anyway, my dancing skills were put to the test, and not being entirely inexperienced, I could at least put in a bit more than the standard drunk boy shuffle. Again my understanding that dancing was a key to winning girls over was reinforced, and we were soon in a corner sitting together, talking very closely in each others' ears while the music blared.

I'm not exactly sure how, but these things tend to happen eventually in such situations, and before long we were well and truly pashing. I mean, I had kissed girls before, but this was the real thing. This was the kind of kissing where suction was created, the kind that lasted for minutes at a time, and involved strange involuntary guttural tones deep in the throat. The kind that caused ceratin changes in the trousal area, and prompted me to attempt to get my hands underneath her clothing. Our activities increased to the point where we began to attract attention from other revellers, mostly because I had her tilted almost horizontally and was kissing her neck while my arms had disappeared up to the elbow under her skirt. Not that I actually touched anything but her legs, and would have not known what to do even if I had.

At this point, my brother and our neighbour had come over and she was led away into the house proper, while my brother distracted me by thrusting another beer under my nose, which I proceeded to guzzle through smeared lip gloss and a stupid grin. The party continued for a couple of hours after this. The red haired girl had been taken home in a state of semi-consciousness by our neighbour, and I was a little disappointed, though mostly just inebriated. Around 3am, we had well and truly run out of beer, the birthday girl was asleep on an old couch in the garage, half waking every time someone tripped over some more empty bottles, and there were at least two girls throwing up into various garden beds, with obligatory attendant back rubbers. It was at this point my brother and I left the party and walked home long the quiet lamplit suburban streets. We quietly snuck in the house through the back door, listening for any movement, but successfully evaded our parents, and slipped clumsily into bed.

Of course it wasn't until I woke up in the morning I remembered Emily. My girlfriend.

Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle...

I've said before I didn't spend my entire social life at school, I had myriad activities outside school. Walking by myself. Whistling. Riding my bike around the streets on my own. Humming. Writing letters to girls I liked. Destroying letters to girls I liked. Writing terrible poetry that always, always, always rhymed, no matter how hard I tried to be artistic and deep. Drawing interesting and bloody ways to kill my enemies, all of whom were among my best friends, and my personal list of arch nemeses changed on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.

And once a week I would go to Scouts. Which was entertaining in an old fashioned "Huzzah lads! Let's see who can run around the hall five times and get back in here with a pine cone before I blow this whistle" kind of way. We wore uniforms. We wore scarves. I know exactly what a woggle is, and indeed, how to make one from rope or leather thong. I can tie a variety of life saving and decorative knots; read maps with or without a compass; light a fire with four pieces of newspaper and a single match; track various types of native and domestic animals; cook in a gigantic cast iron pot as well as on a large bean-tin over a candle (though this is restricted only to pancakes) and various other impressive yet useless skills for a boy living in a major capital city.

One other thing which people may (or may not) know about Scouts is: they love to sing. Every meeting, there were songs to be sung, and every camp, there was a campfire "concert" which consisted of various heart stirring pseudo-Christian, pro-Imperial songs, a few mildly bawdy ditties, and a whole bunch of terrible skits based on the worst dad-jokes imaginable. If you ever wondered where the father of your children learned all those terrible jokes that erupt as soon as he has signed the birth certificate, chances are he knows what a left handed handshake means, and somewhere has a strange pointy four sided hat with his name emblazoned on the inner band.

This was all jolly good fun (what?), and honestly, it was. But even better than regular scout meetings was an annual event which combined the local scouts of the whole local area, and when I was a young teen, that was actually hundreds of kids. It pushed all these boys together, ranging in age from about thirteen to about seventeen. And it brought in another large group of kids, too. But these kids wore blue uniforms, and were shaped in such a way they made the scouts do very strange things, especially to each other, in order to gain their attention. The Girl Guides were also in our Gang Show.

A Gang Show is like a University revue. Only, possibly slightly less sophisticated. So while every ten years or so, a popular, intelligent, hilarious and biting revue comes out of a major University in this country, we are still waiting for a major television network to give a regular series to any Scout-based production. This is in part because the material in most of the shows had worn thin when Victoria was still on the throne, and probably gave rise to her infamous "We are not amused". That which wasn't older than any of my living relatives was penned by older memebrs of the scouting movement involved in the production, whose talent was generally inversely proportional to their enthusiasm. But this was fine. It was indeed encouraged, as after all, we were just here to have fun, and everyone had to put in as best they could in the areas they had some inclination.

While all the acting and singing and costumes and lights and music and dancing and the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd were very exciting, it was still probably the girls that kept me coming back every year. In fact, it was in the rehearsals and show of my second year in the show that I got a steady girlfriend for the first time ever. It was also around this time that I learned how to make relationships very complicated very quickly. But I shall return to that story, anon.

Emily Harris was a girl of my age, around my height, with a broad smile and tight ringlets that would not sit flat ever. She was fresh faced and always laughed at my jokes, which was a bonus, as I felt that was pretty much all I had. The cast would be split up to rehearse different individual acts for the show, people having been cast according to their relative competencies in each area of performance: Acting, Dancing and Singing. There was always a large chorus who would always have massed singing and basic dance routines to practise.

I seemed to always get chosen for acting parts, and often for small group singing, where three or four singers would sing small parts together in the hope of masking each others deficiencies. I suppose it was a step up from the massed chorals of the rest of the group. I was placed in one such small group with Emily, and having been in rehearsal for a couple of weeks, and getting to know her a little better, I decided I liked her enough to "pop the big one" Okay, but remember I was only fourteen, it doesn't get much bigger than asking a girl to be your girlfriend. So, when we were finishing up away from the rest of the cast in a meeting room of the local church where rehearsals were held, I stopped her and eloquently expressed my feelings for her in a way I can only dream of reproducing today.

"Hey Em"

"Yeah?"

"Umm... wanna go with me?"

She giggled "Ah... okay"

Then skipped off. Literally. Guides were a bit like that.

That may well have been the high point of the relationship. Still, I went home happy that night.

My Bloody Valentine

There was a girl in high school with whom I can squarely lay the blame for my first directed sexual thoughts. Prior to her, I had experienced feelings of mild excitement, vague arousal, general warmth in the tummy region, and associated feelings of attraction and admiration when dealing with girls. I wanted to kiss them, I wanted to impress them, I wanted to be near them, but not for any clear objective. The first time I saw someone and thought "Wow, I really want to do to her what I saw in brother's magazines" was when I was fourteen and in high school. She had the otherwise unremarkable name of Kylie Bone. But to a whole class of teenage boys raised on American teen-titty comedy, she was simply The Boner.

Of course this was never mentioned to her face. She was too nice for that. She never seemed to be completely aware of, or entirely comfortable with, her over-developed body. Her face was pale, with very light brown freckles, and a slightly turned up nose. She had deep green eyes that were usually wrinkled in a smile and pearly teeth that only real money can buy. Her straw blonde hair was cut in a kind of bob, as was the fashion for at least part of the eighties, though she was not exactly fashionable mostly. But her body was about four years ahead of her, chronologically, and was rounded and curvy in a way that most girls' would never be. The sight of her long legs leading up to her netball skirt and bloomers as she bent over a desk was distinctly the one that triggered my first blatant sexual notion.

I was transfixed. I was staring. She was bending. She was talking. Her friends were laughing. She turned to see why and saw me, unblinkingly staring right at her bum. She squealed, I jumped, her face went extremely red, and I ducked away from my desk and stumbled out of the room, ducking and weaving, as she threw my folder, my pencil case, and any other pieces of stationery that came to hand at my retreating head. I didn't dare re-enter the classroom until the teacher arrived. Then I got ignored by the Boner for the rest of the day. This was a shame, as my crush, amongst other things, was growing, uncalled for, throughout the day.

So it was that a couple of weeks later I came to be writing a card to her. It was, of course, a Valentines card. I was going to slip it into the vent in her locker on Valentines day, and all would be revealed to her. I didn't just want to stare at her arse all day, I really liked her, and wanted her to be my girlfriend. I would make all this perfectly clear in a letter outlining my possible devotion to her, and my wish that she would get with me at lunchtime. Or morning recess if she had netball practice.

So I drafted a letter. A heartfelt plea for her attention and a treatise to her heart to open up to mine, and to her legs to open up also. The language could have been torn from the very pages of Shakespeare's finest sonnets.

"Dear Kylie, you're a real spunk. I really want to get with you at lunchtime"

I was going to sign it with my name, but chickened out at the last moment, and wrote, in fine Valentine tradition "Your not-so-secret admirer" in a clear reference to my recent ogling of her a few weeks prior.

I slipped the card into her locker before school, and waited for a sign she had got it. When I saw her come into our homeroom, she was beaming and clutching my card to her well rounded breast. The left one. I tried to catch her eye, and she looked in my direction and visibly swooned. I did my best to look suave and cool, raising an eyebrow, but being incapable of lifting only one, giving the distinct impression someone had just put electrodes on my testicles and I was somewhat surprised. She smiled and turned away coyly, peeking back over at me all the way through morning assembly, and all of first period. I had a different class to her after that, and I winked at her clumsily on my way out, though I think she probably missed it.

I didn't see her the rest of the morning. I didn't see her until lunchtime, in fact, when I spied her pushed up against one of the portable classrooms, securely attached to the face of Luke Milton. Luke's athletic arms were holding her to him, and alternately trying to squeeze her boobs or her bum, her slender arms wrapped about his waist to allow her full access to clean his rear most fillings with her tongue. Luke sat on the desk directly behind mine from Kylie's desk. And I had heard him talking about her quite loudly the other day, though not in the kind of terms anyone would wish to hear, say, their sister spoken of. An anonymous nom-de-plume may be of use at certain times, in certain situations, where discretion is the wisest of choices. But it's the stupidest thing anyone in their right mind could ever conceive of writing on a bloody Valentine.

Tastes just like Cherrie Cola

I grew up in a time when parents would name their kids ridiculous things. Obviously they still do, but I went to school with some people of unusual and sometimes downright embarrassing names. Parents who couldn't remember the sixties because they were REALLY there, frittering away a free education by consuming every mind altering substance they could lay their hands on. Mind you where they lived, when they were having kids in the early 1970s, that probably didn't consist of much more than cheap red wine from South Australia and some bad Hunter River pot sent in the post. But still they did their best to play the part of expanded minds, long before they grew up and had inflated heads. Often it was not the parents fault, it was just a weird cultural coincidence that Dougal had the same name as a character from the Magic Roundabout, and similar shaggy mop hair. Every now and then, an attempt at naming someone for a naturally beautiful phenomenon would come up, and hence I went to school with the creatively spelled Rainbo. Of course she was re-christened Rambo by a bloodthirsty bunch of teenage boys anyway. But the parents of one girl in particular must have known exactly what they were doing. There was no mistaking that everyone would find it amusing that they were in class with one Cherrie Blossom.

Cherrie was, I suppose, a reasonably attractive girl. She was tall for her age, though, which often made her a target of derision from the other girls, and relatively flat chested, as though her added height was a result of being stretched. But her face was pretty, and her awkward stoop made her move in a way that was at once gawky but endearing. I always noticed that tall girls develop hunched over posture, especially in the teen high school years, as if they are trying to withdraw themselves from view, which merely has the effect of making them more ridiculously obvious. Like a giraffe trying to hide amongst a herd of zebras. She had almost-black hair, with a consistency of dried grass, such that it stuck out at strange angles, despite her best efforts to tame it. I was never entirely sure if she straightened it to enhance this spasticity, but as long as I knew her it remained the same black haystack . As a result of this contrary nature, it was kept mown pretty short, and she was quite possibly the first time I developed a crush on a short haired girl. A recurring theme in my life, strangely.

I say strangely, though, as I developed a crush on Cherrie Blossom with very little encouragement from her whatsoever. In fact, I hadn't noticed her at all, much, until her existence was brought to my attention by some concerned friends. A group of other young ladies I went to school with had decided that, as "everyone else" was pretty much coupled up, it was clearly high time I also found true love in the back of the bus I shared with them every day.

"You know who likes you?" they taunted.

Of course, being a tough thirteen year old boy, I intended to act aloof in front of my mates who were sitting around me on the oval at the bottom of the school. They then recounted the story of how Cherrie told someone, who told someone else, who told someone they knew who told them that she thought I was cute. Even at this early age, I took exception to that particular adjective since reading once that it meant "endearingly ugly", so I was not overly impressed, though I knew most of these girls never used it that way. It was still less impressive than handsome, or gorgeous, or hot, though no one really used that term back then, except in the movies.

But they had planted a seed in my mind. A germ of an idea that grew in intensity as I went about my business. I started noticing her far more often. I also noticed that her chalky white complexion grew pinkish and blotchy when she caught me looking her way. So it was true, then. Perhaps. At least it was a distinct possibility. Then there followed a week or more of badgering by the girls. It was quite obvious to them, and clearly should have been so to me, that I could not continue to carry on as a single man in this hectic social life of the schoolyard. So it was decided I should be pressured into asking her out, and she, I was told, unaware of the whole thing, would surely go along with the plan. After all, the girls who were feeding me intelligence (now there's a confusing use of the term if ever there was one) were much more popular than Cherrie, who while being quite cute, and rich enough, was something of a nerd. In my "friends" words: perfect for me. And I went along with it, acting up to my assumed role. In some ways, convincing myself I believed it was my choice; convincing them I was into the idea. I still don't know why, for sure. The adolescent need for acceptance is strong.

Eventually it was up to me to make something of this. I had resolved I should ask her out, I should do it on the bus she took along with me every afternoon. And I tried, but couldn't quite swing the conversation around in time before she made her exit every day. A week went by, then another, and another, and eventually, I began to wonder why I was even considering this. I didn't really have any feelings for her, I was being pressured into the whole thing by the girlfriends of my friends, in order that there were no third wheels at their social occasions. In the end, I had to clear all this up. I had to tell Cherrie Blossom what was happening.

One day I jumped off the bus at her stop, claiming I was going to the nearby shopping centre, where I would be picked up by my mother. This was a complete lie, and it took me forever to get home from there afterwards. But it was here I planned to explain the situation to Cherrie. She looked happy at first, and clearly thought I was going to ask her out. It soon became clear my intention was almost the exact opposite, and by the time I came around to the end of my long winded explanation (that even though I thought she was really nice, and very pretty, I didn't actually want to go out with her) she was crying. She never really spoke to me after that day.

I suppose she was embarrassed by my rejection of her, that she'd ever said anything to my friends, or her friends, or anyone. I knew that she had been fed a great deal of misleading information about my feelings for her, as well, and it didn't make me fonder of my girl-friends for doing it. I don't know that I resolved to do it, but I definitely began at that point to become better able to hide my feelings. I suppose in the long run it has been a useful skill to possess, but it has been costly. The fleeting embarrassment of a sweet rejection and an understanding kiss on the cheek is far more easy to live with than the unending heartbreak of losing someone you truly love because you never let them inside the wall.

Spectator Sport

The year I was to begin High School, we moved. All of about a mile, but it may just as well have been a hundred. Everyone I knew in the world, all my friends, were gone. My brother and sister were closer to their school, and their friends were closer to them, but for one reason or another, I didn't go to the same school as them. I went to a private school, that took an hour or more to get to each morning. There was never any issue with my siblings about this, they didn't seem to care in the least, though I wonder now if I shouldn't have put in a little more effort, academically at some point to compensate for the privilege.

So I now lived in an isolated world, very much. None of my old primary school friends were around, they had all gone to new schools. None of the other students from my school lived anywhere near me, and even if they had, I was always getting the impression that geographic location was not the only thing separating me from them. The parties I occasionally got invited to, and the houses they lived in, and the clothes they wore on free dress day - they were residents of a completely foreign country to me.

It was a long time before I made friends, really. I would go to school and talk with people and socialise, and get the buses and trains there and back. I was interacting with people all day every day. But they weren't really friends. Not really. No one I felt I could confide in. No one to be stupid with in a relaxed way. Sure there was a lot of showing off, and bravado, and all manner of ridiculous adolescent behaviour. But I was never really at ease with anyone. It was the beginning of what I think of as my life as a spectator.

I felt often, as though I was just observing the world move around me. I understood it, and I observed it, and in some ways I interacted with it. But I never really felt a part of it. I remember even now thinking that sometimes when I would get a sensation of ringing in my ears that it was some kind of signal I couldn't comprehend, that it marked me in some way to be separated from the events and lives around me. I'm sure a shrink would have a field day with that kind of delusion.

But it is a result, I think, of spending so much time alone. I had sisters, and a brother, and yet, I recall more time spent on my own than interacting with anyone, much. I would read, I would play solitary games, I would build things, or pull them apart to see how they worked, then reassemble them so as to avoid the resulting punishment for being destructive. But often, more often than not, I was alone. Alone on the walk to school, alone on the bus to the station, alone on the train, alone on the bus to school, at least until a few stops in, when it would begin to fill up. Not that anyone I really knew got on the bus that early on. And then a reverse process on the way home. Often arriving home to an empty house, because the parents were at work, the siblings were all at friends' houses, and I was home, alone.

I don't think I was lonely, I was, and still am, quite happy with my own company. I could always occupy my time on my own. In fact, i don't think I even missed the companionship of having friends around all the time. My social interactions at school were in retrospect, a kind of calculated performance for effect. I suppose everyone does this to some extent, but the outcome was never quite in focus, the goal not clearly defined. Was I trying to be popular? Not really. The popular kids bored me, for the most part. I was never attracted to whatever it was they liked. Sport, Top 40 radio songs, clothes I couldn't afford...

I know I loved it when I got the attention of the girls, though. I was always nice to them, always polite to them, always listening, always understanding, always trying to get the inside edge with the ones I liked, and ultimately learned the hard way that this resigned a player to being only a spectator. It results, more often than not, in that single statement that turns a boy's blood cold in his veins when it comes from the object of his desire. A simple phrase, innocuous on the surface, but effectively excluding all other relationship possibilities for the future, handed down as a judgmental sentence so many times:

"I like you as a friend"

Better to have loved and lost

I remember the day she walked into the classroom. She was new. Pretty much everyone else in the class had come all the way from the first day of the first year of school with me. None of them had ever lived more than about ten minutes walk from the school their entire lives. I was an exception, and there were a few others, but for the most part the class had stayed the same since the first day our mum's had walked us into the room, hands on our shoulders, and that's the way it had been ever since. Just us kids. Just this class. Until she walked in.

She had hair so blonde it shone in the morning sun that streamed through the windows of the grade six classroom. Her eyes were blue, but so pale they were mesmermising, and even her eyelashes were blonde. Her skin so pale and flawless it was as if she was not even real. Her clothes were odd, as she had literally just got into town this very weekend past, and her mother had not even had time to get to the shops to buy the regulation school dress and shoes, so she wore jeans and a blouse, and sneakers. Her name was Natasha, we were told, Natasha Eden. And I was in paradise.

Being only an eleven year old boy, I had no idea what it meant when my heart beat faster. Maybe I was sick. Maybe I was going to deposit my breakfast into my old fashioned desk. Maybe I had eaten a bad packet of Twisties at morning recess. I didn't have any idea. All I knew for sure was this pure angel was walking toward me. Toward my desk. How I had ended up with a desk of my own was a matter of pure executive decision making on the part of the teacher. Anyone and everyone I had been put next to, I had begun to talk to all day. From the moment we arrived in the morning, until the last bell rang at 3.30 in the afternoon, I would talk. And my mouth had got me moved, finally to a desk of exile. But some would argue (obviously not I) that this was fate. I was supposed to have the only desk in the room with a spare place, so she could sit next to me.

As we had the same desks every day, I sat next to this angel every day. Yes, of course, as an eleven year old boy, I copped a hell of a lot of flak for being the only boy in grade six who sat next to a girl, but I am pretty sure it was all motivated by jealousy. She was simply the most perfect creature I had ever laid my eyes upon. Which would have been a massive problem, had I even suspected I was completely besotted with her. But I didn't, because I was a dumb kid with nary an ounce of hormone in my whole entire body to start a fire with. So instead, we became friends.

My inability to sit next to another human being in a quiet room and not talk to them became an ally of the greatest value. I won her trust, I earned her friendship, I made her laugh, I took it upon myself to be an ambassador to our new arrival and show her the ins and outs of the complex public school system in the suburbs of the mid 1980s. And she was grateful, I think. She eventually made friends with the rest of the class, with the other girls, and just melded into the general melting pot of pre-pubescent school life that we had all been a part of since day one. But we had something. That year, we sat together every day.

Then, as the end of the year approached, I received a shock. Just as she had come, she was leaving. I was never quite sure what it was her father did for a living, but whatever it was, she was leaving again as it was taking him, and the rest of her family, to some new city in some other part of the world. There was so much I should have said to her, so much I wanted to let her know, a strength of emotion that I couldn't quite express in words, because I had no point of reference by which to navigate. No way to interpret the sense of loss I felt when I knew she would never again be sitting next to me in that fifty year old wood and steel desk in that prefab chipboard classroom.

The last day she was to be there, I made an effort to make her laugh, I tried my best to make her smile, I didn't even get told off by the teacher for chatting to her the whole day. Then it was time for her to go. It was time for us all to go, it was the end of school for the year, and the day was long, and hot. We were all going off to start something new. Next year we would all go to high school. For some reason, I had been kissed by a girl at camp, which wasn't her, as she wasn't there. And any chance we had to be alone was interrupted for some reason or another. It was on the last day I took her aside, and told her what I needed to tell her. I took all the emotion I had pent up in my awkward young body and I made it quite clear to her what she meant to me, and how I felt. How much of a loss it would be to know I would probably never see her again.

I walked her to the gate, we were alone. I stopped as we reached the gate, her mum's Volvo just waiting outside the fence.

"Natasha" I said, and she stopped and looked at me

"Hmm?" she hummed, looking into my eyes with those blue white rays

"Bye. I'll miss you"

Ain't no cure for the summertime blues

Summer holidays when I was at school meant many things. It meant no school, obviously, it meant long, long, long hot dry days, stretching out to two, three, four days in a row of temperatures that would literally cook you alive. As was the cycle of weather where I grew up, these long hot spells would, almost without exception, be brought to an end by spectacular summer storms. Heralded by towering black clouds stretching high into the stratosphere, tumbling ominously across the bleached blue summer sky. As they engulfed the sun itself, distant flashes of pure white light in the darkened sky, with their sound waves trailing lazily behind, them announced the approach of a storm. We would count between the light and the sound to see how close the storm was: Flash! One cat and dog. Two cat and dog. Three cat and dog. Fou... BOOM Rumble Rumble Rumble...

When all became dark, and the ragged spikes of lightning fissured the sky, followed by peals of thunder like a nuclear detonations overhead, then the rain would start. The first drops would hit the ground with an audible "splat"; huge, cool handfuls of water, and steam would rise from the baking ground where they landed. It was apocalyptic, and primally exciting. Dogs would bark in defiance, or hide under houses, and cats were not to be seen at all after the first stampede of thunder galloped across the blackening sky. Instincts that serve well when evolving in a jungle full of creatures much larger than oneself may yet give the appearance of cowardice at the onset of a thunderstorm. Babies and toddlers crying and hiding, children braving the fear to dance in the falling drops, adults opening all the doors and windows to bring in the change.

I remember once, swimming all day in a friends pool on a hot, dry day at the end of a week of hot, dry days when just such a storm rolled in. Though it was a school vacation, it was late in the summer, and most of our parents had returned to work. It was pretty unusual where I grew up for anyone to have a parent who didn't have a job, so there were many, many houses with no adult supervison during business hours. It was in one of these, that happened to have an inground pool and spa, where I found myself, and some friends stranded by the storm. Our flimsy swimming togs were reasonably dry, and most of us had little to put on in the way of real clothes. So we did what any young teens would have done who were looking for the excuse to do so. We huddled together under blankets to "keep warm".

Being that there were at least eight people there, it was probably sheer coincidence that there were an even number of boys and girls present, and yet, that is the hand fate had dealt us. Or it was some careful planning by one of the girls who wanted to "get with" one of my friends. I never gave it much thought before. Of course, none of the boys wished to share a blanket with another, so we managed to split ourselves amicably into mixed pairs to share our assorted rugs. I only vaguely remember the girl with which I shared an afternoon under a blanket in that storm. She was the friend or maybe even the cousin of one of the other girls there, who was "in town" for the summer holidays, her parents staying at the house of the girl I knew.

She was cute enough I guess, straw blonde hair, freckly face, kind of bean polish in shape, even though she was at least a year older than me. I wasn't particularly attracted to her, I know that. But being a thirteen year old boy, I don't think that really entered into anything much. It wasn't long before the lightning faded into the distance, and the rain set in, apparently for the night, even though it was still only mid afternoon, it was unfeasibly dark, and a cold wind had blown up. We were plainly not going to swim again, "We might get wet" one of my friends obligingly joked. So we opted for videos in the louge. Under blankets.

As every good teenage tough guy knows, when you are sharing a blanket with a girl in her bathing suit, the best thing to do is watch a horror movie. And this is just what we did. I believe "The Evil Dead" was what we put on. A scratchy VHS pirated copy of an R rated movie that someone's brother had lent to him so we could see it. I have to admit, it was pretty scary. Not that any of us boys would have let on. And to watch it now, it's actually hilarious, though still could give me a fright in the right circumstances, I'll bet.

The best thing about watching horror movies with girls is, they get scared. When they get scared, they hold on, tight. The aim of the game is to get them to hold on tight to you, and I suppose, try to cop a feel when they press themselves up against you. As the movie worked its way toward the inevitable attack of the living dead, the girl I was snuggled up with some how had worked her way right up close to me, and I was sitting in an awkward fashion to accomodate her holding on to me in the scarier moments of suspense and bad latex. She had worked her way around so that one of her legs was underneath me, and her other knee was just resting between my thighs. I had an arm around her shoulders, taking my cue from the more officially "going" couples, who had been at least pashing since New Year's Eve.

I looked over and saw that two of them had lost interest in the movie altogether, and were engaged in apparently checking each others gums with their tongues for signs of early erupting wisdom teeth. I looked at the girl next to me, and saw that she was still forcing herself to watch the movie. The square jawed main character had just managed to calm everyone down, and was being pleaded with by a girl he had apparently mistakenly chained in the cellar of the old log cabin. I was just working up to pulling in for the pash, and as I rolled forward to give myself better access to her mouth, the girl in the cellar screamed and turned into a living corpse. The girl in the beanbag screamed and jerked her uppermost knee swiftly into the slightly tenty area between my legs. The boy with two testicles in his throat screamed and turned into a quivering glob of trifle on the carpet.

The front door opened, and the parents were home. The rain had stopped, and the sun had returned for a last ditch effort. I decided the best thing was to head out to the pool for another swim. The chlorine would at least be an excuse for the tears in my eyes and there's no better way to hide a bruised... ego, than under water.

It's a big ask

It's pretty obvious that the opportunities to fall in love, and act on those strange feelings are extremely limited for pubescent halflings. The fact that you have to live at home, have little or no disposable income, are basically dependent on parents for pretty much everything and getting from A to B is entirely reliant on public transport, cycle power or walking, can make it very difficult to invite girls out on dates. Well, that and the minor detail that, of all the things you would rather have to endure, asking a girl out is slightly less inviting than being dacked in front of the entire school assembly.

Of course it's not the actual task itself that brings the fear. The simple act of asking a girl you like if she would be interested in spending some of her time with you is not in the least bit taxing or strenuous. It's the possible responses that chill the blood, dry the throat and scramble the brain. Oh, yes, there are those who will tell you all through your life "The worst that can happen is she will say 'No'". These people are WRONG!!!!!!! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. People who tell you that is the worst that can happen have no imagination. They clearly have not given any real thought to how much worse things could be than someone just saying 'No'.

The best thing that could happen, clearly, is that she will say 'yes'. The second best thing that can happen is she could say 'No'. Then we start the long downhill slide into blackness and despair, toward the 'worst thing that could happen'. The next thing on the list of worse outcomes is she could just stare blankly. This suggests she is incredulous you even asked her. She can't even believe you, of all people, would even consider asking her, a far better class of person, on a date. Of course, she may actually have a secret crush on you and have been hoping you would ask her out, and the shock of actualisation renders her speechless. But you're a thirteen year old boy, you will assume it's a bad sign.

Next stop on the train of rejection is the laugh. Rather than respond with a simple answer, or even an awkward silence, she could laugh at you. And not a friendly giggle as if she had just remembered an amusing episode of Happy Days, a real laugh, that escapes when you see someone do something incredibly stupid, or embarrassing. The kind of laugh that leaves you wondering what on earth made you think of even approaching this girl. A laugh that makes you realise for the first time that you are quite simply the most ridiculous looking male ever to have walked the earth, and that you would definitely die alone. Of course, I have never even seen this happen, but the hormone addled mind of a thirteen year old boy would have him believe this at least as likely as the sun coming up every morning.

The train now runs express to public embarrassment. Because in the "worst case scenario" of a young boys mind, she could not only laugh, but immediately find a friend to relate the story to. Which, of course, she will find equally hilarious, and continue to spread the sorry tale throughout the grapevine until all around are sniggers behind hands, knowing sad looks from other rejects, and mid-class smartarse remarks every time there is any attention focussed on you, the hapless romantic. This may get even worse, with first the cleaners, tipped off by some particularly detailed graffiti begin to give you knowing looks and shaking their heads. Then, the teachers become aware of the outrageous proposition you have laid before this poor, innocent girl, who is clearly far too good for you. In the end, of course, they have no choice but to inform your hardworking and loving parents of your unacceptable schoolyard behaviour, which results, when taken along with your increasingly poor academic performance, in expulsion from school. This downward spiral of rejection inevitably leads to the only career path available to one so hopeless: a night shift job pasting on loose labels in the packing room at the pickle factory. And this is where you live your final days, before being crushed by a reversing vinegar tanker when your hearing aid goes on the fritz.

The combination of hormonally triggered mental imbalance, a spastically erratic libido, and a vivid imagination are a cruel threesome to inflict upon a growing lad.

Not all pigtails and inkwells

I suppose it seems the whole history of my introduction to the world of love came from school. This is not the case. Being the well rounded individual I am, I spent time going to church, though it seemed somewhat wrong to be wondering what it would be like to kiss the prettiest girl in Sunday school; and also spent time in the Scouts, though, in those days it was boys only, and even if I was that way inclined, the troop leaders were not unknown to my parents, shall we say.

But in the summer, my family would pack up and go on holiday. And as most folks are inclined to do because of some innate lemming-like compulsion, we often headed for remote forest areas far from civilisation at the height of the summer bushfire season. Okay, they were usually near large bodies of water, often the ocean, and, living on an island, it's not really difficult to find somewhere isolated in such an unpopulated country. However the intelligence of such behaviour remains questionable.

Sometimes we would go with other families, and I recall the year between primary school and high school, the whole family went and camped at some kind of Christian Fellowship summer camp, full of other happy hippie Christian families. My father was friends with more than one minister of progressive, modern christian churches. I suppose being a Vietnam veteran he had particular reason to seek out assurances of some kind. And they were the kind of churches where you were more likely to find bearded man strumming a guitar singing a folky hymn on a Sunday morning rather than a furrowed brow with kinetic eyebrows preaching about hellfire and punishment. They were good people, I suppose, and a safer environment I can't imagine, really.

So this was where I met the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was Dutch, her surname was Van Der... something with only one syllable I can't quite recall. She was tall, taller than me by a head, though it didn't take much back then at age twelve. She was slim, but not skinny, "lithe" I suppose is the word I would use now, though I was unaware of its existence at the time. Her eyes were strikingly pale blue, and her nose was pointy, but not big, and slightly upturned, which somehow made her almost unreal, like a fairytale picture. She had tanned, smooth skin, a golden brown colour like the filling of a Caramello koala, and tiny hairs on her arms and legs bleached blonde from hours in the sun with her outdoorsy family. They were often driving in their Land Cruiser four wheel drive, camping and hiking, with her brother, who was a little less than my age, and a little more than my height; her mother, a weathered woman with smiling eyes, who clearly once was as beautiful as her daughter; and her father, a scruffy ball of whiskers and hair, who wore sandals and socks, and fixed you with hard grey eyes, even as he laughed and joked.

But she captured my attention. She held it the whole two weeks of that camp. Almost. Each day there were organised activities as well as ample opportunity for free time to wander the beach, or the bush trails through the dunes, or the small brackish lakes behind them. One day I signed up for a photography group, because she was going along, only to slink out, embarrassed when I discovered to my horror everyone had been expected to bring their own camera. I didn't even have an instamatic, while everyone else had professional looking SLR cameras with interchangeable lenses and straps for their neck and cases and gadgets. She didn't see me slip out the back of the meeting hall where they were getting their introductory talk. I was glad, because my face so red it was as though I'd been sunburnt. Not that I had any reason to feel as foolish as I did, there was no way I could have known, and I realised later, no way my parents would have encouraged me to go, had they realised.

So, I spent the rest of the day scuffing around the edge of the camps, going for walks, swimming with my brother, who had become friends with the Dutch girl's brother, and generally trying not to think too much about the mornings events. Eventually she came down to the lake where our brothers were jumping off rocks into a deep section of the lake and spread out her towel. Even the way she moved was graceful and self assured, nothing like the gangly girls I knew at school. She was older than us, I was twelve, my brother thirteen, hers at the tail end of eleven. But she was fifteen, which seemed a lifetime away to me. And like a queen, she was distant and untouchable. But I suppose I was infatuated with her. Though I wanted to just watch her all afternoon until dinner time, I realised even then how creepy that would have been. So I wandered off.

I saw her at dinner, she was with her family, and my brother was eating with them in the communal dining hall that also functioned as a recreation hall, emergency shelter, theatre, indoor sport centre, and any other large roof, as required. I sat with my family, my younger sister babbling incessantly with some equally cherubic seven year old girl I had learned to ignore; my older sister eating quietly and reading, she was about the same age as the Dutch princess; and my parents, who were chatting to a friendly couple seated at the next table with their kids.

After dinner, the kids all ran off playing some chaotic game of "hide and seek and destroy", depending who you asked, while the parents settled in for a few drinks as the sky began to darken. I was caught up in the game, and running around hiding and seeking and sometimes destroying when I ran down a trail toward the lake. The game seemed to have no set boundary, and while it was light, most kids over ten or so were allowed to go where they pleased. I found my way back to the rocks at the lake we had been at that afternoon, and began to climb over them, wondering where the Dutch girl had gone, I hadn't seen her since just after dinner.

I picked my way almost to the top of the rocks and heard a low voice. I didn't think it was a word, more of a muffled sound like someone would make with their mouth closed. A strange kind of groaning hum. I looked over the rocks down to a small beach on the other side, and saw my brother and the Dutch girl laying on the sand, mouths pressed against each other. My eyes widened. I felt suddenly sick. I thought I was going to lose my dinner as I climbed back down the rock and walked back in a kind of daze to where my tent was. He couldn't have known, I hadn't mentioned it to anyone, why would I?

It was just a crush, after all. Now I knew why they called it that.

Kisses far from home

The school camp is the nexus of adolescent romance. There is something inherently liberating about being away from parental supervision while being surrounded by friends. That and the increased chance of seeing girls without their clothes on gives the air of a school camp a particular sexual charge which I have never experienced since. And it all starts when everyone boards the coach on the first day.

Coach seats are the perfect places for relatively innocent petting, kissing, and wandering hands. Especially the back seat, though this is almost always reserved for the cool kids. Playing corners, where the inertia from each bend in the road or turn is wildly exaggerated by the players, is an indisputably valid excuse to press up against the object of one's affection. And it encourages them to return the favour at the next opposing corner.

After disembarking, the game of getting the top bunk in a cabin sets the pecking order for each group, then the far more serious business of sneaking into others' rooms can begin. This is where many a first kiss and fumbling grope have been initiated, and certainly far more advanced activities attempted, or at least suggested, and usually denied.

One day while swimming, the brown eyed girl said she wanted to ask me a question. She wouldn't say what it was, just that it contained five words. Looking back, I realise how naive I always have been. I had been laughing and talking and unwittingly flirting and generally spending far more time than usual with her over the course of the camp. But I wracked my brain to figure out what the question might be. Through the camp concert with me and my friends re-enacting with geektastic precision our favourite scenes from The Young Ones, I tried to figure it out. And I was still thinking about it as I lay in bed awaiting sleep. Despite their plans to stay awake until the teachers were all asleep, no one left the cabin for extra curricular activities that night.

After breakfast the next day, I asked the brown eyed girl's best friend what it might be. She rolled her eyes and told me I was an idiot. We went swimming before lunch, and the brown eyed girl swam right up next to me in the lake and grabbed me around the waist. She stood up in the chest deep water facing me, and kissed me with a soft, long, wet kiss, and I felt her tongue against mine, and moving around my mouth. I was surprised but I kissed back, and put my arms around her. Then she pulled away and dived back under the water. I swam after her, but she got to the shore first, and to protect my modesty I couldn't walk straight out of the water until my excitement had subsided.

She caught me after lunch and asked if I'd worked out what her question was. I said I hadn't, and she basically told me to forget it. She seemed pretty angry at me, and I didn't understand why. I suppose she thought I was playing dumb, when in actuality, I just was dumb. She stormed off, and I was left chasing her curly haired friend to obtain some intelligence. I was an idiot, apparently. Her question was "Will you go with me".

Unfortunately, my failure at code breaking had prevented me from having my first girlfriend. I stayed friends with her for years afterwards, but the spark of passion was gone from her eyes, and eventually, my own feelings drained away. My understanding of human behaviour was suddenly a lot less solid than I had thought.

Everybody loves a clown

I have to admit, not a lot happened on the "me and girls" front after that kiss on camp. In fact, it wasn't until some months later, after I had finished primary school and gone on to High School that I even came close to repeating it. The girl who had kissed me had pretty much abandoned the idea of hanging out with me, as soon as the other boys could walk with some kind of dignity again. But that was okay. Kissing was, it seemed both exciting and pretty disgusting at the same time. Especially if there were, as I had heard tell, tongues involved. I didn't really know why I did it, I didn't even like that girl particularly. It just seemed like the thing to do. Like on TV.

So high school arrived. A completely different life to the one I had known up until this point. I think primary school takes toddlers and turns them into individuals. High school takes children and turns them into adults. Mostly. The first thing to note about high school is that I knew all of one person there on the first day. It was both a curse and a blessing. I didn't have to be the same person I had been for the previous seven years, I could be whomever I wanted. Unfortunately, I turned out to be pretty much the same person, regardless. I once again found my own gang of misfits, and the one girl I knew found her way into the popular crowd.

Not that I minded. I had about as much attraction to her as I would have for a cousin or other such wallpaper person. There were plenty of attractive girls for me to try my luck at wooing. Of course, I had no idea how I got my first kiss, so could hardly improve on my technique. The only thing I was sure of was that I could make them laugh. Though I wasn't completely typecast by my earlier school experience as a class clown, I was familiar with the thrill of inspiring laughter in the class. Make 'em laugh, they leave you alone, for the most part. Of course, you don't want to take that too far and become the butt of the joke, you have to balance the clowning with some self respect. And there's nothing for your cred like being sent to the principals office.

So, I'd sit near the girls I liked, make them laugh from time to time, but not too much they got annoyed when they were trying to concentrate. Obviously, I was, along with pretty much every other guy in the place, attracted to the "hot" girls. The overdeveloped young ladies who were embarrassed at the attention their newly blooming bodies drew from the boys, and quietly hurt by the bitchiness of the girls still waiting to begin their own journey into womanhood. Still, despite my fantasies, the girls I chose to focus my attention on were not those popular types, but the quietly pretty ones, who did their homework on time, put their hands up to speak, knew all the answers. The nerdy girls.

And one in particular. She had long dark hair, always pulled back tight in a pony tail and big straight teeth and deep, brown eyes that flashed when she smiled at my jokes. She had exotically olive skin, despite being as Angloriginal as the First Fleet, and the most endearing dimples that appeared before her lips parted to talk or laugh. Not too tall, not too short, not skinny, not overdeveloped, not fat, not too sporty, not too dull, not too nasty. Just twelve years old, pretty much. But she was the first one I actually felt something for.

One day, I recall sitting in class and something changed, after which making her laugh and smile became more important than anything else. One grey wintery afternoon, waiting for a teacher to arrive for class, I made a joke quietly, leaning in to speak into her ear then sitting back on my chair. She laughed honestly, opening her mouth and rocking gently, as her musical laugh began loudly and tapered off. While a smile hung on her face, her gaze caught my eye and held it tightly. For the first time ever my stomach dropped away below ground level, and was dragged back up full of a swirling flock of starlings. I broke a sudden sweat, and my throat went dry as her smile flattened to nothing, but her eyes were still locked on mine when the teacher's voice broke the spell.

I had no idea what that meant. I was sick, but the sickness made me happy. I did not know what to do with that feeling except I knew I wanted more of it. I needn't have worried.