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.