Of course, my brother didn't love Michaela, and so she was inevitably and unceremoniously dumped, over the phone. He told me casually when I asked what they were doing on a coming weekend. He just said "Michaela? Oh, we're not going out anymore". Of course I rang her to find out what was going on, and she told me the whole story. What little there was to tell. It was too hard for him, she explained, to have someone taking up so much of his time. A phone call a day? Sometimes for as long as ten minutes! I couldn't understand it. But I did love her, and he didn't. I would have re-laid the telephone wires from our place to hers if I needed to, just to hear her voice every day.
And this was the thing, she was pretty, but she wasn't the most beautiful girl I knew, her voice was nice (damning with faint praise), but probably unremarkable, she was fun to be around, but not the life of the party, smart, but not super intelligent. There was no reason for it, but then, as I have learned since, there is no reason for falling in love with anyone. It just happens, and it happens apparently at random. Sometimes while already in a relationship with someone, sometimes with someone else who is, and often with someone who doesn't respond in kind.
That was clearly the case with Michaela. It was wrong, anyway, she said, when I even suggested we could continue to see each other, he was my brother after all. And I can't deny that. I don't want to think, even now, about them being together. I'd seen them kissing enough, but I can't envisage them actually having sex, though I know it must be true that they did, and often. But my mind won't linger on the idea, and it never could picture that particular image.
The difficulty with teenage groups is their tribal nature. Sure, we all had best friends, but the group was solid, if amorphous. We looked out for each other doing things I would now think twice about as an adult. Crashing parties in suburbs on the opposite side of the city, sneaking into pubs with drug dealers, junkies, and assorted small scale criminals in parts of town the police tried to avoid. We were a crew, we were a gang, and as part of that gang, we stuck together, even after breakups. There was a kind of inevitable incestuousness within the tribe, as fleeting relationships formed and dissipated within weeks or months, until it seems we had all done the rounds with each other's exes. Except me, of course. I was an observer. I was removed from the activity while being at the heart of the action. As always, recording the history of the tribe, only to recount it later, in private, for my own peace of mind.
And in this case, Michaela was a part of my life. For a while. And she, as part of the procession of girls and ladies and women who did so in my life, told me she just wanted to be my friend, and having done so faded from view, receding into fog like a car in the winter night, tail lights fading into the murk. Then she was gone. And I was back on my own. I avoided my brother for some time, and he avoided the rest of us, avoided Michaela, until she had slipped loose the ties that bound her to us, her friend ending her alliance with whomever had dragged them both in from their parentally-approved private-school parties to our archetypal teen-rebellion lifestyle.
She also said something else that I have heard more than once in my life. A semantic distraction to relieve responsibility for breaking a heart. A pedantic interpretation of an overused word, which discarded all responsibility for the devastation the wordplay always inflicts on its recipient. "Oh, but I love you, I'm just not in love with you". There is no why, there is only a deep wound that is vulnerable to being opened at any time in future with that magic incantation. But you can't argue logically, you can't convince someone in words to love you. This despite the simplicity of convincing another that you don't with a simple phrase.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Monday, 22 June 2009
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Michaela used to call my brother every other day. After a while, it seemed that I would answer the calls more often than he did, mostly due to my bedroom being closer to the phone than his. So I would get to talk to her every day she rang, nearly. We would chat about mutual friends, school, nothing. The usual teenage banter. It was easy, it was the most natural thing in the world, there was no awkwardness, there was mutual understanding, there were laughs and empathy.
Then after sometimes half an hour or more, I would call my brother to the phone, when he would summarily grunt out his responses to her questions. Yep. Nup. Maybe. Bye. I am not sure if he even thought about the fact we were friends, and had a possibly deeper relationship than they did. In hindsight, probably not. He was just like that.
And he didn't mind that almost every weekend he went out with her somewhere in the city, or to whatever house party we transported ourselves to, or whatever gig we might sneak into, she would ask me along. And sometimes she would bring a friend, which made it seem less weird in one way, and more like a double date in every other way.
One of her friends was a tall red head, who dressed, like many girls at the time, in op-shop chic floral dresses and boots. She was lithe and slim, and pale in the street light when I kissed her in the middle of some park around some scout hall in the far distant fringe suburbs of the city. I even went over to her place when we both wagged school, and fooled around for a bit, but nothing too serious. Then just as suddenly as we had met, I don't think I ever saw her again. And for the life of me, can't remember her name. Just her long, tight orange curls and her floral dresses.
There was nothing to hold me to her. Nor another I can recal who wore what I thought was the coolest green leather jacket ever. To be honest, anyone who wore a leather jacket looked cool to me, and the chances of me owning one any time was about as likely as a girl asking me out. On second thoughts, more remote than that. Jo, which was the leather jacket girl's name, asked me out. We had somehow come into possession of a bottle of vodka, which between Michaela, Jo, myself and my brother, we finished off in one of the parks along the river close to the middle of the city.
Having made ourselves quite raucously drunk, there was no way were going to gain entry into a pub. Drunk teenagers usually can't muster the bravado to get past even the laziest bouncer. So we found ourselves in a corner of a carpark behind some warehouse/office complex in the inner suburbs, and Jo had her tongue in my mouth, and I had my hand up her shirt, and the coldness of the asphalt was doing nothing to dampen our progress. Until we were illuminated by headlights and realised quite quickly where we were, and that in all likelihood it wasn't somewhere we were supposed to be. So we leapt up off the ground, and along with the others ran down an alley between two buildings that led to the train station, and the police car couldn't follow. Well, we assumed it was a police car, because we always assumed the police were on to our highly criminal lifestyles, in the way teenagers exaggerate the importance of everything they do.
On the train platform, my brother and I needed to catch a train in a different direction to the girls, and after drunkenly kissing her goodbye, Jo said "Let's go out again soon". That was the first time I had been asked out by a girl. And it certainly seemed like a good idea. Of course, I never did see Jo again. I don't even know why, other than the clear probability that I was actually in love with Michaela. I did begin to wonder if she would run out of friends soon.
Then after sometimes half an hour or more, I would call my brother to the phone, when he would summarily grunt out his responses to her questions. Yep. Nup. Maybe. Bye. I am not sure if he even thought about the fact we were friends, and had a possibly deeper relationship than they did. In hindsight, probably not. He was just like that.
And he didn't mind that almost every weekend he went out with her somewhere in the city, or to whatever house party we transported ourselves to, or whatever gig we might sneak into, she would ask me along. And sometimes she would bring a friend, which made it seem less weird in one way, and more like a double date in every other way.
One of her friends was a tall red head, who dressed, like many girls at the time, in op-shop chic floral dresses and boots. She was lithe and slim, and pale in the street light when I kissed her in the middle of some park around some scout hall in the far distant fringe suburbs of the city. I even went over to her place when we both wagged school, and fooled around for a bit, but nothing too serious. Then just as suddenly as we had met, I don't think I ever saw her again. And for the life of me, can't remember her name. Just her long, tight orange curls and her floral dresses.
There was nothing to hold me to her. Nor another I can recal who wore what I thought was the coolest green leather jacket ever. To be honest, anyone who wore a leather jacket looked cool to me, and the chances of me owning one any time was about as likely as a girl asking me out. On second thoughts, more remote than that. Jo, which was the leather jacket girl's name, asked me out. We had somehow come into possession of a bottle of vodka, which between Michaela, Jo, myself and my brother, we finished off in one of the parks along the river close to the middle of the city.
Having made ourselves quite raucously drunk, there was no way were going to gain entry into a pub. Drunk teenagers usually can't muster the bravado to get past even the laziest bouncer. So we found ourselves in a corner of a carpark behind some warehouse/office complex in the inner suburbs, and Jo had her tongue in my mouth, and I had my hand up her shirt, and the coldness of the asphalt was doing nothing to dampen our progress. Until we were illuminated by headlights and realised quite quickly where we were, and that in all likelihood it wasn't somewhere we were supposed to be. So we leapt up off the ground, and along with the others ran down an alley between two buildings that led to the train station, and the police car couldn't follow. Well, we assumed it was a police car, because we always assumed the police were on to our highly criminal lifestyles, in the way teenagers exaggerate the importance of everything they do.
On the train platform, my brother and I needed to catch a train in a different direction to the girls, and after drunkenly kissing her goodbye, Jo said "Let's go out again soon". That was the first time I had been asked out by a girl. And it certainly seemed like a good idea. Of course, I never did see Jo again. I don't even know why, other than the clear probability that I was actually in love with Michaela. I did begin to wonder if she would run out of friends soon.
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
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.
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.
Monday, 15 September 2008
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?".
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?".
Monday, 25 August 2008
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.
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.
Monday, 18 August 2008
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.
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.
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