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.