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.