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.