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.

Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle...

I've said before I didn't spend my entire social life at school, I had myriad activities outside school. Walking by myself. Whistling. Riding my bike around the streets on my own. Humming. Writing letters to girls I liked. Destroying letters to girls I liked. Writing terrible poetry that always, always, always rhymed, no matter how hard I tried to be artistic and deep. Drawing interesting and bloody ways to kill my enemies, all of whom were among my best friends, and my personal list of arch nemeses changed on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.

And once a week I would go to Scouts. Which was entertaining in an old fashioned "Huzzah lads! Let's see who can run around the hall five times and get back in here with a pine cone before I blow this whistle" kind of way. We wore uniforms. We wore scarves. I know exactly what a woggle is, and indeed, how to make one from rope or leather thong. I can tie a variety of life saving and decorative knots; read maps with or without a compass; light a fire with four pieces of newspaper and a single match; track various types of native and domestic animals; cook in a gigantic cast iron pot as well as on a large bean-tin over a candle (though this is restricted only to pancakes) and various other impressive yet useless skills for a boy living in a major capital city.

One other thing which people may (or may not) know about Scouts is: they love to sing. Every meeting, there were songs to be sung, and every camp, there was a campfire "concert" which consisted of various heart stirring pseudo-Christian, pro-Imperial songs, a few mildly bawdy ditties, and a whole bunch of terrible skits based on the worst dad-jokes imaginable. If you ever wondered where the father of your children learned all those terrible jokes that erupt as soon as he has signed the birth certificate, chances are he knows what a left handed handshake means, and somewhere has a strange pointy four sided hat with his name emblazoned on the inner band.

This was all jolly good fun (what?), and honestly, it was. But even better than regular scout meetings was an annual event which combined the local scouts of the whole local area, and when I was a young teen, that was actually hundreds of kids. It pushed all these boys together, ranging in age from about thirteen to about seventeen. And it brought in another large group of kids, too. But these kids wore blue uniforms, and were shaped in such a way they made the scouts do very strange things, especially to each other, in order to gain their attention. The Girl Guides were also in our Gang Show.

A Gang Show is like a University revue. Only, possibly slightly less sophisticated. So while every ten years or so, a popular, intelligent, hilarious and biting revue comes out of a major University in this country, we are still waiting for a major television network to give a regular series to any Scout-based production. This is in part because the material in most of the shows had worn thin when Victoria was still on the throne, and probably gave rise to her infamous "We are not amused". That which wasn't older than any of my living relatives was penned by older memebrs of the scouting movement involved in the production, whose talent was generally inversely proportional to their enthusiasm. But this was fine. It was indeed encouraged, as after all, we were just here to have fun, and everyone had to put in as best they could in the areas they had some inclination.

While all the acting and singing and costumes and lights and music and dancing and the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd were very exciting, it was still probably the girls that kept me coming back every year. In fact, it was in the rehearsals and show of my second year in the show that I got a steady girlfriend for the first time ever. It was also around this time that I learned how to make relationships very complicated very quickly. But I shall return to that story, anon.

Emily Harris was a girl of my age, around my height, with a broad smile and tight ringlets that would not sit flat ever. She was fresh faced and always laughed at my jokes, which was a bonus, as I felt that was pretty much all I had. The cast would be split up to rehearse different individual acts for the show, people having been cast according to their relative competencies in each area of performance: Acting, Dancing and Singing. There was always a large chorus who would always have massed singing and basic dance routines to practise.

I seemed to always get chosen for acting parts, and often for small group singing, where three or four singers would sing small parts together in the hope of masking each others deficiencies. I suppose it was a step up from the massed chorals of the rest of the group. I was placed in one such small group with Emily, and having been in rehearsal for a couple of weeks, and getting to know her a little better, I decided I liked her enough to "pop the big one" Okay, but remember I was only fourteen, it doesn't get much bigger than asking a girl to be your girlfriend. So, when we were finishing up away from the rest of the cast in a meeting room of the local church where rehearsals were held, I stopped her and eloquently expressed my feelings for her in a way I can only dream of reproducing today.

"Hey Em"

"Yeah?"

"Umm... wanna go with me?"

She giggled "Ah... okay"

Then skipped off. Literally. Guides were a bit like that.

That may well have been the high point of the relationship. Still, I went home happy that night.

My Bloody Valentine

There was a girl in high school with whom I can squarely lay the blame for my first directed sexual thoughts. Prior to her, I had experienced feelings of mild excitement, vague arousal, general warmth in the tummy region, and associated feelings of attraction and admiration when dealing with girls. I wanted to kiss them, I wanted to impress them, I wanted to be near them, but not for any clear objective. The first time I saw someone and thought "Wow, I really want to do to her what I saw in brother's magazines" was when I was fourteen and in high school. She had the otherwise unremarkable name of Kylie Bone. But to a whole class of teenage boys raised on American teen-titty comedy, she was simply The Boner.

Of course this was never mentioned to her face. She was too nice for that. She never seemed to be completely aware of, or entirely comfortable with, her over-developed body. Her face was pale, with very light brown freckles, and a slightly turned up nose. She had deep green eyes that were usually wrinkled in a smile and pearly teeth that only real money can buy. Her straw blonde hair was cut in a kind of bob, as was the fashion for at least part of the eighties, though she was not exactly fashionable mostly. But her body was about four years ahead of her, chronologically, and was rounded and curvy in a way that most girls' would never be. The sight of her long legs leading up to her netball skirt and bloomers as she bent over a desk was distinctly the one that triggered my first blatant sexual notion.

I was transfixed. I was staring. She was bending. She was talking. Her friends were laughing. She turned to see why and saw me, unblinkingly staring right at her bum. She squealed, I jumped, her face went extremely red, and I ducked away from my desk and stumbled out of the room, ducking and weaving, as she threw my folder, my pencil case, and any other pieces of stationery that came to hand at my retreating head. I didn't dare re-enter the classroom until the teacher arrived. Then I got ignored by the Boner for the rest of the day. This was a shame, as my crush, amongst other things, was growing, uncalled for, throughout the day.

So it was that a couple of weeks later I came to be writing a card to her. It was, of course, a Valentines card. I was going to slip it into the vent in her locker on Valentines day, and all would be revealed to her. I didn't just want to stare at her arse all day, I really liked her, and wanted her to be my girlfriend. I would make all this perfectly clear in a letter outlining my possible devotion to her, and my wish that she would get with me at lunchtime. Or morning recess if she had netball practice.

So I drafted a letter. A heartfelt plea for her attention and a treatise to her heart to open up to mine, and to her legs to open up also. The language could have been torn from the very pages of Shakespeare's finest sonnets.

"Dear Kylie, you're a real spunk. I really want to get with you at lunchtime"

I was going to sign it with my name, but chickened out at the last moment, and wrote, in fine Valentine tradition "Your not-so-secret admirer" in a clear reference to my recent ogling of her a few weeks prior.

I slipped the card into her locker before school, and waited for a sign she had got it. When I saw her come into our homeroom, she was beaming and clutching my card to her well rounded breast. The left one. I tried to catch her eye, and she looked in my direction and visibly swooned. I did my best to look suave and cool, raising an eyebrow, but being incapable of lifting only one, giving the distinct impression someone had just put electrodes on my testicles and I was somewhat surprised. She smiled and turned away coyly, peeking back over at me all the way through morning assembly, and all of first period. I had a different class to her after that, and I winked at her clumsily on my way out, though I think she probably missed it.

I didn't see her the rest of the morning. I didn't see her until lunchtime, in fact, when I spied her pushed up against one of the portable classrooms, securely attached to the face of Luke Milton. Luke's athletic arms were holding her to him, and alternately trying to squeeze her boobs or her bum, her slender arms wrapped about his waist to allow her full access to clean his rear most fillings with her tongue. Luke sat on the desk directly behind mine from Kylie's desk. And I had heard him talking about her quite loudly the other day, though not in the kind of terms anyone would wish to hear, say, their sister spoken of. An anonymous nom-de-plume may be of use at certain times, in certain situations, where discretion is the wisest of choices. But it's the stupidest thing anyone in their right mind could ever conceive of writing on a bloody Valentine.

Tastes just like Cherrie Cola

I grew up in a time when parents would name their kids ridiculous things. Obviously they still do, but I went to school with some people of unusual and sometimes downright embarrassing names. Parents who couldn't remember the sixties because they were REALLY there, frittering away a free education by consuming every mind altering substance they could lay their hands on. Mind you where they lived, when they were having kids in the early 1970s, that probably didn't consist of much more than cheap red wine from South Australia and some bad Hunter River pot sent in the post. But still they did their best to play the part of expanded minds, long before they grew up and had inflated heads. Often it was not the parents fault, it was just a weird cultural coincidence that Dougal had the same name as a character from the Magic Roundabout, and similar shaggy mop hair. Every now and then, an attempt at naming someone for a naturally beautiful phenomenon would come up, and hence I went to school with the creatively spelled Rainbo. Of course she was re-christened Rambo by a bloodthirsty bunch of teenage boys anyway. But the parents of one girl in particular must have known exactly what they were doing. There was no mistaking that everyone would find it amusing that they were in class with one Cherrie Blossom.

Cherrie was, I suppose, a reasonably attractive girl. She was tall for her age, though, which often made her a target of derision from the other girls, and relatively flat chested, as though her added height was a result of being stretched. But her face was pretty, and her awkward stoop made her move in a way that was at once gawky but endearing. I always noticed that tall girls develop hunched over posture, especially in the teen high school years, as if they are trying to withdraw themselves from view, which merely has the effect of making them more ridiculously obvious. Like a giraffe trying to hide amongst a herd of zebras. She had almost-black hair, with a consistency of dried grass, such that it stuck out at strange angles, despite her best efforts to tame it. I was never entirely sure if she straightened it to enhance this spasticity, but as long as I knew her it remained the same black haystack . As a result of this contrary nature, it was kept mown pretty short, and she was quite possibly the first time I developed a crush on a short haired girl. A recurring theme in my life, strangely.

I say strangely, though, as I developed a crush on Cherrie Blossom with very little encouragement from her whatsoever. In fact, I hadn't noticed her at all, much, until her existence was brought to my attention by some concerned friends. A group of other young ladies I went to school with had decided that, as "everyone else" was pretty much coupled up, it was clearly high time I also found true love in the back of the bus I shared with them every day.

"You know who likes you?" they taunted.

Of course, being a tough thirteen year old boy, I intended to act aloof in front of my mates who were sitting around me on the oval at the bottom of the school. They then recounted the story of how Cherrie told someone, who told someone else, who told someone they knew who told them that she thought I was cute. Even at this early age, I took exception to that particular adjective since reading once that it meant "endearingly ugly", so I was not overly impressed, though I knew most of these girls never used it that way. It was still less impressive than handsome, or gorgeous, or hot, though no one really used that term back then, except in the movies.

But they had planted a seed in my mind. A germ of an idea that grew in intensity as I went about my business. I started noticing her far more often. I also noticed that her chalky white complexion grew pinkish and blotchy when she caught me looking her way. So it was true, then. Perhaps. At least it was a distinct possibility. Then there followed a week or more of badgering by the girls. It was quite obvious to them, and clearly should have been so to me, that I could not continue to carry on as a single man in this hectic social life of the schoolyard. So it was decided I should be pressured into asking her out, and she, I was told, unaware of the whole thing, would surely go along with the plan. After all, the girls who were feeding me intelligence (now there's a confusing use of the term if ever there was one) were much more popular than Cherrie, who while being quite cute, and rich enough, was something of a nerd. In my "friends" words: perfect for me. And I went along with it, acting up to my assumed role. In some ways, convincing myself I believed it was my choice; convincing them I was into the idea. I still don't know why, for sure. The adolescent need for acceptance is strong.

Eventually it was up to me to make something of this. I had resolved I should ask her out, I should do it on the bus she took along with me every afternoon. And I tried, but couldn't quite swing the conversation around in time before she made her exit every day. A week went by, then another, and another, and eventually, I began to wonder why I was even considering this. I didn't really have any feelings for her, I was being pressured into the whole thing by the girlfriends of my friends, in order that there were no third wheels at their social occasions. In the end, I had to clear all this up. I had to tell Cherrie Blossom what was happening.

One day I jumped off the bus at her stop, claiming I was going to the nearby shopping centre, where I would be picked up by my mother. This was a complete lie, and it took me forever to get home from there afterwards. But it was here I planned to explain the situation to Cherrie. She looked happy at first, and clearly thought I was going to ask her out. It soon became clear my intention was almost the exact opposite, and by the time I came around to the end of my long winded explanation (that even though I thought she was really nice, and very pretty, I didn't actually want to go out with her) she was crying. She never really spoke to me after that day.

I suppose she was embarrassed by my rejection of her, that she'd ever said anything to my friends, or her friends, or anyone. I knew that she had been fed a great deal of misleading information about my feelings for her, as well, and it didn't make me fonder of my girl-friends for doing it. I don't know that I resolved to do it, but I definitely began at that point to become better able to hide my feelings. I suppose in the long run it has been a useful skill to possess, but it has been costly. The fleeting embarrassment of a sweet rejection and an understanding kiss on the cheek is far more easy to live with than the unending heartbreak of losing someone you truly love because you never let them inside the wall.

Spectator Sport

The year I was to begin High School, we moved. All of about a mile, but it may just as well have been a hundred. Everyone I knew in the world, all my friends, were gone. My brother and sister were closer to their school, and their friends were closer to them, but for one reason or another, I didn't go to the same school as them. I went to a private school, that took an hour or more to get to each morning. There was never any issue with my siblings about this, they didn't seem to care in the least, though I wonder now if I shouldn't have put in a little more effort, academically at some point to compensate for the privilege.

So I now lived in an isolated world, very much. None of my old primary school friends were around, they had all gone to new schools. None of the other students from my school lived anywhere near me, and even if they had, I was always getting the impression that geographic location was not the only thing separating me from them. The parties I occasionally got invited to, and the houses they lived in, and the clothes they wore on free dress day - they were residents of a completely foreign country to me.

It was a long time before I made friends, really. I would go to school and talk with people and socialise, and get the buses and trains there and back. I was interacting with people all day every day. But they weren't really friends. Not really. No one I felt I could confide in. No one to be stupid with in a relaxed way. Sure there was a lot of showing off, and bravado, and all manner of ridiculous adolescent behaviour. But I was never really at ease with anyone. It was the beginning of what I think of as my life as a spectator.

I felt often, as though I was just observing the world move around me. I understood it, and I observed it, and in some ways I interacted with it. But I never really felt a part of it. I remember even now thinking that sometimes when I would get a sensation of ringing in my ears that it was some kind of signal I couldn't comprehend, that it marked me in some way to be separated from the events and lives around me. I'm sure a shrink would have a field day with that kind of delusion.

But it is a result, I think, of spending so much time alone. I had sisters, and a brother, and yet, I recall more time spent on my own than interacting with anyone, much. I would read, I would play solitary games, I would build things, or pull them apart to see how they worked, then reassemble them so as to avoid the resulting punishment for being destructive. But often, more often than not, I was alone. Alone on the walk to school, alone on the bus to the station, alone on the train, alone on the bus to school, at least until a few stops in, when it would begin to fill up. Not that anyone I really knew got on the bus that early on. And then a reverse process on the way home. Often arriving home to an empty house, because the parents were at work, the siblings were all at friends' houses, and I was home, alone.

I don't think I was lonely, I was, and still am, quite happy with my own company. I could always occupy my time on my own. In fact, i don't think I even missed the companionship of having friends around all the time. My social interactions at school were in retrospect, a kind of calculated performance for effect. I suppose everyone does this to some extent, but the outcome was never quite in focus, the goal not clearly defined. Was I trying to be popular? Not really. The popular kids bored me, for the most part. I was never attracted to whatever it was they liked. Sport, Top 40 radio songs, clothes I couldn't afford...

I know I loved it when I got the attention of the girls, though. I was always nice to them, always polite to them, always listening, always understanding, always trying to get the inside edge with the ones I liked, and ultimately learned the hard way that this resigned a player to being only a spectator. It results, more often than not, in that single statement that turns a boy's blood cold in his veins when it comes from the object of his desire. A simple phrase, innocuous on the surface, but effectively excluding all other relationship possibilities for the future, handed down as a judgmental sentence so many times:

"I like you as a friend"

Better to have loved and lost

I remember the day she walked into the classroom. She was new. Pretty much everyone else in the class had come all the way from the first day of the first year of school with me. None of them had ever lived more than about ten minutes walk from the school their entire lives. I was an exception, and there were a few others, but for the most part the class had stayed the same since the first day our mum's had walked us into the room, hands on our shoulders, and that's the way it had been ever since. Just us kids. Just this class. Until she walked in.

She had hair so blonde it shone in the morning sun that streamed through the windows of the grade six classroom. Her eyes were blue, but so pale they were mesmermising, and even her eyelashes were blonde. Her skin so pale and flawless it was as if she was not even real. Her clothes were odd, as she had literally just got into town this very weekend past, and her mother had not even had time to get to the shops to buy the regulation school dress and shoes, so she wore jeans and a blouse, and sneakers. Her name was Natasha, we were told, Natasha Eden. And I was in paradise.

Being only an eleven year old boy, I had no idea what it meant when my heart beat faster. Maybe I was sick. Maybe I was going to deposit my breakfast into my old fashioned desk. Maybe I had eaten a bad packet of Twisties at morning recess. I didn't have any idea. All I knew for sure was this pure angel was walking toward me. Toward my desk. How I had ended up with a desk of my own was a matter of pure executive decision making on the part of the teacher. Anyone and everyone I had been put next to, I had begun to talk to all day. From the moment we arrived in the morning, until the last bell rang at 3.30 in the afternoon, I would talk. And my mouth had got me moved, finally to a desk of exile. But some would argue (obviously not I) that this was fate. I was supposed to have the only desk in the room with a spare place, so she could sit next to me.

As we had the same desks every day, I sat next to this angel every day. Yes, of course, as an eleven year old boy, I copped a hell of a lot of flak for being the only boy in grade six who sat next to a girl, but I am pretty sure it was all motivated by jealousy. She was simply the most perfect creature I had ever laid my eyes upon. Which would have been a massive problem, had I even suspected I was completely besotted with her. But I didn't, because I was a dumb kid with nary an ounce of hormone in my whole entire body to start a fire with. So instead, we became friends.

My inability to sit next to another human being in a quiet room and not talk to them became an ally of the greatest value. I won her trust, I earned her friendship, I made her laugh, I took it upon myself to be an ambassador to our new arrival and show her the ins and outs of the complex public school system in the suburbs of the mid 1980s. And she was grateful, I think. She eventually made friends with the rest of the class, with the other girls, and just melded into the general melting pot of pre-pubescent school life that we had all been a part of since day one. But we had something. That year, we sat together every day.

Then, as the end of the year approached, I received a shock. Just as she had come, she was leaving. I was never quite sure what it was her father did for a living, but whatever it was, she was leaving again as it was taking him, and the rest of her family, to some new city in some other part of the world. There was so much I should have said to her, so much I wanted to let her know, a strength of emotion that I couldn't quite express in words, because I had no point of reference by which to navigate. No way to interpret the sense of loss I felt when I knew she would never again be sitting next to me in that fifty year old wood and steel desk in that prefab chipboard classroom.

The last day she was to be there, I made an effort to make her laugh, I tried my best to make her smile, I didn't even get told off by the teacher for chatting to her the whole day. Then it was time for her to go. It was time for us all to go, it was the end of school for the year, and the day was long, and hot. We were all going off to start something new. Next year we would all go to high school. For some reason, I had been kissed by a girl at camp, which wasn't her, as she wasn't there. And any chance we had to be alone was interrupted for some reason or another. It was on the last day I took her aside, and told her what I needed to tell her. I took all the emotion I had pent up in my awkward young body and I made it quite clear to her what she meant to me, and how I felt. How much of a loss it would be to know I would probably never see her again.

I walked her to the gate, we were alone. I stopped as we reached the gate, her mum's Volvo just waiting outside the fence.

"Natasha" I said, and she stopped and looked at me

"Hmm?" she hummed, looking into my eyes with those blue white rays

"Bye. I'll miss you"