First Love

SEVEN YEARS AGO I began an interesting writing project which somewhat chronicled my (religiously restrained) pursuits in love from the age of ten. Clearly it was a work of humour, some chapters were girls names, another chapter entitled 'It wasn't Pinnochio's nose that grew...' which documented adolescent sexual frustrations expressed via boyhood campfire conversations about girls. I continued writing up to the age of seventeen and eventually abandoned the project after deciding that the years that followed were shaping into a long winded tragedy with dwindling amounts of humour. 

Love changes with age. Some relationships seem like vague recollections in dreams or nightmares, some like lives in parallel universes. The past can be stranger than fiction when you look at the journey. Maybe it is a sign of success if you can look back on things that way?

I wanted to write something meaningful for Valentine's day but I thought it would be more important to laugh.

An excerpt from an earlier chapter in my abandoned project. My first love ;

CASSIE

Cassie was my first ever girlfriend.  I was 11 and at Intermediate School.  I had liked her for a while and she liked me also.  She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and her nose was a little bit pointy but that was alright, she was still pretty.  One day in the playground her friend Kelly asked me out on behalf of Cassie and I paused to think about it before replying with ‘yes’.  (I paused because I did not want to seem over eager).  Cassie was waiting across the other side of the playground.  As soon as I said ‘yes', Kelly ran over to Cassie to inform her of my answer.  I watched in the distance as she did this.  They both looked ecstatic and held hands, nodded their heads, and jumped up and down in excitement. 

Having a girlfriend was a new thing for me and I wasn’t sure what it entailed.  I figured we’d hang out, hold hands and stuff, and maybe kiss but french kissing a girl kind of grossed me out. 
In the classroom Cassie asked if I wanted to move my desk into her group.  My teacher Mr Thomson let us sit in whatever desk arrangements we liked.  I agreed but said that I wanted my friends Matthew and Andrew to come with me.  Cassie and Kelly consulted each other about this arrangement and they accepted.
So there we were. Me, Cassie, Kelly, Matthew and Andrew, all sitting in a group.  It was a different group dynamic sitting with girls. We would get in more trouble because the girls would talk when Mr Thomson was talking, and they would draw in our workbooks.  One day Matthew told me that it was pissing him off and Andrew agreed so they moved out. I felt quite abandoned.

I told my parents that I had a girlfriend.  I don’t know why I did this.  Maybe it was because I was proud I had got one.  I did not know it would cause such commotion.  Mum was outraged and said I was far too young to have one, and that it was bad news.  She feared that a girl would just be trouble and she wanted me to break it off.  I, of course was outraged by this and said that it was not fair and it was my life and that it wasn’t that bad.  I was quite angry.  Mum looked at dad for support.  I don’t think dad liked the idea of me having a girlfriend either but he didn’t say much.  He could tell that I was angry with mum for her reaction.  In the end  I heard dad say to Mum, “He’s only 11, don’t worry”.  I then heard Mum say “But this will just be the start, he’s too young…”

Cassie would call me on the telephone.  I learnt that girls like talking.  They like talking a lot. We would talk for up to an hour.  Sometimes Cassie would ring me for no reason, it was just something to do.  She would ring up and say ‘Hi’ and then ask me what I was doing. 

“Watching T.V” I would say. 

“Same” she would reply. 

“Cool” I would say. 

“Cool" she would say.  “What are you watching?” 

“The Simpsons” I replied. 

“Same.  Do you think Clarence from school looks like Milhouse?” 

“Um… yeah kind of.” I said.

She laughed.  “Four eyes (Clarence) is such a geek.”

Basically Cassie would ring me up and we would occupy the phone and talk about nothing.  It was disrupting my homework.  Mum would look at me as if to remind me of this fact when I was on the phone and it made me feel bad.  I would try to get off the phone by telling Cassie that I had to go.  “No you don’t” Cassie would say and she would insist on us talking.  I would give in.  I am pathetic and weak.

I started having to get my homework done early so it was done before Cassie would ring to make mum happy.

It was hard work having a girlfriend.  They were quite needy and demanding.  Sometimes I wondered why I bothered but at the same time Cassie gave me a buzz.  I couldn’t describe it, it was like a flutter of the heart or adrenaline or something, the feeling that there was someone special in your life that shared a special part of you that no one else could.  This is what led me to sew ‘Ken Cassie Ken Cassie Ken Cassie’ all over the pencil case I was making in my clothing and textiles class at school.  It seemed like the in thing to do.  My friend Elliot had a girlfriend Joanna.  They had been together about the same time as me and Cassie.  On their respective pencil cases they wrote ‘Elliot and Joanna 4 eva’.  I showed Cassie my pencil case.  I think she was quite flattered.  I scored brownie points.  We held hands on the way back from class that day.

There were a lot of phone calls, drawing in each others exercise books, and some hand holding but me and Cassie had still not kissed.  I think Elliot and Joanna were in the same boat.  One overcast lunch time Kelly, Cassie’s friend decided that we should go over to the far side of the field where it was secluded and play dare.  Kelly dragged me and Cassie and also Elliot and Joanna.  I started to get that buzz – my heart began to flutter.  When we got there Kelly said that Cassie and I needed to kiss and so did Elliot and Joanna.  We all looked hesitant and embarrassed by being put on the spot like that.  There was a period of silence but then Kelly said “come on, who’s going to kiss first?”.  This made it a competition and I sensed shame for the couple that lost.  I looked at Elliot and Joanna who were sheepishly looking each other in the eyes, to me it was a sign that they were both developing traction in the whole procedure.  This made me look at Cassie.  I felt nervous and uncomfortable and so did Elliot.  We looked at each other and then at our girlfriends and as Elliot leant in to kiss Joanna, so I did to Cassie.  One quick peck on the lips.  It was over in a flash.

The love that Cassie and I shared began to grow old in the days that ensued.  Perhaps it was my fear of the big sloppy.  I watched older boys do it to their girlfriends at the bus stop.  I admired them.  I was just chicken.  One day in the playground Kelly came up to me and stated “You’re dumped.  From Cassie” and then ran away.  Our love had ended pretty much exactly the way it began - via personal message service informing me of my plight. This was my first experience of heart ache. I was dumped for another boy, Michael, who looked like a monkey.

The Best Valentine's Day Blog EVER!

Okay, now that I have your attention, I bring you an original short story.  
I dedicate this one to the lovely but elusive Mari Van der Vyver, who has the most amazing chuckle in the history of the planet, and needs to contact me ASAP.

Juliet, and Romeo

The bed was coercing their bodies together. It was an old lady that had grown up in tough times, witnessing all kinds of pains and hardships, and now in its old age desired only one thing – to witness love. The sag in the bed and resultant roll-together was that bad.

Ron is awake and clings to the side of his bed tightly. He knows that he must not wake her for if he wakes her, she will sigh and it won’t be any ordinary sigh, but a sigh that speaks of pain. It will be long and drawn out. It will be a sentiment alluding to all of Ron’s short comings and inadequacies as a man. They will be rattled off in exhaustive details, both exemplary and metaphorically, covered from every angle and perspective. Simply put, it will proclaim her unhappiness in their relationship and her bewilderment for volitional persistence with the current situation.

Ron thinks back to happier times. He thinks back to the beginning. She had been so beautiful and radiant that night on the stage. She had a light about her, her voice like innocent and transcendent yearns for love, their source completely pure. That was when he first saw her. It had interrupted his admiration for the Oxford grass on which he sat. He had never seen or felt grass that was so soft! So lush! He wanted to roll all over it, to body slam it, but he withheld such urges amidst the sophisticated crowd. He would only talk about Eliot or Lewis, the weather, Darjeeling first cut teas. He had researched such topics earlier and kept repeating them in his head.

She has her back turned to him as she sleeps. She had begun to lie like this as of late. Ron, while still clutching the bed edge, carefully turns his body over to face hers, his movements slow and laboured to minimize vibratory ripples through the springs. He looks at her brown mousy hair, long and wildly splayed on her pillow. He traces down her neckline to her shoulders, her night shirt wide at the neckline and nearly falling off, then down around her chest, each breath a small expansion, a gentle rise and fall. Longing and desirous for connection, he starts to breathe in time with her. Their chests expand together and then passively deflate. They share the same proximity, oxygen, life, and then let it go. Ron takes satisfaction in this. He desires to be one with her, that they would breathe together to make one giant breath. He wants to spoon her so that they would become one giant body, because he is convinced that life is better when two are one. Everything is stronger. It is the way things should be. Instead he clings to his side of the bed awkwardly, the distance between them a gulf.

Ron had not given much thought to fate and alignment of stars, but when he saw her for the first time he had felt an energy and connection to the universe, it sparked an instantaneous belief in such things. It was ironic and rational therefore that she was playing the role of Juliet in the play, the epitome of romantic love, her bare feet dancing upon this most amazing grass like an Eden, the beginning, where loves intention first set ablaze without defect. He could feel his heart pounding as if metronomic for the world, its pace perfect, to the rhythm of Romeo’s courtly strumming. And at that very moment her eyes did meet his in the crowd, a conclusion to all the tension and energy, an explosion of both metaphysical prognosis and resolve. They both knew that they would chance upon the same pub later, phone numbers exchanged. Through telecommunication they would build a bridge, from that bridge a bed, and in that bed sweet, sweet love.

Ron looks across the bed and sighs. Things were so good in the beginning.

He remembers the days and weeks that ensued where they both floated on clouds, the hand holding and skipping through Oxford’s leafy streets, the laughs, the banter, the joyous drunken moments of youth, a world seen through new eyes. But then came the cracks, at first small, minor complaints; mismatching musical preferences, hygiene habits, views on each other’s parents. Then the perfect world split open, minor grudges becoming full scale arguments, heated exchanges screamed at close proximity, doors slammed, toilet seats left up, food chewed too loudly and with an open mouth. Every action became symbolic of protests, cunning and suggestive. Deliberate. They would plot against each other silently but in each other’s presence. Hubris fuelled psychological voodoo, Jedi mind tricking, the atmosphere ominous and potent, a chaotic imbalance of Yin and Yang. 

Distraught, Ron starts to think about the story of Romeo and Juliet, his arm fatiguing as he does so. He looks for reasons, answers to how his relationship could fall so far from grace. Then it dawns on him. Romeo and Juliet were only together for days! All they knew were the initial moments of attraction! The lofty passion! Their whole relationship centred and ended in the honeymoon phase! They didn’t know each other well enough to hate! Their visions were clouded by desire, faults overlooked by lust, discrepancies trumped by chemistry! 

Ron’s eyes are opened wide with his epiphany. He sees everything clearly. The story of Romeo and Juliet was wrong! The real tragedy would have been if they had remained together! They would have learnt to hate their only love! They would have fought and argued then run back to their respective families, the Capulet and Montague feud newly replenished and inspired. This was how the real story went! This is the real tragic love story! 

Again Ron looks over at her sleeping placidly - the gentle rise and fall of each breath. This was her in her most peaceful state, she was harmless but still – Ron’s arm turning numb from its persistent grip on the bed edge – making him suffer. With Ron’s free arm he glances at his watch. It was past ten in the morning. She was so lazy! And still, if he woke her up now he would have hell to endure, she would moan and hold a grudge all day. She would complain of her robbed sleep, use it as an excuse for lack of shared chores around the house and would tell Ron that he was not sensitive or aware of her needs. Ron thinks of all her persistent complaints and nags. He starts to question the last time she said anything positive. He watches the gentle rise and fall of each breath and begins to detest them all. He detests her sleep. He detests her constant complaints, her selfishness, her dreams! He looks at his arm that clings to the bedside and starts to feel stupid for doing so. He shakes his head both at himself, her, and the ridiculous bed in which they shared. He lets go spiralling, colliding into her in the middle. Ron decides come what may. Awake the beast! Love is pain! Love is suffering! Love is a collision and then picking up the pieces of an ugly mess only to tenderly try to put them back together again finding the pieces too intermixed. He will give his all to her and love her despite her quirks, her defects, her verbal knives and belittling blows. He is a romantic and will therefore bleed for the cause.

And so on and so forth...