My first love returns by dream

On Saturday night I dreamt of my first love. Probably because Stalkbook had alerted me to the fact that it was his birthday. You've got to love how Stalkbook has allowed us to become that good kind of friend who never forgets birthdays (something I am loathe to admit that I was - the forgetting type. With even more loathing I have to admit that even with Stalkbook telling me, over there in the corner, that it's Aunt Mabel's birthday, sometimes I still forget to phone. Oops.)

Anyway, my first love was of the stuff that Sweet Valley High novels are made of (am I dating myself?), but with a little bit of scandal thrown in. First, the SVH bits: he was the younger brother of a good varsity friend of mine. The first time I saw him, he came to visit with his brother and I literally had to stop myself drooling, as metaphorical stars flittered from above his head, bright light shining through his blonde locks from behind him. It turned out to be the neon light in the passage, but still.

A couple of months (and the end of year vacation) later found us serendipitously stranded in the nearby seaside village for the night, thanks to my fabulously unfaithful emerald green 1975 Ford Escort. We kissed for the first time in the sand on a moonlit beach, waves crashing, young naive hearts beating. It was lovely, and was the beginning of a beautiful thing that lasted almost two years.

I became one of his wonderful family (who lived in our varsity town). They embraced me, immediately - unconditionally. I am still friends with them all. I was surprised by their unconditional embracing, though, because (here comes the scandal)... I was the Older Woman. While I was ever so grown-uppedly in my second year of university, first love was but a schoolboy (admittedly in his final year.)

When I think of it now, the hero-worship he must've had from the pimply teenage boys in his class when I'd drop him back at school in my emerald green 1975 Ford Escort after taking him back to my digs for 'lunch' - his hair dishevelled, his tell-tale grin. He was just SO cute in his school uniform!

We grew up together really (well, a bit) in that time and our passion and intensity was that of only first love - bright, colourful, naively complicated, tempestuously calm. He was my first for many, many things, and it was wonderful. We were inseperable for that time.

In my dream, he had on a top that had been through the wash and was just too small for him, and I was pushing my hands and arms in under it to stretch it and make it fit. There's no understanding the sub-concious, is there?

The Kissing Chronicles, Part Two

So, where were we? The lanky 16-year old Shiny had received her first, fumbling kiss in a smoky bar amidst St Patrick's Day glasses of green beer and many, many people. (Kissing Chronicles, Part One)

The setting of my next foray into the delights of teen romance was beautiful, and befitting of the best romance novel out there. It was Easter, so the moon was full and round, hanging fatly in the sky amongst swathes of stars above the fever trees on the banks of the Limpopo River. Hippos wallowed and splashed and grunted upstream. It was post-flood, so the river was full to bursting, it's muddy waters glistening as it rushed by in the moonlight.

The boy - a very beautiful, red-haired, Irish twin. He was younger than me too (I warned you, there are definite themes to this long tale). I fear the only reason that I was the target of his affections was because he'd already kissed all the other girls who were there (except his sister, this is not the Jerry Springer Show), but we'll ignore that detail due to the beautiful setting and the need for me, at that stage (or always, I guess), to gather experience.

So, yes, there we were, beneath the fever tree, moon shining on us, talking arbitrarily (you remember that teen chat, just filling the space, before The Moment?) when he moved in and kissed me. It was a far more beautiful, gentle kiss, and I'd like to put this forward as my First Kiss, it just seems so much more romantic than the first fumblings.

However, a couple of minutes into our clinch, things heated up slightly as he slipped his hands INTO the back of my pants and felt my never-before-felt bum. I was incensed! I jumped back in horror, removing his hands swiftly, protecting my innocence. Whether this was due to pure shock and fear of inexperience, or actally piety, I'm not sure. Okay, again, I lie. It was definitely not piety. I can't even pretend to be pious.

I bolted, leaving the poor boy hot under the collar, my buttocks still warm from the touch of his hands, my stomach plaited, my heart aflutter (I really should try to write for Mills & Boon, maybe I missed my calling). I spent the rest of the weekend avoiding his gazes. Ah yes, the folly of youth. How differently that would've turned out, had it been a few years on.

And then there were a few more fumblings with random boys on holidays at the sea, you know the stuff. And then came my First Boyfriend. Of sorts. He was The Brother, from The All Boy's School. Also a twin, his sister and I shared a dorm, at The All Girl's School. It was New Year's Eve, 1990 (or was it '91?), a hot, sweaty Transvaal night. A parent's party, with lots of kids attached. A swimming pool into which we all (obviously) landed, and then we were cold and were all in the pump room (snigger) where it was warm, and even sweatier.

He pulled me toward him and kissed my neck from behind and I was his. Okay, so it was only for a couple of month's, but it was fun. I can't really remember having any kind of meaningful conversation, it was more just some illicit kissing behind his closed bedroom door and many letters with inane details of school life backing and forthing between The All Girl's School and The All Boy's School (the Victorian postal system, as previously mentioned... Seriously, it was a guy on a bicycle who ferried letters daily between the schools.) I still have those letters somewhere. Then he kissed my friend's sister at a party and it was over.

He met the girl who he would marry about a year later. I saw them occassionally on visits home from varsity. They seemed really happy. Like they had not only the illicit kissing behind closed doors, but meaningful conversation, and more. They married and had two children. He died of cancer, two years ago, aged 32. Inexplicably sad.

I hate leaving things on a sad note, but it also seems impossible to return to my usual glibness at this point in the story. I might have to find those letters again. I do miss real, written letters. And the fresh, new, innocence of those first fumblngs. Oh, look, now I've made myself all nostalgic. More to follow, at a later stage.

Sometimes, it's impossible not to wonder, why?

The Kissing Chronicles, Part One

I am very fond of kissing, and have had some rather funny experiences in this regard in the past couple of months (okay, forever, but the most recent ones are, obviously, freshest in my mind). I do fear sometimes that I exist purely to provide amusing stories to my friends but, really, I think that I'm just getting through the frogs, waiting for my prince. And I'm sticking to that story. The fact that my frog pile would keep a good, very busy, French restaurant going for, well, a year at least, is beside the point.

But let me attempt to begin right at the beginning. I'm not very good at keeping timelines going and stuff in my writing, but I'm practicing. So, let's throw ourselves back some years. To a lanky, unsure, teenage Shiny. Let's just say I was not an early-starter when it came to boys and all the bits involved with them. I came from an all-girl household (except for my poor hen-pecked father, even our dog, cat, mice and the chicken who I reared when I was 11 and loved were girls. Okay, I lie, the chicken turned out to be a boy and was sent off to live with my aunt on her farm when he started waking up in my room (we were very close) to herald in the morning. Loudly. In fact, the poor guy landed up on the Sunday lunch table after he developed a rather nasty habit of trying to peck my 2-year-old-at-the-time cousin. I was devastated. And it couldn't have had anything to do with his coddled upbringing... (Chicken, not cousin).)

I digress. Back to the summer of my 16th year. I went to an All Girls Boarding School too, so my only intertwinings with boys really consisted of intermittent run-ins with boy cousins or friends of my parent's sons or summer holiday friendships that faded as we drove out of the summer holiday village (ok, there's more to that story too... but it must wait). So, yes, 16, never-been-kissed, beginning to think that maybe I was destined to a life in an abbey. Luckily, I wasn't, because, although I can sing a song, I don't think I'd be good at belting out "The Hills are Alive" on a mountain top. Oh, wait, she turned out not to be abbey-destined either, didn't she?

Thank god for theme-parkey Irish pubs serving green beer on St Patrick's Day in The Big Smoke. Only when you're 16 though. The All Girls Boarding School was in a small, conservative university town an hour or two away from The Big Smoke (I came from a small, conservative mining town between the two). Lots of the Girls came from The Big Smoke so, every now and again, we would pursuade our parents that it was a good idea to spend a weekend there. This one, however, we pursuaded a friends' parents to take us to said bar. She had a Brother at the All Boys Boarding School down the road. And her Brother had Friends. Although, there's a story with her Brother too. Later though.

And so, I found myself, sat on a bar counter, green beer beside me (apt due to my extreme fondness of Cream Soda, to lose one's first little bit of innocence supping on the slightly-more-adult version of it), in a crammed bar in front of, oh, approximately 200 people, receiving my very first 'real' kiss from a boy who had the dubious nickname of Fungus (thankfully, I never did find out why). He was about half a foot shorter than me (not hard, I'm a tall girl), and a year younger. While I didn't realise it at the time, all these things were signs of things to come - the crowd of people, his height, his age... I loved the kiss though and decided then and there that this was a habit I would like to pursue. So I did.

He was sweet, he wrote me a couple of letters via our very Victorian Inter-All Girls Boarding School/All Boys Boarding School postal system. But, I fear, it was not meant to be. My 16-year-old heart was ecstatic just to get that hurdle out of the way. I was glad he wrote though. It was important at that stage. I think I'd have been devastated had he not. I hope I was nice back, I can't actally recall.

I have to admit though, that possibly that first kiss doesn't stand out in the way that various others have. I suppose it doesn't for most people really. It's a fumbley, vaguely uncomfortable I-hope-I'm-doing-this-right thing. Then you kiss the person that makes you realise it's not like that. A kiss is just the most natural thing in the world and requires no thought whatsoever. It just flows like mercury... beautiful, silvery and unfettered by anything.

And that's Part One. I'm quite impressed with myself for (mostly) keeping to a topic.

I still wonder though, when I'll reach the end of my frog list?