Breaking The Ice

This is a story about a boy.  My clearest childhood memory is of him giving me a Valentine’s gift when we were both seven.  We were preparing for our communion that year, and although I didn’t know him well I knew him well enough to be suspicious of the gift.  He was a boy, and a bad boy at that.  I can still feel the terror of that moment; being handed a gift-wrapped present in front of the whole class on my arrival at school that morning.  I was sure that it was going to blow up in my face, that it was a horrible trick designed to embarrass me.  It was a grey teddy with heart-shaped glasses.  Three years later he repeated the gesture. 

He was my first Valentine.  Years later, my first kiss with tongue.  Aged 14, my first encounter with male genitalia.  From the age of 17 onwards he was a regular feature on my weekend scene, which mainly involved drinking too much and collecting experiences with men to entertain my friends with during the week. 

I don’t think I’m going to be able to find the words to tell this story properly.  I wish I could describe the feeling of seeing him on the dancefloor on a Saturday night, after studiously ignoring him all week in school.  The strobing lights, 90s music and grinding couples fading into one another as his gaze held me helpless.  The agonizing anticipation of those moments, the electric expectation finally giving way to ecstatic relief as he touched me, held me, danced with me and kissed me like nobody else could.

We slept together, once.  We’d finished school and I was in town with a friend of mine, enjoying our new-found freedom and testing the rules of the real world to the limit.  The night, and the booze, led me to his single bed in a rented apartment crawling distance from the club. 

And the years rolled by.  I met him again, on another visit to the hometown.  Another drunken night, another nightclub.  I was obviously going through a responsible phase at the time; I didn’t take him home with me but I did take his hipflask as a souvenir.

And then last night.  A familiar voice called out my name across the crowded beer garden of a local pub.  And there he was.  Older and rounder than the last time we met, but the same indescribable charm.  I was defenseless.  The evening ended in his house, drinking cans and talking shit into the small hours.  This morning I woke up in his bed, cursed myself for my predictability, then made the most of the familiar yet mysterious body lying next to me.

That’s the thing about him.  The mystery.  All those years when we were in school together, we never spoke about our weekend flings.  I never knew if there’d be a next time, and that intensified every touch, every kiss.  He’s a lot of things, and leads an interesting life, but to me his biggest redeeming feature is that he’s a little bit dangerous.  Because he drinks hard, gambles big, talks straight and lives for himself. 

A no-strings relationship might not sound like the key to happiness to a lot of people.  But in my 25 years the relationship I’ve had with him has been the most straightforward and possibly the most satisfying.  It’s not love, it’s not even friendship, but it’s honest.

The oldest lover I’ve ever had was exactly 19 years, 364 days older than me.  “Teach me something.”  “The only thing I can tell you, the only thing I’ve learnt, is that it’s all about the passion.”  I don’t think it would be possible for me to feel the passion I felt this morning for someone I was in a long-term relationship with.  I’m not saying that passion has to fade over time; I’m saying that in most relationships that passion is never given a chance to grow.  Distance, uncertainty and anticipation are the elements that make our relationship what it is. 

I had to take the morning after pill today.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  We had a brief discussion last night, during which we apparently decided that we were ready to start a family.  The drunken mind is a truly fascinating, frightening thing.