were too similar to mine, and I didn’t appreciate the competition. I’d make a joke, then he’d make a louder one and win approval from our giggling classmates. So I’d make a joke at his expense, and get a louder laugh. He’d reciprocate, and escalate, and make me seethe with competitive rage from behind my exercise books. This war continued until he called a truce, and the passion and hatred of our frequent fights developed into a warm reciprocal friendship.
Instead of fighting, now we’d sit next to each other in classes, making quiet, secret jokes to each other. We’d spend hours on the phone at weekends, dissecting what had happened during the week. We’d open up a bit about our habits and lusts, and what our rampaging hormones made us want to do.
Not to each other, you understand—despite my desire for him I knew that he’d never be mine. He was slightly cooler than me—not popular, but cool. And with my high test scores and big glasses and ignorance of popular music, I most definitely wasn’t. I settled for simply being friends, projecting an air of calm platonic happiness, while in secret I fell hopelessly in love with him.
‘Can anyone tell me what the difference is between weight and mass?’
I daydreamed during science classes. It was one of the few lessons in which First Love would sit further away from me and I could watch him from my desk, as he laughed and wrote notes to the guy sat beside him, ignoring the teacher until just the moment when he’d be called upon to answer.
‘Come on, anyone? Mass versus weight, anyone?’
It was during a science class that I realised I loved him. I was watching him writing notes, admiring his long, quick fingers, his thick forearms accentuated by a chunky watch. I looked at his hands and was struck by a powerful image, of him pushing me roughly against the wall in an alleyway on the way to school, using both hands to push at my tits as I hiked up my school skirt.
I felt that deep, throbbing lust and I squirmed on my stool. I could feel myself getting wetter, as I kept my eyes on his hands and wished I could be alone to touch myself. That quick snapshot—the roughness of his grip and the force of him pushing me against the wall—was the first genuine fantasy I’d felt for a real person. I don’t think I imagined us fucking at that point, I just pictured how desperate he’d be to come, how hard he’d rub himself against me, and how his hands would stray from my tits to grab my arse through my knickers and pull me forward against his dick.
I ran straight home from school that day, not speaking to him, or even to my friends. I waited until my sister was safely settled in the lounge, unlikely to return to our shared bedroom, and I wet my fingers, touched my clit and thought of him, him, him.
‘You need to be careful,’ said Dad. ‘I know it might seem like a platonic relationship to you, but boys are different. It’s hard for a boy to stay platonic. He’ll be thinking of you in other ways, so you need to make sure that he knows how you feel.’
Listening to my dad telling me that First Love wanted to fuck me was almost as painful as hearing First Love tell me he didn’t.
Both of us would protest if asked whether anything was going on. ‘Oh no, we’re just friends. It’s not like that.’ But I’d watch him during school, I’d speak to him whenever I could, I’d hang on his every word like each one was a magical secret, and I’d go to bed at night wishing he would touch me. ‘Honestly, we’re just mates. Nothing’s going to happen.’ But God I wanted it to. He was as interested in girls as I was in him, but for some reason I could never give him that feeling. We’d play-fight and we’d hug and sometimes we’d sit so close on the sofa that I was scared he’d hear the throbbing of my cunt, but he never touched me.
Other girls were more interesting to him. My friends. My girlfriends. Amy. He’d snog Amy with slobbering, desperate passion then turn to me, with a semi-hard dick, and let me know all about it. And I’d smile, and congratulate him, my potent, lucky best mate. Well done, man. Good on you. You got some. And then go home to sob silently into my pillow, and relive the times when—in my head—he’d fucked me.
Dad, again: ‘It’s not that boys are only after one thing. It’s just that they’re often thinking about this one thing. They want sex even if you don’t, so you have to be careful not to lead them on.’
I sat through the lecture with gritted teeth and a determined smile. I smiled as hard as I could to stop myself from crying. My dad was telling me how inevitable it was that First Love would try to fuck me, and I was replaying in my head all the times he’d told me, ‘No, I don’t feel that way about you. Let’s just be friends.’
My dad told me that, as a woman, I’d be irresistible to anyone with a penis and a pulse. Men have erections and they need someone to fuck. And of course First Love had erections, and he wanted to fuck too. But no matter how fun I was, how young and horny and wet and eager I was, he still wouldn’t fuck me. As I listened to my dad telling me to push First Love away if he made any advances, I remembered all of the ways in which this boy had rejected me, and I felt an actual physical pain in my chest.
‘What I’m getting at here is that he’ll be thinking these things about you all the time. I want you to be careful. It’s not that I don’t want you to be friends with him, I just don’t want you to break his heart.’
And it broke my fucking heart.
After years of friendship and countless hours of longing, First Love eventually moved away. I still spoke to him every weekend—languid hours spent lying on my bed, one hand comfortably down my knickers, listening to him tell me about his new life, his new school, the girls who were much prettier than me who might or might not be interested. But I could at least forget him for a while during the week and focus on finding that lustful feeling elsewhere.
I made rather awkward friends with a gang of laid-back stoners. Although I wasn’t keen on everyone in this new, scruffy group, it opened up plenty of new opportunities to have my tits touched. I still thought about First Love, and whenever I met a new boy I’d be looking for elements of his character that reflected Him—a quick wit, a dirty smile, lovely big hands or a penchant for chatting about wanking. And he remained the only real-life person who had ever featured in one of my fantasies. He’d left an impression on me that I realised would never go—the first person who’d got me hot and wet and then fucked off without giving me any release.
But my new friends were fun as well. We’d hang out in shy groups after school, arguing over the artistic merits of Kurt Cobain, smoking lopsided joints and feeling better than everyone else.
They introduced me to a lot of new things, some of which (like smoking and super-noodles) I’ll never forgive them for. But they also helped me to lose my virginity.
‘Ow … ow … ow … please sto— oh, you’ve stopped.’
I lost my virginity in a shed. That’s right, I was classy. But I wasn’t that different from others in the group. Without parents willing to host big parties, we spent most of our evenings swigging cheap cider in parks and frotting in darkened alleyways until the tension would build up and we’d find a place to fuck. Any place to fuck. Fussiness about these things was considered bad form. At the time you’d be seen as ‘stuck up’ if you insisted on a place that had walls, let alone an actual bed.
I met number one just before my sixteenth birthday. He was tiny—around five foot five—with soft skin and bright green eyes. He wore torn jeans and smoked roll-ups and spoke with a slight, shy stutter. Best of all, though, he was not fussy. He was horny and willing and desperate to have a girlfriend. He didn’t just want to hang out on the outskirts of parties and kiss the girls who were drunk enough to fancy him; he wanted to be at the centre
