Last Saturday, I received a desperate sms from her. I was nowhere near a landline, and I was shopping with Frodo. I eventually went to my mom’s place and sent her the number. No call. Yes, I worried. Yes, I know she is going through extreme turbulence. Yes, I know she is generally turbulence personified.
Some History:
She was my first real love, my first real kiss. She is the sister of my best friend in primary school. We had two brief intense relationships. Once when I was 12, the second when I was 22. In neither case was there sex.
I mean a lot to her. Too much for me I think. She will be here in July. This is good. Mostly. I look forward to seeing her kids too, they are little jewels. I do miss her so. Her voice has connotations from and era past. A good era for me. before the shit hit the fan basically. I think I mean the same to her, for the same reasons.
I once said to her a long time ago that we would probably end up being two old fogies together, sitting on the porch in rocking chairs, drinking some form of alcohol, still smoking, giggling about the ‘old days’.
My guess is that it would be her and Nikki and me on the porch. I wish they knew each other. jealousy is so unnecessary. What is there to be jealous about. I cannot change who I know. It is a prerequisite for any new relationship for me. I have history – a long anf full one. And it involves people. Perhaps I give the impression with everyone I meet, that they are the ‘only one’. No-one will ever be the only one. There just are too many.
This is an excerpt from a larger story, but it describes our first kiss – my first kiss. It can be replayed at whim in my mind. Some of the external details are not what they were, but the essence is there:
The Kiss
So there they were in the little flat in the city. Werner loved to cook, and they all loved to eat. Much more than Stephen could. God, they ate and ate and ate. Then they listened to some Mozart or Beethoven, or something classical anyway. Quite honestly, Stephen was hating it. Hating all of it except hearing Annelieze’s laughter. It was like sweet rain in a desert. It jingled and danced. Her whole being laughed. It just simply lit up the room, and the suburb, hell, it lit up his universe. Could this be the beginning of the thing they called love? The very week he was due to go away to some place no where near her universe? The universe where stars danced, and comets smiled. God, life was a real bitch!
The flat was small. Werner and sister shared a room. Two pine bunks were arranged in an L-shape so that the heads were together. Stephen got the one bed, Annelieze was not going to be put out of her own bed. Werner was on a mattress on the floor.
After an hour or so of match poker, lights were out, and they settled in for the night. The way Stephen usually slept, his right arm became his pillow and his hand extended beyond the end of the bed. Just as sleep crept up on him, she touched his hand with hers. Could it be on purpose, or had she just shifted in her sleep? He didn’t care. It was a touch. And it was electric. Power flowed between them. She pretended to shift again in her sleep, and turned so that more of her arm rested against his. It was if their arms had become their entire bodies up against one another. He could smell her toothpaste breathe, and feel the pulse in her wrist, or was it his own heart racing? He began to sweat. They shifted, both pretending to be asleep, so that more surface area of each others skin to could touch, could brush against each other. He became aware that he wasn’t breathing, or he didn’t seem to be breathing. He felt the fine hair of his arm against hers. He felt her move closer, they were inhaling each others breaths. Their lips just touched, caressed. In some ancient ritual dance. Touch, breathe, touch, breathe. Soon, they were literally gripping each other between the pine head board planks. Instinct kicked in, and what was meaningless lip locking with the girl down the road two weeks before, suddenly became erotic. With no prior instruction, tongues touched, wet mouths exchanged fluids, bodies moved as close as they could without being in the same bed. Their minds seemed to merge as their senses took them to a place where there was nothing but the taste of each other. A place where time was not a concept, where space was just space, to a universe where nothing existed but the two of them. He felt he needed to be in bed with her, their bodies locked together. She felt it too, but they both feared Werner waking. He would be devastated. Stephen was HIS friend, not her boyfriend. They were thinking the same thing. It was a thought that gradually, like a sneaky draught in a cozy warm room, which found its way in through closed doors and windows, crept up on them, and gently closed the curtains on the most exhilarating act of his life so far.
The breathing slowed, the tongues became lip caressing, then just became breathing. For the first time, they both opened their eyes and looked directly at each other. She was wearing that knowing smile most of us dream about seeing most of our lives. A squeeze of his hand, and she turned and fell asleep.
