My first (proper) kiss

My first (proper) kiss
My first kiss
Not the best. Not the worst. Is anyone’s? A bit like the first time one has sex, but I am definitely not going down that road on the narrative side of things.
So the first kiss I ever had. I was 15 and he was 22. Now even at the time, or at least shortly after, I did pause to wonder what kind of sicko would want to have some sort of relationship (? Ok I think he really did) with someone who was a mid-teenager. I don’t think he was a pervert though. Just a bit… well thick. Ok this is cruel, but it’s true. He was much less bright, much less knowledgeable than I was. I don’t say this because he was a train driver (you have to have your wits about you for that job) or because he lived at home (economical) or because of his penchant for nylon-heavy v-necked school uniform-like pullovers (which smelt nicely of fresh washing.) And the Bette Davies film thing might have given him brownie points had I been older.
No it was none of these things. He was evidently, lamentably just not that bright.
And I wasn’t remotely attracted to him, although I did quite fancy his
much, much younger brother who ogled me through the tea that his mum served up the one time I went over. My initial snogging session was the result of a kind of setting up by my sister, who, incidentally, later agreed with me that he was a sloppy kisser. And the whole incident only happened, on my part, as an act of revenge/self proving after a couple of friends buggered off to and allegedly did get off with guys, leaving me in the lurch, in a restaurant on my own for over an hour.
On my birthday. (All is forgiven by the way. It was a long time ago, but relevant to the narrative.)
As a consequence, I was fed up, self-esteem bereft (not that I had any self-esteem anyway) and my sister thought that she would cheer me up by taking me to the number one heavy metal nightclub that mid-1980s Sheffield had to offer - Rebels.
Or was it Revels? Always easy to confuse nightclub name with a chocolate one.
It was a classy place. Pictures of naked page three style bimbos on the walls, broken glass on the floor (not a style statement, just a consequence of drunken clientele, and presumably complacent staff) and lots of girls and guys (sorry lads and lasses) in pre-lycra days skin tight white jeans giving their brains a bashing as they banged their heads up and down to the likes of Meatloaf. It was sad, I knew then, but I suppose I was quite excited, doubtless cigarette in hand and Sally’s borrowed clothes on. I really don’t remember. Anyway ‘it’ (the ‘relationship’) lasted a week. There was only so much Bette Davies… or was it Joan Crawford? and fragrant navy nylon jumper that I could stand. (Actually one afternoon’s worth.) So I got my mother to break us up. She rang him and told him that I was too young for him, only being 15 etc. The next year he sent me a huge ludicrously tacky birthday card and rang me to see if I would go out with him now that I was 16.
I suppose it was sort of sweet, but I am not sure how innocent. I always thought it was the latter as well as the former, because I thought he was a bit dim, especially as I got a card the next year not to mention the big valentine cards with bears and hearts on them in the intermediate time, but perhaps given the turning-16 watershed and the ramifications of that in the eyes of the law, maybe not. I’ll never know.
I suppose that while I am on this train of thought, I might as well mention my best worst, chat up line. Not my chat up line, exactly, I hasten to add – I don’t chat people up - but the best bad one anyone ever tried on me…
I’d gone to a night club on a trip up north to visit my parents. Sunny Sheffield. I don’t do night clubs, and never really have (apart from erm Revels, I mean Rebels.) I mean what’s the point. Unless you really like dancing, there’s only one thing they are for, and that’s not having a nice chat and getting to know people. It’s getting off with people. Which I never did, not that I am sure that I wanted to really, but either way, standing with your arms folded tightly and watching your friends (were they really friends?) doing exactly that was the emotional equivalent of a stiletto heal grinding out the cigarette butt of the last bit of your soul or self-esteem. Wrong metaphor, perhaps. There was no way that guys would be wearing stilletos in Sheffield and I wasn’t into girls.
Anyway this time I was 25, so old enough to get into ‘Grab a Grannie night.” Yep. Passed the 20 mark, so a grannie. There were actually a couple on the dance floor that looked really old. Must have been in their 40s, and god so sad, strutting their stuff (how cruel we are when young), but apart from that no one over 28.
It was a strange evening. I had been dragged there by a friend, who’s friend we met up with promptly offered me poppers. Now I never get offered drugs, apart from pot – and who doesn’t get offered that – and I wasn’t sure what poppers did, so there was no way that I was going to accept any without doing research, and in the virtually pre-internet days that wasn’t going to happen even after the event. So for me, a bizarre start to the evening.
And then this guy came and sat down next to me, sidling up against me, and uttered the immortal words “You smell nice. What shampoo do you use?”
I was literally speechless for a moment.
I don’t remember what shampoo I was using. Why would I, and the inanity of the chat-up line would doubtless have obliterated any memory of my usual morning hair product anyway. But it was probably whatever Mr Sainsbury’s had on special offer at the time, being an impoverished post-grad student.
I think I danced with him, although I can’t be sure. It’s a long time ago.
Needless to say no snogging.

Inappropriate behaviour

Inappropriate behaviour
OK I am not exactly innocent when it comes to inappropriate behaviour. Far from it, although I am not prepared to go into details. Well maybe I could admit to licking a plate to relish the last morsels of a truffle cream sauce… swigging juice from its carton (but everyone does that… don’t they?) and there was that time I fell asleep at my own party. I was just going to have a nap, but didn't wake up until the next morning. Good thing I had a flat mate (mostly her friends at the party anyway) to hold the fort. And it ended ok. A 7am walk in Port Meadow, working off the embarrassment, and some arty photos taken of dew-filled spider webs and the like. (Although I am still slightly disturbed and curious about the identity of the person who was caught stroking the ceramic sheep on the outside of my bedroom door whilst I was sleeping.) But anyway. All of this has been in the privacy (well sort of) of my own home.
Not in public.
But some people seem to have no sense of what is appropriate. To some extent my reactions reflect on my own upbringing/obsessions/phobias. I mean hey, what’s intrinsically inappropriate about cutting your nails on the tube. (God, the sound of the clippers still haunts me.) And there’s certainly nothing wrong with putting your make-up on on the train. In fact, these women should be given a medal for having the tenacity to apply eyeliner while the train speeds from Loughborough Junction to Elephant and Castle. (We are talking serious swerving here. I am told that it’s to do with crossing points on the line.)
And the woman on the train who licks her fingers every time she turns a page of her free gutter press newspaper. Nothing wrong with that. (I wonder if you can get ink poisoning. I rather hope so. Then I might not have to witness it again. Very Name of the Rose.)
But as I said this is all small fry.
Compared to the guy I was sitting opposite on the train the other day. He was sipping from a large carton of double Elmlea ‘cream’, cradling it like it was some elicit after-work can of beer- on-public-transport kind of thing. And I thought I was weird.
Someone I mentioned this to suggested that perhaps the carton actually did contain beer. If so, I hope he washed the carton out thoroughly. Cream/beer mix. It doesn’t bear thinking about. But then there are people out there who like Baileys. (Erm I have been known to drink it – but only in private. And that’s not official.)
There’s perhaps a slight blurring on the border between inappropriateness and the slightly strange. Or, as I like to think of it, the surreal. Generally one can only keep a grip on the surreality of things if one refuses to look for an explanation. This is something I have always thought of as appropriate. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it can be amusing. Breast pumps, for example. As soon as my ignorance was relieved, so to speak, an amusing aspect of life was also removed. But there are things in my life which will never be explained, thank goodness. The time, for example, I was in a phone box (poor student, no phone) when the booth was suddenly surrounded by 5 burly firemen, shouting ‘it’s in here.” I assume they weren’t referring to me, but who knows. I didn’t, and don’t want to.
The guy who used to walk down the main drag in Shepherd’s bush wearing black plastic sacks wrapped around his legs, who inexplicably turned up in Oxford several years later. (Maybe it wasn’t the same guy. Just a plastic bag man ‘meme’ sort of thing.) Finding a big big beetle on my curtain after watching a TV production of Metamorphosis.
Ok I am straying into the realms of my list of bizarre experiences now. But only bizarre if you don’t try to understand them or half think that there is a meaning that goes beyond the obvious.