He Was Around First (Chapter 2)

How do you talk about the first person you remember fancying? However conceited it sounds I was used to being approached and having the pick of the litter!  No guy really kept my attention for longer then a week because they just didn’t have that je ne sais quoi! He, however, had something I hadn’t seen before.  I was instantly attracted to this stranger.  I would stare at him until we caught eyes and then I’d have to look away swiftly, but then look back at him because for some reason I was drawn to him.  He was everything I thought I wasn’t attracted to but for some reason he had me instantly mesmerised.  His medium slim build and dark mysterious eyes intrigued me.  At first I couldn’t understand why he never seemed interested in me.  I was shy so it was highly unlikely that I was going to approach him at any time.  It sounds funny but because I found him handsome rather then cute I knew immediately he was older then me.  I had never spoken to him but his posture and the way he would seem so aloof made him seem somewhat suave, and the way he dressed gave him a style which none of the other boys I knew had.  What surprised me most was the fact I was attracted to him at all, he was dark skinned and that wasn’t my type.  Far from if I’m honest!  I had always been attracted to Caucasian guys or those of a lighter variation and the contrast from him and a Caucasian guy was vast! I guess that convinced me that the attraction was real.  I couldn’t stop what I was feeling.  If it was meant to happen it would happen.  He had unblemished smooth skin and a fresh haircut every time I saw him.  Sometimes I would stare at him just to see if I could find any flaws.  Never did! He put every other boy I knew to shame. I did however want him to like me back which now meant this had turned into a challenge.  I wasn’t one for not getting what I wanted but I also wasn’t one who came across desperate so I figured I’d play the waiting game.  Only time would tell if he liked me back and I had a lot of time on my hands between going to school and going home!  Thinking about it now he was the first significant guy to speak of from my past

He finally spoke to me after a long time of me eyeing him up and him pretending not to look back.  My friends and I used to go home lots of different ways from school, depending on which boy was on the scene for any of us at that time.  This particular journey we took home would require walking through a field, across a motorway nearly to our death, or under an underpass depending on how daring our mood.  This way home was due to me wanting to catch a glimpse of my new found interest.  Funnily enough, for someone who didn’t attend my school or wasn’t even in the same year as me, he would always be at this particular bus stop with his friends, everyday, precisely when we would be walking past.  Coincidence, I think not!  None of the boys that would be there attended our school, they finished earlier then we did and he lived near his school, which meant he would walk past home to be near or around the bus stop we would use to go home so I knew that he was going out of his way to see someone.  I could only hope it was me.  As far as I was concerned I knew he fancied me too and no one could tell me any different!

The haphazard meeting at bus stops and not talking continued on for a few weeks but he eventually spoke to me.  I remember he told me he liked me, I don’t much remember his approach, in those days I’m unsure if boys even had an approach, there was no way he could throw me to the floor and feel me up like the other boys my age used to! I think in the end we just both got sick of the staring.  We started meeting up on a one to one basis.  We’d meet up after school and on the weekend and walk around the local area, which was local to us both as we lived in the same neighbourhood.  We would sometimes walk to his house, and sit in parks talking.  I remember the first time he walked me home from school.  We walked and talked and when we finally reached outside my house it was like neither of us wanted to say goodbye.  I never invited him inside so we stood outside and continued to talk.  As we spoke I felt tiny raindrops falling onto my forehead.  I had no umbrella so I ran the risk of becoming very wet and looking like a wet dog! But I didn’t want to leave him.  I wanted him to kiss me but he never did. It started to rain harder so we decided we should both call it an evening, he left and I can assume he got very wet on his walk back home!  We liked each other but pneumonia isn’t sexy!  A few more weeks of getting to know each other passed and he asked me to be his girlfriend and of course I said yes.  Back then it was so easy, there was no in between for me I was either a girlfriend or I was a friend.  Little did I know that after this relationship, things were going to stop being so black and white and suddenly life was going to start being an irritating colour of grey. 

We were now a proper couple and we did everything together.  We got along really well and had a lot in common.  He was a lovely person, sweet, caring and good looking.  What more could I have asked for.  He had a lot of things going for him.  He was intelligent and very athletic. I loved his body!  If I saw him topless it would make me nervous because I could assume he wasn’t a virgin like I was and he had the kind of body I had only seen in magazines!  His abs were to die for, and that was the one thing I loved about a guy then, the six pack! Time with him was really nice.  I met his parents, they were lovely.  His whole family were great they made me feel so at ease and welcomed, which was all new to me.  I hadn’t been the girlfriend you introduce to family.  I felt so grown up! I met his mum and she was wonderful.  She was always so nice to me.  She spoke to me like she had known me all my life.  After only seeing me twice she wanted to arrange for us to go and watch him play sports one day.  It was really refreshing to be doing something I hadn’t experienced before.  Of course I had met mothers and fathers but never as a girlfriend, always as the friend from school.  I had never met anyone’s mother who was as welcoming as his.  Thinking back to my previous, somewhat of a near rapist ‘boyfriend’s mother, she didn’t really care about my existence, hence why I would mostly meet him at a friends house or not at all.  My new boyfriends mother made me feel comfortable instantly.  I think what made it even nicer was the pride she had in her eyes and huge smile when she spoke about him.  How could I not fall for him? When I met his dad the reaction towards me was the same, he was nice, friendly and inviting, really warm and funny.  Other members of his family likewise, I wanted to be a part of their family, it seemed so ‘My wife and kids!’

We used to go cinema a lot, it was all we ever did really! If we weren’t at each others houses or in each others company at a park we were on the bus going to the cinema.  I suppose the frustration of a young horny guy not having sex with his girlfriend whilst they were alone together took its toll on him but he was too much of a young gentleman to say anything or make it seem like it was a problem.  One of the many times we attended the cinema I saw a sign warning pedestrians about polluted wasteland.  I pointed it out to him because I thought it was funny.  He looked at it and didn’t find it funny, our sense of humours were clearly different.  That was the first and only negative thing I experienced in our relationship.  I had a silly sense of humour and he just didn’t seem to have one at all.  This immediately made us distant and our future seem bleak.  He turned away from the sign so I shouted out to him, “NO WAIT don’t move, it’s polluted right there!” He looked startled and confused.  “What?” he whispered somewhat unimpressed, so I walked towards him pretending I was dodging polluted ground and life threatening things on the floor and grabbed his face with both hands either side and kissed him.  “Saved your life!” then smiled shyly at him.  His face was very surprised.  From the very beginning of any relationship I make it clear to a guy that I do not kiss first; I will never initiate a kiss.  I can assume that has a lot to do with my fear of rejection as even now at twenty seven I find it hard to do.  That day however I clearly changed my mind and kissing him first seemed like the right thing to do, possibly as some kind of distraction as I felt childish because he never found the sign as funny as I did.  Possibly as a way to convince myself I was still interested, or at least convince him I was.

I was used to being with my friends and having childish, not real relationships and it became apparent that we both had different ideas of what this relationship was and where it was going.  I was only about sixteen at the time and he used to talk to me about really intense things like babies, marriage and living together! Slowly I started to become a bit apprehensive.  At the time I didn’t think about what those things would involve but I knew it would be intense and I also knew that the thought of such responsibilities scared me.  I was still a virgin, we didn’t even have sex yet and he expected me to want all those things?  Slowly things began to change between us.  I wanted to gallivant with my friend’s he wanted to sit indoors all the time.  I wanted to go to parties, he wanted to stay at home and relax together.  What did he really expect from me?  I tried but never quite adjusted.  He treated me really well, I cannot complain about anything really.  I used to collect bears and he would get me different bears for no reason and leave them on my front doorstep to surprise me.  Whatever I wanted I got even though I never wanted or asked for anything, except maybe Burger King! Only thing I’d maybe want him to do is chill out and relax a little bit, not to take life so seriously but he was just so uptight all the time.  Maybe now I can appreciate he was just that little bit more mature then I was but at the age we were, it felt like uptight! We became weird.  I noticed he didn’t make me laugh enough and eventually the laughter stopped altogether.  I would be around him and my face would be set like I’d just been told I couldn’t go to a friend’s house by my mother!  Even my mum noticed it. “How come you don’t seem very happy lately” she’d ask anytime I was with her after I would get off the phone to him.  Would just tell her to leave me alone or stop asking me silly questions and then be moody for the rest of the day, partly because of him and partly because of myself but I would blame my mum, it was easier.  I never understood why we got like that, there was nothing about him I didn’t like so what was wrong?  Eventually I stopped caring.  I wasn’t going to be moody all the time because I was dating a young black Scrooge! My humour is somewhat childish, I laugh at farts and people falling over, swear words and fights.  He never found those things funny.  It puzzles me how people can be so different but made of all the same things, bar women having a vagina and men having a penis! I guess it’ll be something I will always wonder.  Why did we never work out, when the foundation was perfect?

Maybe I was distracted.  If I’m honest I wasn’t distracted at all, at the time, he was all I was interested in, but then when I got bored, I think my mind shut off and I did start losing interest rather rapidly.  I didn’t want to be with him anymore but I couldn’t bring myself to end it because nothing was obviously wrong, I knew he liked me and I felt bad.  How could I dump someone and say the excuse was because you didn’t make me laugh, its not like he was a comedian, it wasn’t his job!  I don’t like when people dislike me so I would rather stay unhappy at the risk of making someone else feel sad.  Come to think of it that is probably the silliest thing I have ever heard and the fact it’s something I apply to my life makes me stupid! But in saying that it just makes me a nice person, nice people may finish last, but at least they finish! However when my mind has shut off to the possibility of us going any further, my thoughts begin to wander.  In this instance they wandered unknowingly right into someone else’s path.

If you like to laugh and someone doesn’t make you laugh do you instinctively search for someone who does? Like if the sex is shit do you try to find someone who can give it to you good?  Maybe you can’t laugh with two guys at the same time…