A history of girls.

1. 15 years old, first one. You were like opening a new page. Grabbing at each other in alleyways. Walking in winter until our hands were blue. Sneaking to your house when your parents weren’t there, all shyness. Biting hips. Scratches. Clothing parted, but intact. Sitting on a bus afterwards, laughing up at the fluorescent lights, our mouths spilling with blueberries that you stole from the kitchen. Scratches nipping and not minding. You slept with someone else at a party an hour after I left. We parted.

*The same night, I kissed one of our friends, during spin the bottle, with your permission, and I enjoyed it more than I ever did kissing you.

2. My best friend. Bottles and bottles of alcohol, poppers until our hearts were racing like crazy and lying on the living room floor laughing at the ceiling. Your ceiling was damp. I did not like your house. Kisses that were previously playful turned in to something different for you, because you were animalistic. Wild. I went along with it. I should have stopped. But then came your Spongebob sheets and your commands. Fumbling and wriggling and inexperience and let down. Your mouth tasted like Ribena. I don’t think you’d been drinking it. We were interrupted just as you were squirming down the covers like a worm. I was glad. In the morning, I felt nothing. You felt everything. The scales tipped and we parted.

3. You got thrown from a club and I took you home. I had no intentions. I couldn’t leave you in the street. I only wanted to sleep. Zzz sleep. It was you. Grabbing at my hands and putting them where you wanted and I complied. For that moment it became what I wanted, too. Magic hands. You had never done this before. You did not touch me – your hand thought about it, for a millisecond, but you pulled back immediately like my skin was on fire. Maybe it was. I was gentle. You seemed precious. But apparently soft was not your thing. Afterwards I wanted to cuddle, to talk to you in to the night, to ask you things. You looked scared. You left in a taxi and left your underwear on the carpet. You, my love, are ‘straight’, and I’m bloody glad we parted.

*You are not precious.

4. A friends couch. It was a long time coming, but I was nervous. So were you. You kissed me and kept falling in to my chest in a heap with a sigh, in and out and in between puffs the silence would not tell me what your brain meant. You were high. I was sober, staying away from everything that would make me too loose because in the morning your brain springs back in to a ball tighter than ever. I tried to be comfortable in that half-light. Calvin Klein pants, the both of us. Mine were girls, pink and purple and yellow round and round in circles. Yours were boys. The question game and spelling it out on my body. Bare skin sticking to the leather and the noise of something smashing outside. We had pancakes for breakfast. I got a bus and got lost but I was 90% satisfied. 3 months later and you were boinking a blonde and I was about to find love. We parted.

5. We were supposed to be talking, but I pounced. You took off your own clothes. I could not stop looking at you. You still laugh at the thought of my face (I wonder what it looked like) and the fact that I said ‘You’re naked’ out loud as if it had to be a physical vibration in my ears for me to believe it. You giggled. A year later and still gets me. Stop melting me. I never wanted it to end. I was fully clothed. Tights and all. I needed to take the reins. You didn’t mind. I kissed you everywhere, the coordinates of your body drawn all over my lips. I tried to pour everything in to you that night. In the morning I watched you sitting on my bedroom floor telling your Dad over the phone that you were at a ‘friends’ and looking at me in a way that let me know that I was more. You’re not a memory that can be washed from the sheets. We never parted.

*God, don’t let us part.