The memories!
From around the age of 11 right up to the age of 21 I was in a continuous series of crushes; proper crushes. Adrenalin-surge-when-you-even-just-glimpse-them, planning-your-entire-day-around-when-you-might-bump-into-them, being-rendered-speechless-to-the-brink-of-idiocy-in-front-of-them, thinking-about-them-to-the-point-of-insanity, all that lovely stuff. Even though I dabbled in the odd bit of sordid fantasising over famous people (David Duchovny, Johnny Depp – the classics), and even though I managed to slurp and fumble my way through your common-or-garden opposite-sex teen experiences as per the Rule Book of Life; I cannot remember a time from that period where I was not hopelessly, painfully, and - most importantly - secretly ‘in love’ with someone I knew.

I shall attempt to catalogue. First one below, next two in replies due to length.

Age 11 – 15
My brother’s best friend, Tris, was a couple of years older than me. He came round to our house relatively often, lugging his PC with him for some serious LAN war action with my bro. I would watch like a chubby, ginger hungry beast from behind the banisters, rendered totally, blindingly inarticulate by the mists of lust which descended whenever I saw his mushroom-pale, pimply face.

Oh, Tris! If only you had known how the breath came whistling faster through my train-track braces whenever you appeared in one of your horrible old black Iron Maiden t-shirts, your skinny (‘toned’ I called it, then) arms struggling to carry your massive monitor to our front room. How the thick lenses of my Boots spectacles fogged up at your powerful adolescent whiff of slightly rusty armpits and growling hormones! One day, after years of crotch-tingling desire, I finally summoned the courage to sneak up behind you as you were playing Quake and ‘seductively’ run my finger up and down your back. Unfortunately, in the thumping adrenalin override I experienced which fritzed out quite a lot of my brain’s circuitry, I instead roughly wiped a sweaty few fingers over your neck, making you shriek and leap in the air thinking someone had suddenly tried to grab you with some room-temperature Cumberland sausages. There was really no recovery from there, so from that moment I hid whenever you came over. We never spoke of it. Heartbreak.
(Wheezy Luv-ah is pootling about on, Mon 9 Nov 2009, 17:13, 7 replies)

Part Two
Age 15 – 19
The Mr. H___ years. I think I was actually bordering on the brink of gurning lunacy at certain points in the heady years of 1999 – 2002, so obsessed was I with that poor man. I was at a high-achieving all-girls’ school. The few male teachers we had were subjected to a relentless and terrifying assault of misguided lust – even Mr. M___ the past-his-prime physics teacher with a serious glandular problem that made him smell like rotting bins had a few beating hearts following him down the corridors. Effete Mr. T___ the history teacher was hounded like an escaped convict whenever he set foot outside the staffroom. Mr. H___ had no chance; he was normal-looking, quite young, and had a wicked sense of humour. Whenever he walked into a classroom you could hear at least a dozen little ‘sputt’-ing noises which may or may not have been the sudden projectile moistenings of at least a dozen little cotton gussets. He was a God to us, and I loved him with all the 1,000,000V passion of 16 year-old frustrated speccy ginger.

He taught me for a couple of years as GCSE, and I can hardly remember a thing about it: for all that time I was so close to fainting from desire-overload that all I can seem to recall is a deep thumping sensation in my ears and partial blindness due to dangerously high blood pressure. I entertained wild, illegal fantasies about him sweeping me into a store cupboard and roughly taking me there and then amongst the textbooks. I wrote swathes of stilted, Fielding-esque (‘Oh, I say, sir!’) pornographic fiction in which he and I were the protagonists – but as I was so scared of it being discovered I never kept any, and used to tear the paper into tiny, tiny pieces which I’d then put in several different bins. I fabricated any excuse to be with him alone – even volunteering to draw caricatures of the entire bloody teaching staff for the school’s magazine for the sole opportunity of getting to sit and draw him. Every year I wrote and directed the school’s Christmas panto so that I would see him in rehearsals. Thanks to Mr. H__ I discovered the joy, and necessity, of masturbation. I can also thank him for my current tendency to always find figures in authority fist-bitingly erotic.
(Wheezy Luv-ah is pootling about on, Mon 9 Nov 2009, 17:14, closed)

Part Three
Age 19 – 21
I went to university after a listless year at art college – I had moped for an entire year about the fact that I was never ever going to see Mr. H___ again (well – apart from the possibilities presented by stalking, which was a bit too tragic even for me to contemplate). Still nursing my lovelorn heart, I numbly threw myself into the proceedings of Freshers’ Week. Our college was hosting a ‘Playboy Mansion Night!’ which led to the dreary inevitability of fishnet stockings, cardboard bunny ears, medallions and dressing gowns. Sitting at the bar, strawpedo-ing my fifth Smirnoff Ice, I was approached by a young man with thick, curly dark hair. My heart went ‘SPANG!’ and that’s how I met Danny. For a whole week all we did was talk. Then, in one adrenalin-saturated exchange, we ended up kissing. Then we slept together, and I was a dazzle-eyed goner.

Then he stopped coming to see me. Undeterred, I would merrily trot down to his room on the lower floor for a chat and to see if I could get into his pants again, and he would greet me coldly over his nerdily well-thumbed copy of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Then there were rumours that he had been seen out with another girl – who I then bumped into as she was exiting his room. I was utterly crushed. I would like to now issue a general apology to pretty much everyone (apart from Danny) who resided in our college block in that first year. You know on nights out you generally see some poor paralytic girl sobbing into her pint, mascara everywhere, clinging onto her stony-faced group of friends, wailing something like ‘b-b-but I loooOOOOOooove hiiiiiiiim – waaaa!’ (without consonants, as the girl’s mouth is fixed open in a ghastly, sobbing rictus.) That was me – about a thousand times – that was me. The shame – it burns.

All this totally passed him by. Danny kept apart from pretty much everyone (which made him seem so edgy and alluring at the time), so he had no idea these snot-crusted dramas were going on. I started a weird double life for three years whereby if I ever saw him I would cultivate a free and easy demeanour – talking about literature, life, philosophy and the like – then when he was gone, the Dark Side would take over, and I would soon be hooting and blubbering about my Epic-And-Never-Before-Experienced-By-Anyone-Else Love to anyone who would listen, whilst imbibing copious amounts of cheap cider.

Gradually, the feeling faded as we all moved away from each other, and I have never really experienced anything like it since.
(Wheezy Luv-ah is pootling about on, Mon 9 Nov 2009, 17:14, closed)

Epilogue
I am now in a happy relationship (one of a few since uni) which started in the usual love-jousting heart-pumping way, but which has now settled into something with more warmth and depth. Even in those early stages of a normal relationship, though – there really is nothing like the feeling of being in a secret crush. The debilitating obsession, the frisson of self-abasement, the crotch-aching desire of it; it’s totally delicious. There is something you can think about all day long. You have erotic dreams. It’s a gateway to a whole new level and detail of imagination, which is completely uplifting as it is painful. I miss being secretly in love with someone – as much fun as it is to be openly in love with someone, there’s just something missing.

/misty-eyed reminiscence.
(Wheezy Luv-ah is pootling about on, Mon 9 Nov 2009, 17:14, closed)

Yep
All wimmins are mental.

But I want to add that I really enjoyed your post. Most entertaining!
(The Boy Monders I have ginger bits in my beard., Tue 10 Nov 2009, 12:43, closed)

have an affair
Noooooo, not really.

My older brother’s friends. I too was tortured by those rare creatures, especially when they would come to visit and you could catch glimpses of them. Wishing, fantasising they would get the bedroom door wrong, ohhhh.

The teacher, well no…. the reason being that there just wasn't any nice male teachers IMO. Shame really I just had to pray on my brother’s friends. I attempted to make one jealous by binging my ‘boyfriend’ (he want really my boyfriend he was some try-hard I knew who liked Ordinance Survey Maps) no surprise it didn’t work, but I can fold an OS map like a demon. Saying that though there was one male teacher who’s audience would leave misty damp patches on the school’s plastic chairs, albeit not me (I had maps to fold). He was a super 'Ken doll' conventional good looking chap, he should have been presenting T4 rather than teaching French and enjoyed provoking worthy challenging discussion, such as why it is not wrong to be gay/from a racial minority/female/disabled etc.

The big one, the one you LOVE, the one that brings out heart broken obsessive maniac in you, the one that can instantly turn Smirnoff ice number 5 to mascara thinner. My experience was much the same, talking, the tension building, the momentary kiss which led dream like state of 2 people wrapping there bodies around each other. I can’t say I experienced such public displaies of emotion, my heart broke inaudibly on the sight of him and his girlfriend, who had returned after living elsewhere. Nearly every day for a year I saw them together, right up until they broke up. All it took was a couple of glasses of wine and the flood gates would open. And out popped the mentalist - NO ONE COULD EVER UNDERSTAND WHAT WE HAD TOGETHER, THEY WERE JUST NOT MEANT FOR EACH OTHER I KNOW IT IS ME HE WANTS HE JUST CAN'T ADMIT IT, I KNOW HOW TO MAKE HIM HAPPY and I KNOW HE DOESN’T LOVE HER LIKE HE LOVES ME blah blah blah.

Good times I miss the drama.
(Free pens 100, 101, 102 is still counting on, Tue 10 Nov 2009, 14:27, closed)

I think just the sentence
"...making you shriek and leap in the air thinking someone had suddenly tried to grab you with some room-temperature Cumberland sausages"

Is a winner just on it's own :D
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Mon 9 Nov 2009, 18:43, closed)

i like
every part of this :)
(jennymnemonic, Tue 10 Nov 2009, 10:33, closed)