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, Reply)