Last night I had a dream about someone I haven't seen or thought about for a long time. It's an odd sensation, waking up from a dream like that. It's almost as if you've connected with that person in some way. It left me feeling slightly melancholy but oddly happy.
It's probably too grandiose to say he was my first love. In fact, that's utter bollocks. I wasn't a virgin when I met him and he was going out with someone else and we never actually had a relationship. We just shagged. A lot.
It was my first job out of school and I was a receptionist. I was sixteen years old and basically didn't have a clue about life, men or working for a living so I was in a perpetual state of tension for a good three months. However it was a great, young company and I soon made friends and settled down. I don't remember noticing him until about six months into my employment, but when I had I couldn't get him out of my mind.
He was twenty eight and manager of a department based just off the reception area. I knew he'd noticed me but I was naive and couldn't believe anyone as handsome, successful or as old as him (oh, the irony!) could look twice at me. But look he did. It started off with casual, flirtatious comments, stolen looks across the office and cigarettes companionably smoked together on the fire escape. He'd been off for a few days before my first Christmas at the firm and I'd been missing him dreadfully, or rather with the wisdom of age was probably missing the attention. He was there on the last day before the holidays and a group of us decamped to the local pub to end the afternoon. I sat with my friends and ignored them, only nodding vaguely whilst I held his gaze across the pub and drank Archers and Lemonade in what I thought was a seductive fashion. After a while he got up to leave and, God bless my youthful arrogance, I got up and followed him out. He was waiting for me.
I'm sure we spoke but I don't remember what was said. All I remember is that he kissed me. With his hands cupped round my face and in my hair like a proper grown up. I'd only ever kissed boys. Usually ones who thought kissing involved either licking the area of the face around the mouth or just forcing their tongue roughly down your throat. He was soft, and sensual and to my little sixteen year old heart, an absolute God.
The flirtation continued in the new year and got stronger. This was in the days before mobile phones became smaller than hatchbacks and widely available and email didn't exist yet in our office so our contact was limited to times when we were alone which wasn't often. He used to sneak in on me in the post room, shut the door, push me up against the wall and kiss me, touching me urgently. I know, I know what it sounds like but I wasn't some teenaged Lolita and he certainly wasn't taking advantage. There was full complicity on my part. I knew he had a girlfriend but I didn't care. He'd told me she was virtually psychotic and that they were always breaking up. He didn't use it as an excuse to kiss me, he just told me when I asked about her which wasn't often.
Over the course of the year our illicit moments got more frequent. He used to 'give me a lift home' which was code for drive to the local park, stop the car somewhere secluded and virtually fuck in it. I remember the first time I gave him a blow job and he told me to bite his cock I was so shocked. It seemed so deviant to me (again, the power of hindsight). How the hell we kept this all a secret I'll never know. Once I gave him my knickers at the start of the working day. His boss was off so he was using his office and he told me later that he had to drive all the way back to the office after hours because he'd left them in his boss's desk drawer.
It wasn't until the following Halloween that we actually ended up having sex. It was fancy dress and I knew I was going to dress up for him. I was an oh-so-mature seventeen year old by now after all. I went as a witch but actually I went as a slut. Long black boots, short skirt, see thru top that had a vague resemblance to cobwebs and blood red lipstick. It worked. He barely left my side all day and that night I went home with him. He fucked me all over his flat for hours, smoked with me and drank tea naked, then drove me home (fully clothed). I think I changed a bit that day. I realised what the power of sex really was, in an albeit slightly juvenile way. I didn't really learn to exploit it until years later though.
From then on we slept together frequently. I learned to drive and got a car so we drove in tandem to his flat. Once he went in ahead of me and came running out a few minutes later clutching a rubbish bag (as an excuse). It turns out she was indoors which was a close call. He bought me my first legal drink on my eighteenth birthday and by this point I was convinced I was in love with him. I was distraught whenever he was out of the office or when we were forced apart at the weekends. I lived for workdays, basically.
I went through some difficulties with the company during my third year. I'd been in hospital for a couple of months following really serious surgery and they refused to pay me for my time off. I came back to the company for a few weeks but quit soon afterwards. I knew I was leaving him behind but I was eighteen now and knew I had to move on. It was so sad but the right choice. He was never going to break up with his girlfriend and I was growing into my sexual self, drawing on the energy and experience my time with him had given me. I never got any real emotion from him though. He never gave me any indication that it was anything other than lust which was so hard to get my head around at that age. I still sometimes have trouble separating sex and emotions now so how I coped then I have no idea.
I got on with my life, moved away and grew up. Years later I moved back to my hometown for a job and started working with someone who worked for that first company at the same time I did. He'd actually been her boss. Anyway, I confessed all about the affair and she was so shocked but suddenly became thoughtful. She eventually told me that he'd once told her about a girl in his life who had 'really got under his skin' and that he'd considered leaving his girlfriend for her. I have no way of knowing whether he was talking about me but the timing fit and I like to think he was.
I bumped into him a couple of years ago in my hometown and was sad how much but also how little he'd changed. He was in the same job, driving the same car and looking strangely old and tired. In my dreams however, and I have dreamt about him before, he's always twenty eight and so handsome - like James Dean I always thought. Why I dreamt about him last night I don't know but it's made me revisit that time in my life. Looking back I almost can't believe that happened to me. As a twenty eight year old I couldn't fathom getting involved with a sixteen year old boy so heaven knows what drew him to me. Whatever it was, I'm eternally grateful.
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