1st Love
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday January 21, 1994
I AM sitting here looking at a photograph. Unfortunately, it is a photograph that I am in.
Me and the only '70s hairstyle I can guarantee will not be coming back into fashion this summer. Royal blue suit. Ruffled shirt. Black bowtie. Cuffs too big. Toes nervously turned inwards.
In this photograph, I am standing in the Canberra High School hall, home of our irregular film nights (what were they doing showing Freaks to us?).
My right hand is on the waist of my first love, my left is completely unsure of what to do with itself. It is late in the evening at the Year 10 formal. I am painfully aware that this is a Kodak moment.
We are staring into the camera with an impassive look, a look that suggests inner panic at the thought that the photograph might not work out perfectly. This, after all, is the closest we are going to get to something as important as a wedding photo for a very long time. We are teenagers. We take these things seriously.
It's the end of 1980 (OK, my hairstylist was a little behind the times). We're finishing our high school career, heading on to Hawker, one of Canberra's fifth and sixth-form secondary colleges.
We had been seeing each other for more than a year. We soon wouldn't be...
I can't tell you exactly when I met Lyndel Cureton, but it was early in 1979 when I transferred to Canberra High from a school that was closer to home but less suited to my total lack of discipline.
Memory has robbed me of most of the elements of the courtship, but I recall that in role-playing terms, I got to be the effusive, breastbeating suitor, while she got to politely and coquettishly deflect all of my blandishments.
We spliced officially on December 8, 1979, at the party of a mutual friend. That afternoon, another friend and I, bursting with teen invincibility, had played doubles in the ACT junior tennis championships.
We had made it to the second round by a lucky forfeit - hey, at least I won the bet with my father about how far we'd go.
There, we were confronted by a couple of gangly kids who had those newfangled metal racquets and were ranked something like one and three in the country for their age, a fact we were blissfully unaware of as we strode out onto the court.
Unsurprisingly, my unhelpful brain refuses to blot out the fact that we won one point in the 12 games it takes to get to a two-set demolition. Don't expect a Greatest Sporting Moment story for next year's Summer Agenda.
So the weekend was not looking good. My invincibility shaken if not stirred, I arrived at the party without much hope of romantic success. I had just about given up on Lyndel. It seemed to me that I had as much chance of winning her as the Davis Cup.
Out in the yard, where I was moping as usual (listening to Electric Light Orchestra's A New World Record pumping through the window), she told me in a perfectly calm, almost businesslike tone that she had decided I was the bee's patellae, and that (after speaking to her lawyers from the sound of it) she felt she was in a position to offer me something, romance-wise. Bang. Thud. We were going steady. Or in the local idiom, just going.
Lyndel and I were together for 17 months. On the high-school timescale, where people gauge their successes in terms of weeks, that's enough to rate gold anniversary status. To our friends, we were a grand old couple, some kind of immovable object in the face of irresistible hormonal force.
They were, on reflection, 17 idyllic months, pretty much free of tarnish, save that provided by a continuing run-in with an assistant principal, a suitably gnarled, vicious and bitter old man who decided that displays of young love (ie hand holding) were unhealthy, unbecoming and should be discouraged with force.
So what if the kids at the bottom of the oval were keeping the local suppliers of Winfield Blue and Red in the black? So what if there was a functioning black market for pornographic magazines among a certain circle of boys? So what if students were carrying knives (one got stabbed at a social that year)? Handholders were perverts and should have been stoned.
It makes just as much sense to me now. We protested with a campaign of same-sex hugging and fraternisation, boys holding hands and looking mistily into each other's eyes whenever visitors or anybody on the faculty happened to walk by.
When Lyndel and I weren't running from the law, we were doing what other middle-class kids of that age did: going to movies, worshipping whatever god it was that made shopping malls, spending a lot of time in rumpus rooms and riding our bikes to Lake Ginninderra for grass, sky, water and the not-to-be-underestimated opportunity for unchaperoned snogging (love those Canberra winters).
Which brings us to that subject. When asked to write this piece, it seemed from everyone that I spoke to that any first-love story should pivot around the first experience of sex or, at the very least, the first denial of sex.
Lyndel and I left our virginity somewhere along the way, about the time the photograph mentioned above was taken. We sailed it out to sea (well, out to lake) like a Viking funeral, with both of us waving from the shore.
The experience itself was uncomfortable, anticlimactic, fumbling and kind of embarrassing. Probably no different to anyone else's, really.
Sex was always there as an issue and eventually it just happened. Neither of us seemed to feel it was the wrong thing to do. I still don't. We had reached a point where it seemed a logical next step. After all, everybody else was doing it (or so we thought); I remember one slumber party that year where all kinds of stuff seemed to be quietly going on in sleeping bags.
Sure, at the time, the loss of my virginity loomed large and significant in my psyche. I can't say it changed me radically, though. And I can't say that there was ever a time when I looked back and wished it hadn't happened.
When reflecting now, I think (with quite appalling smugness) that, comparing myself with many of my friends, I was just lucky to have the experience with someone I care to remember. If that sounds like a very sad thing to say, it is.
Of course, it was probably the beginning of the end, but who was to know that? Who was to know that the stakes just keep getting bigger and at that age, sooner or later, you'll be out of your depth?
I know that I treated sex as a new toy, and that the taste of it fired my hormonal palate. And I know that after losing my virginity, I actually thought about it a lot more, undoubtedly to the extent that it got in the way of things, made the relationship more problematic. These things happen. What am I going to do, punish myself for puberty?
The break-up came about six months later. I think I started it, but she certainly followed it through and denied every one of my (increasingly desperate) attempts at reconciliation.
I try not to dwell on that period much. The next couple of years, leading up to my heading out of Canberra to study in Bathurst, were pretty fuzzy, full of the usual adolescent misery, self-loathing and dabblings of various kinds.
Better instead to recall the positives. At the risk of selfaggrandisement, if you want to know how incurably romantic I am about this, I have kept every word Lyndel ever wrote to me, the letters and cards, a diary she kept for me in a month we were apart, even a doodle.
They're all packaged up - when asked to write this, I knew exactly where to find them. Sure, the letters are corny, full of soppy 16-year-old joy and wonder at the world, ram-fed with cliches, mushy in extremis.
But what makes me keep them is that no matter how much like greeting-card verse the sentiments can be, that was the truth at the time, that was the way we expressed ourselves, those were the words we believed.
And there's also the knowledge that everything I wrote to her was just as overwrought and florid, if not much more so.
The other reason, one I'm only starting to appreciate, is how much I can learn from them. As I read now, I'm struck by little epiphanies, small and consistent revelations about the way I lead my life, the women I end up involved with and the ways in which I relate to them.
Lyndel left Canberra as well, moving to Melbourne to "do drama". She's back in the Lost City now, unmarried, as I am, and writing a play.
The last time I saw her she was here, in January 1989, staying with a friend during the Festival of Sydney. We drank tea, sat around and feigned pleasant surprise at how well we got on after all this time.
In a way, it was oddly romantic. We did all the dumb stuff - speculated out loud about whether we would be attracted to each other if we met now, and diplomatically changed the subject.
As we had such an enjoyable afternoon, the reunion was extended into the evening. We went to see La Fura Dels Baus, the Spanish avant-garde theatre troupe, who performed in a pavilion at the Showground. Their speciality was the threat of grievous bodily harm. To panic the audience, they would throw buckets of offal and chase us with chainsaws.
Amid the laughs and shrieks, I remember grabbing Lyndel, pulling her out of the way of an approaching motorcyclist. I drew her to me, and felt her hand on my arm, instinctively. Nothing serious, just a warm, nostalgic moment.
Strangely enough, that is my strongest memory of her. The two of us together, my arm around her waist, perfectly comfortable. Not a camera in sight.
JON CASIMIR
WHEN in search of ready-made wisdom the dictionary is not among the volumes I usually reach for.
Yet in the task at hand - to describe for you my first love - a glance at the relevant entry in the Macquarie clarified the matter. FIRST: being before all others with respect to time, order, rank, importance etc.
If my son Jack is not first in "respect" to time, then in all other respects he most certainly is. And, anyway, what is chronology except a method employed to store CDs (never went for the alphabetical system, myself).
That this should be so - that after 28 1/2 years a 2 1/2 year-old boy should be the centre of my existence - sometimes surprises me still.
Initially I equated the prospect of parenthood with a prison sentence. It was not, I should say (though some have told me I should not say), an event that had been planned. Nor was it something I desired.
I now believe, however, that if the conception of Jack was hardly immaculate, then it was at least serendipitous.
Jack - so tall for his age, so beautiful, splendid and clever - is part of my life three or four days out of seven. His mother and I have shared him that way for a year now, so he has two homes and the run of each.
It would be so easy to regale you with the awful and wanton boasts that parents make for their children. I have so much to boast about.
Yet while his accomplishments grow with his stature, I love him for the myriad impossibly precious moments with which only he can provide me.
Perhaps only I can fully appreciate the joy he sparks within me when I arrive to take him home from nursery school.
After all, the manic grin and yelp of "My daddy |" as he trips rapidly towards me with his outflung arms really could not be for anyone else.
No matter how crushing the day has been, regardless of how dispiritedly I slink into the rumpus room, Jack is always pleased to see me.
He throws my own crass behaviour into stark relief. You would swear he was possessed of some dark intuition if you didn't know his little gems spring from innocence.
His look of despair when even mildly chastised is a greater reprimand for taking leave of my temper than anything imaginable. Except perhaps a stern"That's enough |" accompanied by a cautionary pointed finger and frown for my crime of singing out of tune to a song on the stereo.
Jack has a gift of mimicry and fondness for imitating his elders. As I've long tried to curb my natural inclination to dispense abuse to whatever driver wrongs me on the road, it is unbalancing to hear sweetly voiced epithets such as "Cwetin" and "Mowon" chirruped from the safety seat.
The late Frank Zappa once described his family home as the embodiment of Dada. There can be no greater absurdity than a child undergoing the rigours of toilet training applauding and congratulating you on having successfully used the appropriate receptacle without spillage: "Good boy, Daddy |"
Yes, there are times when I long to be free of him: when I do not wish to be roused at 6 am; when I tire of preparing meals only to see them dismissed with a petulant word; when a day of playing with toy cars and being beseeched to "make a house" from building blocks seems like drudgery.
I have these moments, but they do not last long.
It takes only an innocuous remark from a parent of some other child and full fatherly pride for his cub is restored.
"My William is up and running now, you know."
"Yeah? Well, Jack's levitating." PAUL POTTINGER
I AM 10 years old. I have no concept of love, apart from the thing I receive from my family no matter how shabbily I treat them. I am also told that God is love, but I can't expect to treat him shabbily and get away with it. In this way, love and guilt sit on a park bench, hand in hand.
I have 10-year-old passion. I am desperately in some sort of love with Graeme Langlands, who plays fullback for St George and is a distant cousin. Our relationship has been developing splendidly ... he speaks to me through after-match radio interviews and writes interesting things about his life on the back of bubblegum footy cards. I draw pictures of him in action and stick them on my bedroom wall.
I begin to see how shallow love is when just about everyone else who is having a relationship with him dumps the bloke after the infamous white-boots grand-final scandal in 1975. I don't want to talk about that ... it still hurts.
All my hurts - lost skin from falls off the bike or the dodgy homemade skateboard that can't be turned, or fears of undone homework - are nursed in a family where love is dished out unconditionally. This, despite the fact that our life map is drawn from a Bible that is as frightening as it is captivating for a child.
Dad is a policeman. A big man, with a mop of wavy hair, sideburns and a moustache, he collects cars to work on at the weekend when he's not hooning about in a motorboat. Or when he's not preaching New Testament Christianity to tiny congregations gathered in our loungeroom. His career has seen us move regularly among NSW's country towns, setting up a home church until there are enough converts to warrant hiring a hall for services.
Although I later fell out of love with the concept of God, the moment of our consummation was earth-shattering. In the infancy of my teens, I stood in our loungeroom in Lismore trying to sing Trust and Obey with the rest of the congregation. My father had finished his lesson with the usual call for those who had not taken God into their lives through baptism.
As I recall, there was only me and my younger brother, David, in the room who hadn't taken the step that had intrigued me for some time. David was trying to snap flies shut in his hymn book, so I guessed Dad was talking to me. But at that moment, it wasn't my father's voice. I believed another hand guided my steps across the Axminster.
REAL hands rushed to grab me. Mum organised a white nightshirt affair and we drove to the nearby Richmond River. Here, as the rest of the group sang hymns on the bank, with the occasional car stopping to inspect the scene, Dad and I walked waist-deep into the water.
He had removed his coat, shoes and socks but retained a formal appearance as he put a hanky over my nose and mouth and lowered me into the water. I could still hear the singing ... muffled ... embryonic. I didn't have time to acclimatise to this new environment, but was raised on the strong arm of my father, a new person, born again, washed in the blood of the Lamb.
I was about to enter puberty, attending a co-educational school, playing football with a bunch of kids who already had beards. How long could I remain sinless?
My relationship with God was an understated but important one. We never smooched blatantly in public, preferring just to hold hands and not upset the other kids who weren't so close. I acknowledged the fact that I was a"Christian", but didn't preach to my peers, unless a religious argument began nearby.
But I was a faithful partner and, in this way, often closed to the people with whom I began secular relationships.
God aside, I was dead hopeless at courting. I invariably assumed - in most cases quite properly - that the girls I found attractive looked right through me, and I found the idea of boys being the instigators a hideous notion. I longed to be asked out.
It wasn't until I reached Newcastle and senior high school that that happened. Stephanie was not afraid of the baggage I carried. More to the point, she was confident that she could break through it.
She had several thousand advantages over me, chief among them the fact that she was more intelligent, was not hemmed in by an insular view of the world and had a set of experiences I found difficult to fathom. When we met, she was going out with a young man several years out of school who owned a car |
We didn't so much date as sit in each other's homes (usually hers), get competitive about school results. We'd take it in turns to play records that somehow explained where we were in this relationship. It was a game largely for my benefit, since she had the wherewithal to tell me exactly what she thought. I preferred a medium. So, I put Leo Sayer's Just A Boy on the turntable, sang along and looked meaningful. Stephanie replied with Give A Little Bit, from Supertramp.
How I longed to do the Supertramp thing and grow beyond the Leo Sayer thing. But I already had a relationship on the boil, a marriage with vows involving much weeping and gnashing of teeth should I stray from the narrow, straight path. There was altogether too little of Tony to give Stephanie.
She went back to her former boyfriend, who still owned a car. I sat behind her in economics and sang I Am a Rock. Most importantly, though, God and I began to glance suspiciously at each other before we dropped off to sleep.
TONY SQUIRES
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald