Growing Up Twice

by Rowan Coleman

  As he makes his speech he flushes pink from the hollow in the base of his throat up to his temples and if I could see into a mirror right now I’d see two red spots on my cheeks too. I can’t remember the last time anyone said something like that to me and I don’t think there was ever a time when I heard that kind of speech and believed that it was sincere. The romance of it all is going to my head and I need to get my feet on the ground. He said he thought I was twenty-two.

  ‘Mike. Mike, I really like you, you are very attractive to me and we haven’t spent much time together but I have really enjoyed the time we have. But we can’t see each other. I’m not twenty-two. I’m twenty-nine. I’m too old for you.’

  There. I’ve said it. I have done the responsible thing, I have learnt from all those impulsive encounters that left me messed up for weeks, months, years, depending on the encounter in question. I cannot go out with someone this much younger than me. He’s very attractive, impossibly sincere and forbidden-fruits sexy, but despite all that I just can’t do this.

  ‘You aren’t twenty-nine. You’re not.’ He looks at me and shakes his head.

  ‘I am and in a few months I’ll be thirty. So now you know that you feel different, don’t you?’ I am really hoping he doesn’t.

  He sits back and looks at the ceiling. ‘No, I mean all that stuff I just said, it doesn’t depend on your age. I still mean it. And it’s not that you’re too old for me, is it. It’s that I’m too young for you, right?’ He’s got an angry, slightly hurt tone to his voice and his long fingers clench the edge of the seat so that his knuckles show white.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he says, as if that is reason enough for me to throw every reservation out of the window.

  The really scary thing is that I think it might be. At least some of them. When was the last time anyone felt that way about me? The large gin on an empty stomach – along with the sensation of his knees pressing against mine and the pull of being near someone who wants me – has made me feel light-headed. I should get up and leave now. I’ve done what I meant to do, I have behaved in a responsible way and walked away from a situation doomed to failure. I can’t go out with him, of course I can’t, but I suddenly realise I am about to say something I know I am likely to regret at some point in the near future.

  ‘Look, you and I aren’t going to have any kind of relationship. It’s not going to happen. But I do fancy you like mad and so I have decided to have sex with you tonight, for one night only. OK?’ I say quickly.

  The flush on his face deepens another shade and he crosses his legs in a none-too-subtle way.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he says. ‘OK then.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  We have been sitting in the back of this black cab for about the last fifteen minutes and we’ve made it about halfway down Oxford Street.

  We haven’t said a word. I look out of my window and he looks out of his. Across the wide expanse of the black leather seat our arms are outstretched and our fingers stop just short of touching each other. I look at him and smile. He looks at me and smiles.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to clam up or anything,’ he says. I smile at him even more and reach out to pat his hand; it feels freezing cold. Freezing cold probably isn’t the temperature most desirable prior to carefree, fantasy-fulfilling sexual abandon, but as my nan always said, cold hand, warm heart, or something.

  This is not the first time I’ve jumped into the back of a black cab with the intent to liaise. But this is the first time that my love interest and I haven’t been making free in one corner, embarrassing or entertaining the driver depending on what type of driver he is.

  Michael shifts a bit in his seat to face me. I smile at him so much that I am afraid I have probably started to look a bit scary and mad. My face hurts. I should have slipped another gin in to relax me more while I was waiting for him to come back from the loo. He seemed to spend quite a long time in there, composing himself I expect, but anyway by the time he came back, still looking pink and a bit flustered, I could easily have had two more doubles, neat over ice, one after the other just like I used to when I was too poor to afford mixers.

  I was only young back in my part-time waitressing days and although no one can actually prove any correlation between the number of undiluted doubles I sank and the number of total toss-pots I pulled, they seem to tally up pretty much percentage wise. Michael isn’t like any of those mishaps. Michael is the kind of boy I would have died to have a date with back then. Come to think of it, he isn’t the first eighteen-year-old that I have kissed, it’s just that at the time I was eighteen too.

  ‘What about, you know … condoms?’ he asks. I can’t help the childish giggle that escapes my mouth before I catch the eye of the driver in the rear-view mirror and look guiltily away. He’s the type that won’t be entertained.

  ‘Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve got some. If the sell-by date hasn’t run out, that is!’ I laugh with cartoon-calibre hundred-watt voltage but Michael nods solemnly. I wish he’d stop being so mature and not take it all quite so seriously. I wonder if, in a few years from now, when he’s sitting in the back of another cab with another woman he doesn’t intend to see again, he’ll think about tonight. The night that he first had sex.

  It’s not that it has suddenly occurred to me that he might be a virgin – it’s crossed my mind around the same number of times as he has over the last few days – but it has suddenly dawned on me that it might be a problem. For me, if not for him. I never intended for things to get to the cab stage. I hadn’t planned to act out my last sleepy thoughts before I drifted off every night and besides, in those fantasies I have a flat stomach. I reach over and slide the glass across to close off the passenger compartment from the driver’s ears.

  ‘Michael, don’t be embarrassed or anything,’ I say as I am about to ask the most embarrassing question I have ever asked next to, ‘is that erect?’ ‘But, well, are you a virgin?’ I say it quickly, avoiding his eyes and trying to act as if someone else must have asked him such a personal question. I really hope that glass is soundproof.

  ‘A virgin?’ He splutters. ‘No! Well, not completely. I mean Sarah and I got pretty damn close, I can tell you. We didn’t actually do it, but it’s not like I haven’t had plenty of dry runs. OK, yes I am.’

  He looks at me closely and completely straight-faced, trying to gauge my reaction. I look back at him, trying to gauge my reaction. I think how much the girls would laugh if they ever heard this story, but they are never going to hear this story. Even now in the midst of the most surreal taxi ride of my life – and I have had a few – I know which secrets to keep and this is one of them. So I just smile at him, transfixed, with a manic grin that feels as if it has bisected my ear lobes.

  ‘I made her come,’ he informs me anxiously.

  I turn and look out of the window and take a deep breath. Tears sting my eyes and my face is hot enough to fry an egg on. As soon as this is over I have to go out and make some new friends to tell this to. Just about composed, I turn back to him.

  ‘Perhaps now isn’t the right time for you,’ I say softly. The gentle tilt of the not-enough gin has subsided and the virgin thing has somehow taken the edge off the whole idea.

  I’m not the virgin-busting type. I have never knowingly had intimate dealings with a virgin before. I’m not sure I’m up to it, it’s a big deal. There would be things I would feel obliged to do, I know; I spent much of my early teens reading about it in fat books featuring busty virgin mayor’s daughters/novice nuns and naughty swarthy pirates/highwaymen. There should be candles, four-poster beds or a full moon and a windswept empty beach.

  First overcome protest. Remove clothes (forcibly if preferred). Place hands. Whisper encouragement. Make them float, float on a burning sea of desire. Just not sure I have what it takes.

  My virginity was lost on a single bed in a squat in St Albans. I hadn’t quite picked Mr Right, more a Mr All Right, but it was just about as romantic as cide
r-and-chip-fuelled passion could be and it was perfectly nice. I had just wanted to get it over and done with. Selin, Rosie and I had all told each other we’d done it when we were sixteen. I told them I did it with an Italian twenty-year-old in the local graveyard, but in reality I was eighteen when I finally went through with it. We only found out a couple of years ago that we had all lied to each other because the others said they’d already done it. Good old peer pressure, where would we be without it? Non-smoking, teetotal thirty-year-old virgins probably.

  Actually this sort of thing has happened to me once before, about five years ago. I went to this rooftop party in Old Street with an old friend I had known since sixth-form college who I was secretly in love with. It was entirely futile as he was not secretly in love with me, and I suspect that he thought I was a bit too flighty for him anyway. The fact that I followed him to parties, got drunk because he wasn’t in love with me, and then pulled an assorted variety of his friends probably didn’t help much, but you know how it is. Logic flies out of the window when you are in a futile crush situation.

  Anyway, I was at this party on a roof in Old Street. It was a summer evening and the sun had sunk to the level of the building, making it very bright and hot, I remember having to squint at everyone and shade my eyes to see who I was talking to. My friend who did not love me was nowhere to be seen and the combination of sun and neat double vodkas over ice had made me feel dizzy and nauseous.

  Without warning a cool hand took mine and led me out of the sunlight and into what looked like a cool dark bicycle shed. On a roof. Pretty strange, but I was drunk so I wasn’t too bothered. My rescuer seemed a handsome chap with a confident smile. He handed me a glass of water and before I could work out that it was another vodka and tonic we were kissing. The oldest trick in the book, but my friend didn’t love me so I didn’t care and anyway this would show him how popular I was, and then he’d ask me out and one day we’d get married.

  The rescuer was quite funny and not a bad dancer so I ended up going back to his place. I remember he lodged with this incredibly gorgeous male model who was lounging half-naked on his sofa looking like an Athena poster when we got in. He took one look at me and nearly fell off the sofa. At the time I thought he must have been stunned by my sunburnt, mascara-blurred beauty, but later on I realised that it probably had something to do with his tenant, bringing home an actual girl. For the night.

  It was going quite well. I’d told him I didn’t have sex on the first night, which is something I have always said until I get to know the lie of the land, so to speak, and most of the time I stick to it. He acquiesced like they always do and you secretly know that the next eight hours or so will be spent trying to change your mind.

  If you’re wondering, yes, this kind of thing has got me into trouble in the past, and yes, I have been lucky with the blokes I’ve pulled. None of them have turned out to be raving psychopaths – well, not murderous ones anyway – but if, for example, Ayla was about to embark on a voyage of discovery similar to the one that occupied most of my twenties I’d stop her right in her tracks and say, ‘Don’t be stupid, you’ll only end up hurting yourself.’ But no one can tell you that, can they? You have to find out for yourself.

  Alarm bells rang when I saw that he had a poster of Celine Dion above his bed and a model aeroplane hanging from a bit of cotton over the computer desk, but boys are strange. We got on well, made out, giggled, made out, slept, and talked until around five in the morning when I realised he hadn’t tried to talk me into sex once. Feeling mildly offended and anxious and deciding that I liked him after all, I rolled on top of him and said in my best husky seductress voice (which luckily coincided with my dehydrated and sleep-deprived voice), ‘I want you to make love to me.’ The poor lad nearly choked to death. Then he told me he was a virgin and that was it.

  I think when a man finds out you’re a virgin it’s a turn-on. Rosie and I have kind of reinstated our virginity a couple of times (purely in the interests of research) and I know this to be true. However, when you are a girl and you find out that the man in your bed is the less experienced one it’s a turn-off. At least for me it is. I can’t explain it. It’s the sudden fear that you won’t be up to it. You’ll fail in some way, it’ll be dreadful and he’s the man and he’s supposed to do all the hard stuff anyway. Sorry to all those who have struggled for the last hundred or so years for equality, but this is about more than equal pay and the vote. It’s sex. In your heart of hearts, what do you really want from sex with a new partner? To lie on your back, suck your tummy in and look pretty? Or to engage in potentially humiliating acrobatics that turn gravity into a Very Bad Thing. I know what I’d rather do.

  ‘You know what?’ I had said at about 5.05 a.m. ‘I’m late for church. I’d better go.’ And in fifteen minutes I was out of the building, realised I was somewhere in Forest Hill and spent most of the journey home wondering how I could persuade my friend who I was secretly in love with that I wasn’t such a slut after all. I never did manage it. He’s married now to a primary-school teacher from Stow-on-the-Wold.

  And so right now here I am, five years later, halfway along the Edgware Road with another virgin, one years younger than me. One that has all the hopes and expectations that I usually have myself. One who has romantic ideas about me. A fragile, young, fairly innocent virgin boy entirely in my hands. I can’t do it. I might have to go on top.

  As I turn to Michael to tell him that this just can’t happen, that I’m not the right one to remember in years to come, he slides across the seat and with purposeful resolution takes me in his arms and kisses me in a way so different from the kiss in the square that it makes my head spin, my heart pound and I literally swoon.

  ‘God, I want you,’ he says in a deep voice. Without hesitation, I draw him down to kiss me again.

  The way I look at it, we have another ten minutes at least in this cab before we get back to the flat and I really have to decide what to do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  While I pay the cab driver Michael is kissing the back of my neck. As I turn the key in the lock he slides his hands under my top and runs his fingers down my spine. We get into the hallway and he pushes me up against the wall and pulls back my hair to bare my neck to his kisses. Blimey.

  We pause briefly and hear the sound of breathing echoing against the walls. He chews his bottom lip and looks at me intently. Poised on the brink of something, I feel the need to take a moment. I gently push him away and slide from under him.

  ‘Hang on,’ I say, fanning my face with my hand. ‘I’ll pour us some wine and I’ve got to phone the girls and tell them I won’t be coming out. Take a seat.’ I point him towards the living-room and take a deep breath. As I go into the kitchen I feel the taut beginnings of a new adventure about to uncoil. This could be a really bad decision. I don’t care.

  I call Selin’s mobile but she doesn’t pick up, so I leave a message telling her I have a headache, I’ve gone to bed and not to worry about me; I’ll see them in the morning. I look in the fridge for the half bottle of wine I had left over from yesterday. It isn’t there. I find it in the cupboard next to where the tea bags would be if they weren’t in the fridge. It’s warm, the tea bags are nicely chilled and it all seems to fit in rather well with this topsy-turvy evening.

  Rosie and I are such dedicated spirit drinkers that we are bound to have at least one tray of ice-cubes on the go in the freezer, which has frosted up so much that there’s now only room for two ice-trays. Sure enough I find a little dolphin-shaped rubber ice-cube maker that is still half full.

  I tip its contents into two plastic half-pint beakers left over from a party and slosh the wine over it. I taste it. It’s revolting. I down half of mine before I go into the next room and top it up again. I feel brim-full of nerves and anticipation.

  Michael sits on the sofa with his long legs stretched out, his head flopping back and his eyes closed. He is smoking a spliff. I suppress the shock, resist the urge to tell him off a
nd slide into the space created by the curve of his arm. This is going to be fine. Eighteen-year-olds today are much older than they used to be in my day.

  I hand him the wine. He smiles in that lovely slow way he has and offers me the spliff. I feel the geeky embarrassment that I have always felt in refusing it, knowing that I’d probably just have an asthma attack, which really would ruin this most precarious of moments.

  He puts it out on a saucer that’s been by the sofa for a couple of days and takes the wine from me. If he thinks it’s revolting he doesn’t say and he takes a couple of healthy sips. We hold each other’s gaze for a moment, and he runs the blunt tip of a long finger down the side of my cheek. Both of us put the wine on the floor.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispers as he winds his fingers in my hair. ‘You’re so incredibly beautiful.’ Usually when I hear those words I don’t quite believe them, but with Michael I do believe, and that is more than enough.

  We’re kissing again and I find myself pushing his T-shirt over his head and running my fingers down his toned and hairless torso. His skin is soft and lightly golden, like all the colours of a summer morning. He sits back from me for a breath and his hands are trembling as he lifts my top over my raised arms. He stares at me and his scrutiny makes me close my eyes.

  I feel his fingertips run down my neck and over the curves of the top of my breasts, then he is kissing me again. Arching my back, I reach behind and unhook my bra, keeping my eyes closed as I let it slide to the floor.

  His hands are on my breasts and then his lips and I open my eyes to watch him and I feel like I haven’t felt in ages; adored, desirable and ready for this moment. I want to devour him whole.