One hot minute

Close you eyes
And click your heels
Can you believe
How good it feels...
- Red Hot Chili Peppers, 1996

I wasn't Sophie's first, but I was the first that mattered, she told me. I could live with that. It was pretty much what I told her in return. This was all after the fact, of course; there hadn't been much time for idle conversation or comparing notes at the time. Not as the world went approximately insane and we went at each other across her studying desk, then the floor of her bedroom, then finally across her bed. Neither of us really knew what the hell we were doing but equally neither of us gave a good goddamn, we were prepared to learn on the job (as it were) and make it up as we went along. They say you never forget your first. I'm not sure I actually remember it. I don't really remember detail. I remember a blur of limbs and mouths and underwear and 'we shouldn't... oh fuck it, yeah we should' and I remember fingers and tongues and the little crescent of freckles over her shoulder that I remembered from seeing her in a swimsuit since forever, and I remember the demure little crucifix pendant dangling between her gorgeous brown-nippled breasts, which made me giggle like I was on helium for some stupid reason, and I remember having a condom in my wallet beforehand that I didn't have afterwards, which was doubly ironic I guess. Catholic girls, yeah?

And afterwards, when by rights it should have been World of Weird... it was. For about five minutes. Then she tossed her bra at me, blamed me for breaking the strap, regarded me contemptuously with those impish hazel eyes of hers, and started a playfight which ended with her sitting in my lap, wrapping her legs around my torso, trapped in her grasp. Very, very naked. Apart from the pendant and the freckles and a delicious megawatt smile that could melt diamonds.

“Now what?” I inquired.

“Now what?” she teased. “We wait for you to get hard again.”

Which, me being 17 at the time of asking, took all of... the time it took to read this sentence.

She wasn't the most beautiful girl in the world. She didn't need to be. She was Sophie. My Sophie. My dirty little Sophie. The first girl I'd kissed. The first girl I'd seen naked - not that she'd been entirely aware of it at the time, hmmm less said about that the better AND MOVING ON. And yet, despite our long history, it didn’t feel wrong, or incestuous, or anything like that. It didn’t feel like screwing your sister. (Not that I’ve met your sister, and I’m sure she’s lovely.) It didn’t feel like we’d overstepped a line somewhere; if we had, it only added to the thrill.

Actually, scratch that. Over the following days we overstepped quite a few lines on occasion, and it was one hell of a thrill, but that was between Sophie, myself, and the olive oil in question. Hey, Cosmopolitan told us to try it. We even used Greek olive oil like they insisted.

“That was amazing,” she murmured afterwards, out of breath on her parents’ bed. (Her idea, not mine. Catholic girls, yeah?) “So intense. God, I'm still shaking...” She kissed me deeply. Those had also become a lot more intense since the beginning of swot-vac.

“So you’d do it again?”

“Oh hell no,” she frowned. “By the end, it hurt like buggery.”

“Funny, that…”

She pulled a face and punched me in the arm, like she'd done thousands of times before. Just not in luscious post-coital nakedness on her parents' bed. “Hmmm, we should probably change these sheets before my parents get home.”

It was the chocolate Ice Magic that had done for them, honest.

“More to the point, I think we need a shower,” I suggested.

“Another one?” she grinned. “That’s two already today, and it’s only mid-afternoon.”

“And you’re paying for the hot water?” I pointed out.

“Just so long as you don’t keep molesting me in there,” she sighed histrionically.

“Because you’ve just hated it the last few times,” I observed, bundling her up in my arms and carrying her, squealing with delight, into the shower.

Actually I did give the molestation a rest this time. Even perpetually horny 17 year olds need their recovery periods. We stood under the warm water, arms around each other, her body nestling against mine. This was nice. This was… no, nice was the right word. I kissed her lightly freckled shoulders and neck, up to her earlobe. Sophie pulled me away from there and looked into my eyes. Hers were coloured a mixture of hazel and accelerant flames.

“You promise you won’t tell anyone… I mean anyone… about what we’ve been up to?”

“Actually I was planning to write a book about it all when I’m rich and famous.”

In hindsight, presumably it would have been called Sophie’s Choice... No Really, She Is, Trust Me.

She slapped me across the thigh. Hard. Leaving a mark.

“I’m serious!”

“So am I,” I said. “It’ll be chapter one of my story. I’ll be the renegade hero, throwing away his future career prospects for one shot at the big time. You’ll be the high school girlfriend I leave behind in my home town, broken-hearted, barefoot and pregnant…”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Though we are running out of condoms. Someone may have to visit the pharmacy pretty soon.”

“God, not again,” I muttered. The box of twelve that I’d hesitantly purchased in the false dawn of expectation immediately following Nerissa earlier in the year, had been cleaned out inside three days. Even self-styled renegade heroes could find humiliation across the counter of small-town pharmacies.

“So,” she began, “what exactly is this one shot at the big time you’re planning to take?”

“Fucked if I know. World Spirograph champion. Lecturer in lazing about doing fuck all.”

“Freelance sex instructor?” she suggested. “I’m prepared to supply a reference.”

“Thought you wanted to keep this quiet?”

“The grubby specifics, yes. The vague plot outline, I’m happy to divulge.” The flames flickered in her eyes. More accelerant had been carelessly poured onto the fire. C’mon guys, get firewise.

“Can I ask one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Your story. Your one big shot. Riding off into the sunset with a raised middle finger to your hick small town past… I was thinking we could cast someone else as the hometown girl.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah… I was kinda hoping to get the position of permanent slutty sidekick… I’m prepared to look on adoringly when required, and perform depraved sexual acts on your person whenever my contract dictates. Or whenever you just happen to get hard,” she added, revelling in the delicious nastiness of her softly spoken promises. Catholic girls... yeah.

“Well, you’ve passed the audition so far,” I said, rather liking the sound of this.

She looked deep into my eyes. “You will take me with you, yeah?” she said, her voice breaking.

“You’re serious?” I said.

All of a sudden, judging by the imminent tears, she was. Things had turned, very abruptly, for the Serious. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. I wasn't good at Serious. We'd never done Serious before.

“Look, Soph, I don’t have a clue where I’m going - geographically, career-wise, anything.”

“And I do?” she snapped. “And don’t give me that ‘you can do anything’ bullshit, I’m sick of fucking hearing it. I don’t want to do ‘anything’. I just want to be happy, I don’t honestly give a fuck… You understand?”

I did, and said as much. And I understood something else. Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen in love with her. Badly. Horrendously. Disembowellingly. I’d fallen for the certified genius chick with the ticket to stardom and endless achievement, who was off to places God-knows-where, whereas I was off God-knows-where but pretty clearly in the other direction. I knew instinctively, in the same instant, that it wasn’t going to end well. I couldn’t see how we’d ever be together. But here she was, demanding that I promise that we’d stick together, because I, she went on to inform me tearfully, was all she had in the world that she really cared about.

So I made that promise, because I’d fallen in love with her, or because maybe I always had been.

And we acted on it. We sat down together, ripped up our uni preferences for first year, and worked out a way to stick together, cross-referencing our choices. If she went to Sydney Uni to do law, as she hoped to, I’d go too and do chemical engineering. Looked a reasonable way of turning my vague skills/interest in science into reliable bucks, and they had a decent course apparently. If she was accepted into the Queensland Conservatorium, I’d move to Brisbane and do chem eng. Or science, or education, or both, or neither.

She kissed me goodbye at the end of the week, a face-melting invocation of lust and tenderness that made my toes curl and probably would have attracted a crowd had we not been hiding in the barn at the time. Exams started on Monday, and her parents had come down to collect her and take her up to her grandmother’s place in Lismore - they said it’d be closer to her school and as such, easier for exam mornings, though in truth her nan was fading pretty quickly and they wanted their only daughter nearby. I personally felt that heading up to her grandmother’s place was the last thing she needed for her exam focus, but I kept my selfish views to myself.

Wisely, as it turned out. Within weeks, both Sophie and myself would be attending funerals. Sophie’s was, sadly but not unexpectedly, her grandmother’s. On the same day, we buried my brother, Matthew.

Matt had been killed in a car accident in Sydney. Rounding a bend in the wet on the old Pacific Highway just north of Berowra, reported the small print of our local paper. He'd swerved to avoid being sideswiped by a sliding truck and had piled straight through a railing into a river-gum with a trunk as wide as a bus. The seatbelt mounts on his old Saab broke away and that pitched him straight through the windscreen. It was the day before my three unit Maths exam. The timing may have been partly responsible for me rather bombing out completely in that exam. And pretty much all the others.

I don’t remember much of the funeral. I remember it was my first time in a suit, ever; I’ve avoided wearing them ever since. I remember looking around at the faces, trying to recognise people through the haze. Everyone was in black, facing away, looking down, and I couldn’t see anyone’s face, couldn’t recognise them, couldn’t fathom why noone would look me in the eye. I remember trying not to cry, trying to be strong and not to embarrass my old man. I remember my old man breaking down, just as I was thinking that. I remember, when it was all done, flogging a carton of Tooheys Red from somewhere or other, and taking it up to the barn out the back of the farm, where Jeff, McCarthy and I staged an impromptu wake for Matt, drinking, laughing, swearing and crying until we wanted to vomit. Though I suspect that was the affect of the Red more than anything else. The old man was pretty cheap with his beer tastes.

The powers that were said they would take my ‘bereavement’, as they quaintly called it, into consideration when totting up the marks which would decide my future. How nice of them, I thought. Can I have my brother back now? The Board of Studies had a set procedure for this sort of thing, offering me the option of supplemental exams at a later date, or marks based on my internal assessment results. I opted for the latter, figuring I'd rather carve things into my face with a Bic biro than sober up enough to study for supplementals. My internal assessment marks were pretty lousy, seeing as though I’d stuffed around all year figuring I could rescue things with a good showing in the exam - supposedly the internal assessment was only there to rank you or scale the marks or whatever, and the exam marks were the largest part of your HSC results. How they eventually came up with the numbers didn’t matter much to me at that point, as you’d expect. It was like being chronically jet-lagged for months, permanently. Being awake was the only thing worse than being asleep. I was just desperate to get to the end of the exam period and see Sophie again.

I’d have to wait longer than I wanted. I didn’t see her after the exam period, as she went up to the Gold Coast for Schoolies with friends from her school, whereas us lot went out to Ten Mile Beach in the Bundjalung National Park, just south of Woodburn, camping for a few days. Surfing at the beach, swimming in the creek, playing beach cricket, riding trailbikes, bushbashing with old farm jeeps, or just sitting around the campfire drinking beers, playing guitar and talking complete and utter shit. Honestly, it was the best possible thing which could have happened to me; it was the moment when the fog just began to lift, if only imperceptibly. McCarthy had to talk me into it, even though it’d been my idea in the first place - actually, scratch that, it’d been Matt’s idea in the first place; he and his mates had done the same thing for their Schoolies a few years before. So, whether as some sort of half-arsed tribute or whatever, we kept the flag flying. Here and now, a big shout-out to all the lads who made that camping mission so legendary - Uncle Sam, Thommo, Chrisso, Fungus, Chops, Big Ben, Slightly Smaller Ben, Harold Bishop, Brown Mullet, and Lukosade a.k.a. the Human Garbage Disposal Unit. And belated apologies to Fungus for burning out the clutch on his old XR trying to do burnouts on the road around the campground; and to Chops for prematurely munting the rear shocks on his old Corona wagon from having us all pile in the back of the old shitbox for trips down to the creek and back (we had to store the beer somewhere after we ran out of ice). I was amazed the gutless old device could haul all of us fat bastards, to be honest. Though Chops did claim to have thusly hauled the entire under-18s rugby team (including reserves) from the local playing fields to the pub on more than one occasion, so kudos as warranted to Chops and his old Corona. Made it no less of a shitbox, however.

I didn’t see Sophie again until a few days after we got our HSC results back in the New Year. Her family seemed to be back at the farm after being away over the Christmas break, but when I knocked on the door, I was told, quite civilly, that Sophie wasn’t around. For several days in a row. Even though the light seemed to be on in her room of a night-time, from my vantage point on the hillside which backed onto both our farms. Even though there were always three head silhouettes in the Townsends’ family car when it backed down the driveway each day. Even though, apparently, I was turning into a crazed stalker by the minute.

In for a penny, in for a pound, when it comes to the stalking game, I figured. One day in early January, after watching Sophie’s familial Falcon headed down their driveway, I sprinted back to the house and jumped on our old Suzuki TS185 ag-bike. I figured the lairy dayglo-orange paintwork and window-shaking report of my old Torana - Matt’s old Torana, of course - would be a bit conspicuous for my stealthy intent.

Then, at a respectable distance, I followed them into town, hoping like hell they weren’t on the first leg of a family trip to Cairns, as I only had fuel to get to Ballina. As it happened, Ballina was where their family did their weekly shopping. The Youngs tended to shop in Lismore. On that basis our families would obviously never get on and our union was doomed to failure, Montague-and-Capulet style.

Sophie didn’t seem that surprised to see me, even though I’d ‘happened to run into her’ in the lingerie section of Kmart, not one of my usual haunts. She’d grown her hair long again, long enough to tie it back in a ponytail. She looked grown-up and demure, with that look of detached-yet-intense concentration I remembered from watching her study. I realised I hadn’t seen her, hadn’t kissed or touched her, for months, not since before exams, before Matt’s funeral. Months? Sure it wasn’t years? We were different people, the bastard children of the two people who’d had that relationship.

“I’m sorry about Matt,” she offered. I nodded, and said I was sorry about her grandmother. She seemed surprised I remembered.

“How’d you go?” I asked. There was never any doubt what I was referring to.

“Not so well,” she replied curtly, and told me her mark. Sounded pretty good to me - I’d have taken it, internal assessment or not - but I knew it was less than she’d hoped for.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said.

“Oh come on Andrew, it’s not as if it’s your fault,” she responded, in a way that made it perfectly clear that yes, it absolutely was my fault. “I should have studied harder. I was distracted. It’s my own fault.”

Distracted. I had to tread very lightly here.

“So what’s next?”

Sophie’s full attention seemed to be focused on choosing between coffee-tan and pastel pink pairs of matching bra and panties. “Monash law,” she said breezily. “Missed out on law at UNSW and Sydney, but Monash offered me a position.”

“Melbourne?” I hadn’t realised she’d even planned to put in choices for the Victorian unis. I certainly hadn’t, when we’d conferred over our options. I said as much.

“It was just something I’d done beforehand… before us, I guess. I’d forgotten all about it. Now, it’s the best offer I’ve got, so what do you want me to do?”

I didn’t know. I said as much.

“And what about you, Andrew?” she asked, regarding me for the first time. Her hazel eyes were cool and dispassionate. No flames. “What have you got planned for your future?”

“I’m going to go and get really fucking drunk with the boys at Chrisso’s place tonight,” I said. “Beyond that, it's all pretty fucking irrelevant at this stage.”

“If you say so,” she said carefully, and slotted the pastel pink underwear set back on its rack.

“Good choice,” I offered gamely. “The brown complements your skin tones better.”

She smiled at last, though in a resigned, almost sad way that killed off any last hope that I’d ever see her in her bra and panties again, coffee-tan coloured or otherwise.

So this is goodbye, I thought. But didn’t say as much.

“You’re welcome to join us,” I suggested half-heartedly.

“Love to,” she lied, “but we’re heading down to Melbourne tomorrow morning to look at places for me to live. We’ve got an early flight out of Ballina to Sydney.”

“Who are you flying with?” I asked conversationally. Making small talk, as you do. While screaming at myself What the fuck do you mean, ‘who are you flying with’? What the fuck do you care who she’s flying with?

“Impulse,” she replied. “Yeah, I know, impulse is a change of momentum, and that’s the last thing you want at thirty thousand feet.” It was an old joke, and it wasn’t funny. Like our relationship. I was really taking to this beating-up-on-yourself thing, getting quite a talent for it. If you’d given me the choice, right there and then, to hit Esc and stop breathing, I’d have gnawed your arm off for the opportunity.

I ran out of words. I wanted to be anywhere else but there. I felt sick, betrayed, stupid, used, broken-hearted. She was the one riding off into some exciting new dawn, and I was being left behind, cast-off. Not quite barefoot and pregnant, but feeling pretty fucking lousy in any case.

“Guess I’ll catch you later,” I said. “Good luck in Melbourne.”

“You too,” she replied, “wherever you end up.” And seemed to mean it, strangely enough.

And that was it. I walked out of Kmart Ballina, and out of Sophie’s life.

Which turned out pretty well, apparently, even in my absence. She finished law at Monash, did really well there, moved to London and worked in a decent-sized law firm over there, met a South African guy and got married, moved with him to Canada (no idea why, presumably because it sucked less than South Africa) and raised a family of lovely kids, who get very confused over who to cheer for in the Tri-Nations rugby, presumably. I know all of this because Sophie’s family still runs the farm next to ours on the Broadwater Road, and the local grapevine is in excellent working order (watered and Osmocoted by my mother, of course). Not that I have any way of verifying any of this information personally. I’ve not seen Sophie since that morning in the lingerie section of Kmart Ballina, mid-January, 1994. Longer than the amount of time I knew her for in the first place.

As for me, despite my sub-standard results, I did get an offer which I eventually decided to take. The University of Queensland grudgingly admitted there was a place for me in their Bachelor of Science course for 1994. Just their bog-standard, entry-level science course - not the accelerated, honours-targeted, Advanced Science courses offered by other unis like UNSW, which had accepted McCarthy into its new journalism-and-communications focused Bachelor of Arse (as he proceeded to called it, based on the number of hot girlies in lectures with him).

But that was fine by me. Even though pretty much none of my mates from school were heading to Brisvegas - most of them were either headed for the regional NSW unis like UNE or were only leaving the Northern Rivers in a box - I signed up. Maybe I was looking for a totally clean break, a fresh start. No, not maybe. I was. It wouldn’t be the last time. As Iron Maiden put it: Run to the hills... run for your life. Why science? I don’t know. Physics and Chemistry had been my best (read ‘least worst’) subjects as my results turned out, so I figured on doing Chemistry, because Physics was as dry as a dead dingo’s donger. At the very least, I figured, a chemistry degree could get a job cooking up dodgy speed in some back-shed drugs lab out the back of Nimbin. Scenic rural lifestyle, country air and sunshine, who could beat that?

So with a place booked in both UQ’s science course and one of the livelier co-ed residential colleges on campus, I packed up Matt’s old Torana with all my worldly goods, gave a goodbye hug to my folks and my brother Jeff, and drove off into the sunset. Which should have told me I was going the wrong way, as Brisbane was actually due north. Anyway, I eventually made it up to the land of those who bend bananas, to UQ, and to college. Where I encountered two things: a bunch of awesome fullahs and champion blokes, yes even the fucking Queenslanders, who went on to become some of the best mates anyone could wish to have; and a superb selection of very friendly, seriously cute young women who were more than willing to volunteer their time and energy in order to exorcise the physical and emotional scars of Sophie completely from my system.

As I say, sometimes it’s good to run away from all your problems.