On Saturday mornings I went to Helen O’Grady’s drama academy at a community hall in Hornsby. I had a crush on two boys in my drama class. One named Hamish and another named Gerard. But Gerard had a girlfriend named Rowena.
One Saturday after class I walked up to Hornsby shops with Hamish, where my sister, Jaci picked me up. Mostly, we walked in silence, but he did ask me one question and I relayed each and every moment of the entire walk to Jaci and asked her if she thought he liked me.
The following Saturday, we walked to the shops together again. He asked me the exact same question. I answered him uneasily. Didn’t we already have this conversation?
A couple of weeks later, Gerard broke up with Rowena. He asked me to go to the movies with him. He lived in Mt Colah and we lived in Kellyville. He asked if my mum would bring me to his house, pick him up, take us to movies, and then drop him home again.
“Yes!” I said, “Absolutely!”
“That sounds like a bit much,” said Mum.
Another sister, Liane drove us. I can’t remember what we saw, but I feel like it might have starred Sandra Bullock. On the way back from the movie, Gerard and I held hands in the back of the car. We didn’t look at one another, we both kept staring out of our own windows. Our hands got sweaty, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want that car journey to end.
After he hopped out of the car I climbed into the front to sit next to Liane and told her that he’d held my hand. It’s only just occurred to me that she was actually 29 years old at the time and yet she didn’t treat it like it was insignificant or silly. She was just as excited as I was. I wrote about it in my diary when we got home. I remember that my hand was still tingling afterwards and that every time I thought about it, my stomach would jump.
Turn the pages of my diary to a few weeks later and you’ll find the words, ‘who gives a f*** about holding hands?! WE KISSED!’
On the school bus one afternoon, I told a friend about Gerard, my first real boyfriend. A boy sitting behind us leaned forward and said, ‘You can’t have a boyfriend. You’re too ugly!’ I can’t remember if that made me cry or not. But I think I did wonder if there was truth to his words, after all, my hair was too frizzy. When I was a little older, I asked a boy who sat behind me in Maths class how to spell gorgeous. He replied ‘How do you spell your name?’ I swung between thinking, ‘he likes me! He thinks I’m pretty!’ to ‘He’s making fun of me. He doesn’t mean it.’ And also, ‘But really, how do you spell gorgeous?’
There are still days when I hate what I see when I look in my mirror. When I agree with the boy who was sitting behind me on the bus and with my fourteen-year-old self: ‘Yes! I am ugly. And yes, my hair is too frizzy!’
But there are other days where I love my reflection.
Where I believe the boy who sat behind me in maths.