The First Time

This week the trial of the teacher accused of abducting his 15 year old pupil has taken place and he was sentenced to 5 years. Today the papers are full of 'news' that the girl is going to wait for him and they will marry on his release. I'm not going to discuss the rights or wrongs of his sentence although it does seem extreme given the sentence given this week to Stuart Hall for sex offences against girls as young as 9 years old. My own stance is that the teacher abused his position and he has a very small mouth so obviously can't be trusted. Both sets of parents in this case should also look at their reactions and what messages they are sending to their children. The teachers parents are blaming his wife for being difficult and demanding, his employer for being not being supportive enough and the police for not confiscating their son's mobile phone. The girls parents are blaming each other and the mother has said that her daughter is dead to her. Whoever is to blame, assuming this is the girls first sexual relationship, her 'first time' is going to be memorable to her for all the wrong reasons.

My first time was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life and I am eternally grateful to my first lover for being the most perfect lover.

Keith was about thirteen when I first met him. Well, he was about eight when I first became aware of him as an annoying member of an annoying group of boys who sometimes interrupted our games or shouted things at me and my group of friends if we wandered into 'their' part of the estate. We all lived on a housing estate of tower blocks divided by a road. The girls side of the road had two of the blocks and the boys side of the road had three blocks and all the shops and the tenants hall which held the youth club. So inevitably our paths crossed for several years before I finally met him. I can't remember exactly when the two groups joined up but the boys started to hang around our side of the road and we started to spend all our time together playing games such as runouts, building camps in the empty underground garages and listening to the top twenty every Sunday afternoon on a transistor radio. The estate was by then about 5 years old and was, at the time, quite a futuristic design. It was a celebration of concrete and stone. The blocks were 20 floors high and had a lower and upper ground in addition to that. They also had underground garages. Given that they were build in the 1960s when not many working class people had cars if seems strange that these, what must have been very costly, huge, cavernous garages were build given that new developments today, when most families have cars, do not include many car parking spaces. Each garage was the size of a small flat and very few were used so we had the run of this space. The upper ground housed scores of sheds intended for storage of prams and bikes. This became our snogging area.

Despite growing up in this sea of concrete (there was very little grass and no play area for children) we had an amazing childhood playing out in this adventure playground. We must have driven some of the neighbours mad, hanging out on stairwells and landings and sometimes we would be chased away but with 100 landings to chose from we never became anti social enough to cause people stress apart from the time the boys smashed the same woman's window while playing cricket on the upper ground three times in one week. Cricket was then banned from the upper ground but even today, if you look closely enough, the painted cricket stumps can still be seen on the wall below the 1st floor flats windows.

Keith was beautiful. In fact I am sure he still is because he possessed incredibly fine bone structure. His cheekbones were high and well defined, his chin strong with obligatory cleft, his mouth wide and filled with the straightest, whitest teeth (these in the days before cosmetic dentistry). His hair was chestnut brown, shiny and flopped beautifully over his forehead. He was blessed with the smoothest skin which tanned perfectly in the summer, and over one glorious summer, (this was the 70s when summers were always glorious, Keith shot up from being the same height as me to being over 6ft tall.) It took me sometime to realise that my mate had become an Adonis over night. One day he was a skinny kid with a monkey face and the next day he was the most beautiful boy any of us had ever seen. And these were the days when teenage girls walls were covered in posters of David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, David Essex and, for me, David Bowie. When, many years later, I first saw the actor Josh Harknett I thought this boy must be Keith's son so alike were they. When we were 13 (Keith was my first toy boy being 1 day younger than me, which actually mattered at that age)  he asked me out and I accepted. This dating just meant that we got to snog. In the aforementioned sheds. Sadly he wasn't my first kiss. That had happened a few months before hand with an older boy I'd met at a disco in Hackney Town Hall. Not only was that the night of my first kiss (a full on French kiss) it was my first experience of Chinese food as he bought me a spring roll. I was Keith's first kiss though and his wide mouth almost swallowed my face. As I was the experienced kisser at this stage I certainly felt his technique could be improved and made it my mission to work on his skill. This kissing class continued for some weeks until I had my head turned by some boy called Ian, whose round face was covered in acne, at the school disco and asked Keith's best friend Steve (who became, many years later the love of my life although that is a different story) to tell Keith it was over. We still all hung round together and a couple of summers later I dated Steve for a while until I had my head turned by Ricky, who had a glass eye, but this time I was older and wiser and managed to dump Steve myself. Not long after this Keith and I hooked up together and when we were 17 we 'went all the way'.

For weeks we had very heavily petted and indulged in lots of oral sex but so scared was I of becoming pregnant we did everything but have full sex. I visited the family planning clinic, was given the pill and was told I had to take them for two weeks before they would be effective. Those two weeks were the longest of our lives as Keith and I ticked of the days to 'Going All The Way Day'. When it eventually arrived and Keith tried to enter me we were mortified to find his penis was far too big to ever fit inside me and we lay together almost in tears until I had the brainwave of getting on top and, by being in control, managed to ease him inside. From that moment Keith and I never had another conversation. All we did was fuck. We had discovered the most wonderful thing in the world. Our relationship continued for months after this day in March 1977 until November 1977. Looking back we were both lost in a sexual quest to discover more about this amazing pastime and to not waste a single second by going out or having conversations. The last time we made love was on the 5 November 1977 and the next day I met Jimmy and I made another of my poor choices.

I have such wonderful memories of my first time. It was with a friend who I loved very much and who loved me. It was with someone who was so beautiful he took my breath away. We were well matched sexually and became lost in one another.

Keith and I lost spoke about 10 years ago. Not long after I met Jimmy Keith emigrated to Australia where he has a successful career and a beautiful family. We spoke on the phone and he sounded like an Australian. The only time he sounded like my Keith was when he laughed and , when I heard his laugh, I was transported back to the 1970s and we were hanging out on the estate laughing at some prank one of us had carried out.

This week I had an email from my form tutor who taught me from the ages of 11 to 16. Mr C was only 10 years older than the youngest children he taught when he joined the school in 1971. He was a fantastic teacher who made me love school, love learning and inspired me to work hard. Never once did Mr C abuse his position. We have stayed in touch and it is great to hear how much he is enjoying his retirement and his grandchildren.

I have certainly been luckier that the young girl in the news this week. My first time was memorable for all the right reasons and the most important teacher in my life has had a positive amount of influence on my life and one that still continues over 40 years later.

Certainly I have made wrong decisions over the years and indulged in relationships that I should have avoided but because I had a great start in my sexual relationship life for which I'm eternally grateful sex has never been a problem. It remains, for me, one of the greatest celebrations of human contact.

http://www.thecinemasource.com/blog/interviews/josh-hartnett-interview-for-the-black-dahlia/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346607/Jeremy-Forrest-dark-place-marriage-abducted-schoolgirl-say-parents-blame-crimes-depressed.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/losing-virginity-stories-11-women-first-time-having-sex_n_3267987.html