I was in my late teens. 17 or 18. I was still at school. I was still a somewhat awkward kid, even though I had plenty of friends. As is the way with schoolkids, there was a girl I really liked but never did anything about. Despite that, I eventually realised that she felt the same about me.
She was not one of the ‘cool’ girls. She was one of the smart ones. A redhead, with a little androgyny about her face. Thanks to being a competitive swimmer and training daily, she had a body to die for – but she didn’t show it off. In later years, that changed …
In the middle of a maths class one afternoon, I was talking to friends beside me about a movie I wanted to see at the cinema. The girl I fancied so much piped up from the opposite end of the long, straight desk. “I really, really, want to see that. We should go together. Will you take me?” In school days, I thought that showed courage. Butting in to a conversation I was having with somebody else, just to ask me out on a date. Not just that, but across a table of seven or eight boys. I said yes immediately and not one of the guys dared make fun of either of us. I think they were actually impressed.
We went to that movie. We enjoyed ourselves. We agreed to do it again the next week. We had not really planned ahead or thought it through and arrived at the cinema with no clue what films would be showing. We figured that we could walk in and pick something. We both realised there and then that the film really wasn’t the important thing here.
Walking in and reading the boards in the lobby, the pickings were slim. But she spotted something. “Threesome. Whatever that is, let’s try it.”
It was a great choice. To this day it remains one of my all-time favourite movies. Stephen Baldwin, Lara Flynn Boyle and Josh Charles in an American college comedy about the unconventional relationship they build sharing a co-ed dorm room. It is smart, witty and romantic all at once. Sexy, too. (Especially the scene with Lara Flynn Boyle in the library. If you’ve seen it, you know the one.) The whole film leads up to one night in bed together, with all three of them enjoying sex together equally – the threesome of the title.
We left the cinema on a high. It was pouring with rain – a proper storm. It was warm though, despite the heavy drops soaking us within the first few steps outside. The cinema was on a quayside and instead of running straight to my car, we walked over to the waterside, leaned on the painted railings and enjoyed a moment of staring out into the rain, watching it fall into the deep water already out there.
She turned to me, this girl I had admired from a distance for months, took my hand and looked me straight in the eyes, rain running down her face and sticking her thick red hair to her forehead. She said only one thing. “So who shall we get to join us then?” |
