Tuesday 7 March 2000: Zed's "Lovelife": The Stupid Years

No, I told myself sternly at the end of 1996. You are not going to fall in love.

For one simple reason. I had been there for the last two and a half years and it was pants.

The guy was two years older than me. When I was twelve, I thought he was sort of cute. Now aged fifteen, I hated him, although mostly as a projection of my self-loathing for still fancying him. In the months that had elapsed, we had exchanged perhaps ten words, yet I would still concoct ridiculous fantasies in which our paths crossed.

Actually, maybe liking someone more accessible wasn't such a bad idea.

No, it was a Very Bad Idea. Approximately on par to selling my life's work to buy Spice Girls merchandise. (Come on, who would want my life's work?) Horrible Crush #1 would be leaving school in a few months and I'd never have to see him again. I could live through that long, surely, without turning my attention elsewhere? Someone else that I'd be stuck with until the end of my time at school and a friend of mine at that?

Oh, Chris liked me, but Not Like That. When would anyone like me like that? People had their suspicions. When we talked outside the music block while we awaited the teacher (or rather, prayed that she wouldn't turn up), Paul made Remarks. Every day after school, before the library opened, he would find me sitting alone in room nine doing my homework and the key-jingling prefects would take one glance at us before saying, "I'll leave you to it." But there wasn't anything going on. Why would I want to anything to do with him anyway? He was a freakazoid! He had a glasses case that cost £190! He listened to classical music and stayed up till 11.30 at night doing his music homework! He liked cricket! (Never mind the fact that I had a collection of Babysitters Club books that cost £190, listened to The Levellers and stayed up till 11.30 doing Latin, and liked playing "Man Utd In Europe".)

[Anne Frank style note: since writing this piece, he has revealed that he once enjoyed the fine game too. I retain my claim to freakishness though: after all, I was female. Still am, in fact.]

And yet, as Valentine's Day approached, I couldn't help hoping. 14 February came and went without any sign of a red envelope, but who needs one when you have a ticket to see Suede? The following day, however, ears ringing, I checked my e-mail. Two messages, one from my keypal Brad, one from him. Both signed "love".

This threw poor emotionally-retentive wouldn't-draw-a-heart-on-a-letter-to-a-girl Zed into a fit of confusion. However, she succeeded in returning the sentiment, admitted to herself that she liked him, and waited impatiently for the half term holiday to end.

Upon their reunion in the music block they did not, however, consummate their passion under the electric piano. He threw erasers at the lights while she focussed her emotional energies into a song entitled "Filthy Old Man".

She spent the next two years and three months employing a variety of tactics to get him out of her mind. She tried cramming it with French vocabulary, but still "only" got an A in her GCSE, evidently distracted by having to deal with French letters.

She went to Maths summer school where, between making dodecahedrons and finding out what people with careers in Mathematics did ("I'm studying the blood flow in the neck of a giraffe!"), her attentions turned to someone else. Unfortunately (but not altogether surprisingly) said object of desires ignored her, and said attentions turned Chris-wards once more in due course.

She wrote Angstful Love Poems, in an attempt to make herself feel totally pathetic and snap out of it. She dealt with his liking for Smill by making fun of him (The Song). Failing again, she tried made fun of herself (Verbal Voodoo II). But still, she cooked up scheme after scheme in order for them to spend more time together. She even went to a Northern Symphonia concert so that they could sell programmes together!

[And, although they got in for free, despite flogging hundreds of the beeping things, neither of them got to keep a single one as a reminder of their evening of magic way of differentiating between one classical composition and the next. They did see someone from the aforementioned Maths Summer School there though.]

In a last-ditch effort to move on, during a trip to London during the Easter holidays of her final year at school, she slept with Smill. Since this did not live up to expectations [Smill stole all the covers], two nights later, she slept with her visiting online friend Twi instead. Needless to say, Zed and Smill had a bit of a lovers' tiff on the train back home. Zed, overcome with an urge to kill said Smill, sent an e-mail to various friends, asking for input in her intricate torture plans. As a postscript, she wrote, "Oh yes, Christopher, if you know anything about British cricket grounds, please tell Flink about it."

Zed then had to attempt to explain Flink's psyche to him. This, naturally, took a few weeks. In the mean time, she introduced him to the effects of IRC and they discovered a common cause for despair: their undone Physics practicals. They became inseparable, to their classmates' glee.

Alice: Are you two getting married or something?
Zed: No. Why?
Alice: You're always sitting together!
Zed: We weren't sitting together in Physics this morning. [Although probably because they were in different Physics sets.] Besides, you and Helen Wo are always sitting together.
Chris: Yes, are you getting married?

However, he clearly got a bit worried about where this was going when he found himself in Zed's room being introduced to her collection of teddy bears. Not to mention being subjected to the ultimate torture of meeting her parents. Therefore, he spent the final three weeks of school trying unsuccessfully to win the heart of Katie, while Zed wrote poems for her English teacher (Dear Sir).

When the day came to mark off the final square in her student planner, Zed was ecstatic! She'd only have to see him a few more times, when they went into school for to take their exams, and then she'd be able to get over this horrible infatuation, no trouble. (Since Horrible Crush #1 had departed, he had barely ever crossed her mind.)

Unfortunately, that night, they both went to Buskers night club along with the rest of the world.

However, when Zed arrived there were only about two other people there, so she jumped on the dance floor straight away. Some bloke she didn't know danced with her for a couple of songs, but she got a bit thirsty so they parted company.

"Who was that?" Chris asked.

"No idea," Zed said, cheerfully.

"Congratulations!" he said. "You've pulled! Anyway, what are you drinking?"

"Water," said Zed.

"Water?" he asked incredulously. "You can't drink water!"

"Yes I can." And indeed she did.

Why didn't Zed want anything alcoholic? A variety of reasons. Firstly, she was entirely capable of silliness and loss of inhibition without touching a drop. Secondly, in the interest of hardcore raving, H₂0 was the most appropriate beverage. And thirdly, years of limited pocket money and ridiculous Internet usage had rendered her a cheapskate. A quid or two for a drink when you don't even get to keep the glass? An unspeakable rip off!

"What can I do to get you to drink?" he asked.

"You can't," Zed said. And indeed, he couldn't. People had tried their best in the past. Matthew and Martin and Michael had once spent two hours trying to persuade her - "Martin'll snog you if you do-" Hysterics "-ok, Martin'll snog you if you don't" - but all she consumed on that occasion were Katie's ice cubes. [Why does that sound so weird?] At a party at Alice's, Chris actually carried her to the bar and she spent the next hour hiding. She had intended to drink at Sheena's party, but something stopped her. And so, three months under the legal age, she was determined to last until then.

"We'll see about that," he said.

After a while, Zed and her acquaintances headed upstairs to the Cheese Floor to dance. Chris started to dance with Zed and they gradually got closer and closer together until Zed feared they'd turn into a black hole and implode. And there they remained for about six songs, all of them completely inappropriate for dancing of that nature.

Zed thought, "This is really nice, but this whole thing has been completely pointless. He's 6'5" and I'm 5'2". It just doesn't work."

They went back downstairs holding hands (her idea) and he asked what she was drinking. "Water," she said.

"What?" he yelled, over the noise. (It couldn't be described as music.)

On second thoughts, letting Zed stand on your toes for half an hour was a pretty valiant effort, so she said, "Oh, ok, vodka and orange."

So he bought her one. She contemplated the drink for about five minutes, then took a sip. And it didn't kill her. Shame, that.

They ran into Will and Abigail. "Look at this!" Chris said.

They were suitably impressed. "Down it!" Will instructed, so she did just that.

They sat down with a load of acquaintances and Zed spent the next few hours having conversations and elbow fights with whoever was present. As the night progressed, her eyelids started to droop (having had approximately three hours sleep in the last four nights), so she fell asleep on anyone willing. Smill eventually persuaded her to go back upstairs to dance at 1.15, so they crammed themselves onto the dance floor and swayed back and forth for the duration of Robbie Williams' "Angels".

Then Zed isn't really sure what happened. But she left the dance floor and Chris led her downstairs. And behind the stairs (with her standing on a step, given the height discrepancy), they hugged each other for a while. Then they kissed.

In spite of the horrible crush, she didn't actually want to go out with him, which was just as well, since he didn't want to go out with her either. Which is not to say that no subsequent dodginess ensued. It was his idea, but Zed went along with it, her motives being a shameful desire to do some catching up with her peers prior to university. [This turned out to be a sensible one to have, but she is not proud of herself.] Unfortunately, this encounter and subsequent ones destroyed any capability she had to get him out of her mind until someone better came along, which has yet to happen. Nevertheless, a few months later, they went to university, where he found a girlfriend and she found a chocolate machine and they all lived happily ever after.

Friday 24 March 2000

Which will happen first: x-ray specs becoming commonplace or the weather getting too hot for people to bother wearing skin, never mind clothes? Either way, can you imagine, "Phwoar, nice pair of kidneys!" or "Cor, look at the spleen on that"?