Well… (this comes with a bold **OVERSHARE** warning attached)
A lot and not much happened in 1989 in equal measure. I was 18 for most of the year and was in two relationships – if we could deem one of them a relationship – and…yeah.
Firstly, and most prominently, for me – the sex obsessed thing that I am…I lost my virginity that year. I know! No one is more shocked than me that it took this long! Lol. Because…although I am gagging for it most days of the week (any day with a ‘Y’ in it. Lol), I was not the kind of girl to just hand it out to anyone. I wanted a boyfriend, not a fuck buddy! Well…I didn’t end up with a boyfriend. I can’t even deem him a fuck buddy either. We weren’t friends. We weren’t anything. That’s a lie. To me…he was everything. An absolute adonis and the boy of my dreams. I had my sights on him for two years – OVER two years.
I am going to go into some detail with this because I think I need to dissect why this was so important to me. I still hold this night as a very special thing to me. I’ve not seen the guy concerned in YEARS! Probably not since the early 1990s. I probably wouldn’t even recognise him now. I have no photos of him and certainly no photos of us together. I dare say if I saw a photo of him now – looking as he did then – I’d be like…’you were smitten with that?!’ Lol. Then again…I might not. It might all come flooding back as to why and the things I remember of him being a dark haired, blue-eyed, gorgeous Irish descent Catholic boy would all be there. Who knows? But in 1989 (most of it anyway), there was no other guy I was looking at, I know that much.
I’m pretty sure I mentioned my friend who was also my neighbour? Perhaps not. My best friend in my mid to late teens was my neighbour across the road. She was from a big Irish Catholic family – one of 12 children. She had brothers around my age (she had five brothers in total that I can remember…some details are vague) and I was smitten with one of them. First time I saw him I asked her about him and I asked if she would give me the phone number of her parents house so I could ring him up and see if he’d want to hang out. I was never one for waiting for a guy to show interest in me – if I fancied a guy, I’d pursue him instead. I never had enough self esteem to let the guy be the pursuer. I’d always worry that they just wouldn’t be interested in me, so I had to make things happen. Of course that probably just smacked of desperation on my part. Any boy I liked I pursued and I have some really vivid memories attached to these “pursuits”. If I ever draw out 1981 as a “hump day history” year – I’ll have to divulge some of the shenanigans that centred around a boy I was obsessed with then named Matthew Chandler (I usually NEVER forget their names either). That’s for another time though.
Anyhoo, my neighbour friend’s brother I thought was the bee’s knees. I worked up the resolve to call him up and ask him if he wanted to, when he came to visit his sister, come over to my place and hang out. He said that he couldn’t that day because he was going to a friend’s place … or some such shit. I can’t remember the conversation that well – all I know is I took it as a knock back and I cried after I got off the phone, wishing that I hadn’t made such an idiot of myself. Did it stop me being smitten with him? Did it fuck! But I put all this stuff in with it like, oh he was probably really going off to hang out with his mates and why on earth would he want to hang out with ME, FFS – what can I offer? Well…apart from that.
I was no longer at school by my mid teens and so there weren’t any other guys I was coming into contact with and my days were pretty sheltered and counted for nothing. Other than these two glaring memories of these “relationships”, there isn’t much I remember of 1989.
For the sake of ease and anonymity, I am going to call the guy BMc. So, it’s about May or June. I remember it being what passes for late autumn or winter in Australia. The oldest boy in the big Catholic family is getting married. My neighbour has me and mum mind her younger kids while she attends the wedding. Of course, BMc is there to see his brother get married, but he leaves the wedding reception early and goes to his sister’s house (my friend/neighbour). Then…he comes over to our house as some ruse to check on his niece and nephew.
He’s been to a wedding. He’s dressed really nicely. He smells great! To me, he is the hottest thing that has ever walked the earth, right. He looks good, he smells good and…I don’t even know how it starts. I can’t even remember because he NEVER showed ANY kind of interest in me for the two years I had fancied him. Ever! But I remember certain things about the night sssooo vividly. The smell of him. How warm he felt. The beating of his heart in his chest – how that felt as I rested my head on his chest. I sat on his lap and I laid my head on his chest and I got drunk just from the feeling of that. Details still sketchy over certain particulars but I can remember just how intoxicated I felt over the feel of him and the smell of him and from sitting on his lap and…certain appendages made manifest. I couldn’t quite believe it was all happening.
There were clauses though…and I didn’t really question it. He wouldn’t let me kiss his lips. That should have been a massive warning sign. I think I was in such a state at that moment in time, I didn’t really care. I was about to cop off with the guy I had been lusting after for YONKS! How this event can still have something about it that I still hold so dear, yet still at the same time be everything that I feel has gone wrong in my ability to have any meaningful sexual relationships is…I don’t know.
Just a few nights ago, I was still pondering the “what if” of Troy (Troy is a guy who chatted me up at a bus stop – I shit you not! – when I was back in Oz in 2015/16) – that story is also for another time! (Or maybe never.)
Anyway…so, we move from livingroom chair to my bedroom and it happens. It really didn’t set the world on fire but I was ssoooo anticipating it that…I dunno. I want to be honest and open about what happened, but at the same time, I’m not sure I should be. There are things I’d love to say. Things that I think are really taboo and deemed unsavoury to talk about and so I worry about how I’ll project myself to others by even bringing them up. I think I shared enough with his stipulation for no kissing on the mouth.
I feel hindered too much by the societal norms that tell us what we should and shouldn’t share about stuff. I am always open about things and feel a catharsis about opening up. If I can’t be truly open, it stifles the catharsis.
Okay, so here goes. I wasn’t expecting this “event” to take place when it did, so I had my period when it happened. For a lot of women, it seems that would be an absolute no-no or it would gross them out, or they’d be feeling too ill not to want sex when on their period. For me, it has ALWAYS been the exact opposite. I have always been at my most “horny” during a period. Without realising the time he picked to approach me with this, BMc probably picked the most potent time he could have to spring this on me, right. I was, quite literally, GAGGING FOR IT! It could have been a mushroom! Lol. Not to mention just the time I had been hankering after BMc himself, and then on top of that, how long I had already been … sexually potent (since I was REALLY young – 1981 and Matthew Chandler? I was not even 11, and I was already harbouring those kinds of feelings, okay!) – this is the reason I think it has stayed ssoooooo long in the memory. Me losing my virginity was a HUGE thing for me. Really huge! And I had kind of assumed that that would be it….you know…that BMc would be coming back for more and that would eventually lead to a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. I didn’t expect him to take me out on dates initially. That we’d just….”hang out” but, eventually….
I was incredibly naive. Incredibly. And I massively confused love with lust and … if the 52 year old you could talk to the 18 year old you, it would all be so different.
I wanted BMc to be my boyfriend and believed that the way I’d get that to happen would be to call him – at night – and invite him round and…give him what I believed he wanted. He didn’t want that from me. I wanted it from him, and if I was offering it…he wasn’t gonna say no if he wasn’t getting his end away somewhere else. I WAS 18!!!! I should have known better! I should have thought much better and higher of myself, but I didn’t! I subjected myself to what I thought I deserved. Just some guy that I thought was beautiful who only wanted me when he couldn’t get a fuck anywhere else.
That night. That night of the first deed. I remember telling him that he was beautiful and he laughed at me. Laughed in my face. He probably thought I was a fucking idiot. I was. Who could blame him for laughing. It hurts me still that I thought so little of myself then. What I should have done was kick him out, but I begged him to stay. I always begged him to stay and he never did. As soon as we were done, he’d leave. After a time…far too long, I grew tired of being used.
Towards the end of 1989, my first serious relationship started. BMc was consigned to history. And of all the names that my boyfriend could have it was – Roger! And he had the nicknames you would expect too – Roger the Lodger, Roger the Dodger…all of that. Also, culturally, he couldn’t have been any different to BMc too! First generation Australian from Lebanese parents. Christian, rather than Muslim. Though his parents seemed fine with their children dating freely whomever they liked, there was still an undercurrent of some conformity there.
I was petrified of meeting them! I was stunned he actually wanted to take me to his place! I was stunned by a lot of things that happened in that relationship. Firstly, he took me on a date. This was like something that only happened in movies to me. Genuinely. Nothing like that ever happened with BMc – that guy never took me ANYWHERE but down the hall to my bedroom. So, when Roger asked me if I wanted to go to Bondi Beach with him to see a gig, I was like WHAAAAAT? As in, a date?! Again…really vague memories of aspects of it. I can’t remember if he picked me up from my mum’s house, or I met him at his house. I have vague recollections of us walking from Bondi Junction train station to get to/from the beach. I vaguely remember the gig – it was Jenny Morris who was playing. I remember she was performing She Has To Be Loved and thinking that I wanted it to be me – and that…could it be with Roger?
After the gig and a perfect day at Bondi Beach, he brought me home. He stayed for tea…and then he stayed the whole night. Not one for half measures or holding myself back, I’m pretty sure I told him that I loved him and wanted to be with him that night. He didn’t run a mile! That was a miracle. Silly cow! I wish I didn’t live in the past so much! But there is very little “future lying ahead” of me, I feel.
Things with Roger ended up bad. I sabotaged it all. But…1989 is where it all began, so the end of 1989 is absolutely magic. I had a boy! I was in love with a boy and I felt wanted, desired…properly, for the first time in my life. He was a guy that wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him. That has happened so very rarely in my life from what feels like even before I was born … from a father that gave me abandonment issues.
Any other memories of 1989? Not really. The whole year is dominated by those two experiences. BMc and Roger. Other than one other dalliance with one other man a few years later, that was the whole extent of my experiences with men. It’s been nearly 30 years. Hey ho.
Music of 1989 that sticks with me? Let’s see…
Stop – Sam Brown (bought that as a single – sang along to it over and over and while thinking of BMc).
All Around The World – Lisa Stansfield
You Got It – Roy Orbison
Back To Life – Soul II Soul
Ride On Time – Black Box
She Has To Be Loved – Jenny Morris
Little Little – Jenny Morris
Another Day In Paradise – Phil Collins
Love Shack – B-52s
Cherish – Madonna
I Drove All Night – Cyndi Lauper
Black Velvet – Alannah Myles
I Don’t Want A Lover – Texas
All I Want Is You – U2
Dirty Blvd – Lou Reed
I Don’t Want A Lover – Texas
Buffalo Stance – Neneh Cherry
Onion Skin – Boom Crash Opera
My fave Oz band at the time, Spy vs Spy, had a new album out called Trash The Planet.
