I want to tell you
about a girl named
Emily. She was a
girl I knew when she was thirteen, I was fifteen and sixteen. I still speak to her now and then; she's
graduating high school this year. When I knew her,
she was mature for her age, yet harbouring that
innocence that only a thirteen year old has. But she hung around with a
bad crowd at the
time, namely my friends and I. She was
naive, yet she possessed a
bubbly,
attractive intelligence rarely found in
women twice her age. She was a truly
happy girl in
the world, even when
people I knew made fun of her for her "
immaturity," and enormous
breasts. I liked her because of that intelligence, that
spark, and I'm sure the breasts factored in as well (I was fifteen and sixteen, you know). But
most of all, she had one of those
physical charms that
grasp one's attention, and
shake it wildly
about: almost
jet-black hair, very
straight and somewhat thick, with
bright ice-blue eyes.
I knew her mother well, too. Her name was Liz, and she fronted a local band called the Lizband. They were excellent; pure rock and roll, a thing I find lacking these days. Because I knew both of them, it eventually came to pass that I began to spend a fair amount of time at their house. Emily and I would do little but spend time in each other's company. We would hold entirely French conversations. We would cuddle in front of the television, watching whatever show was on at the time. We would watch her brothers Sam and Eli play Nintendo 64. We would kiss, and kiss deeply. We would touch each other's bodies.
But it wasn't as if there was a relationship there; we were feeling each other, feeling for each other, because we felt inside a bond we shared. We also knew that to have a relationship with such a significant age difference, that it would be frowned upon by parents and friends. Perhaps we knew that having a true "relationship," in the boyfriend and girlfriend sense was wrong, anyway. Friends would say to me, "I know what you're doing with Emily, robbing the cradle, don't you think?" Perhaps. Maybe I was. But we didn't see it as such. Once, she came over to my house, lying to her father and saying, "Yeah dad, I'm going to the mall with 'X,' I'll be back at about eleven o'clock." A bald faced lie, as she immediately proceeded to my house, which was maybe two blocks from her father's. Neither of us truly knew why this happened, why we had to see each other. We just knew that the stars were brighter and the wind was warmer, and the sun shined more cheerfully when we spent a day in each other's arms.
We tested out all boundaries. I suppose that if things progressed (over a period of years) that she and I would have begun a sexual relationship. But the kinship we felt outweighed everything else. And now, I'm glad that it didn't proceed to sex. Sex has a way of, if you'll pardon the pun, screwing everything up. We had a true bond, a touching of spirits.
In truth, though I'm in a lovely, almost idyllic relationship now, I don't think that anything has ever compared to the way I feel about Emily. And I still feel it. When she phones - as infrequently as it is - I still feel an enormity of emotion swell in me, when I hear her joyful, happy voice talking so fast, but filled with such unhindered emotion, rising as it does with every circumstances she speaks of, every little detail of her life.
She is different now, but she's still my girl, sister, lover, friend. She's my person, one without possible compare. To coin a rather overused phrase, to compare her to anyone else would be like compare an apple to an orange. Even though she's not my picture of innocence any more (she told me about a particularly hardcore sexual experience of hers; it blew some privately held ideals about her away in an instant), she's still Emily. Even though she does drugs now, she's still my Emily. Even though she's going to university in the fall, she's still my girl, my thirteen year old charmer with eyes like a cool ocean in spring. I don't know how she did it, but she changed my life.