A Conversation and Two Injuries
1.
When I was first at university I finally discovered a little about the opposite sex. Now I know a little more but would never be so unwise as to claim my knowledge is complete, although I hope I understand my wife well.
Back then I was painfully girl shy having gone to an all-boys public school and had a highly romanticised and unreal view of the opposite sex. I never had any formal sex education and what I imagined I knew came from boys in my class and pornographic magazines that I had smuggled into my bedroom at home. Nowadays it would have been different. A simple search in any search engine after typing in "fucking" will take you where you want to go, and the practical side of sex will be "laid bare."
Back then, I found it difficult to even talk to young women my age, and whilst my hormones drove me towards finding a girlfriend my ignorance of what exactly I should do if I found one held me back. I was in what the psychologists term an approach conflict situation.
The closer I got to a woman the more frightened I got.
I didn't kiss a woman until I was eighteen when half-drunk at a party I ended up in a clinch with a girl I didn't know, and who disappeared a few minutes later and didn't reappear. And all that evening and the next day I worried that she had told everybody that I was a bad kisser.
It continued like that at University. If I say so myself I was a good looking guy. I was blond, six feet four inches tall, with a swimmer's physique; narrow waist, broad shoulders, and a six pack. Plenty of women would go out with me the once or twice, but then they would lose interest. And of course, I now know why.
My inability to make a pass combined with the pheromones of desperation oozing from my pores were unlikely to be much of a turn on.
I did know how to behave like a gentleman even if I couldn't behave like a grown up man. I opened doors for my dates, pulled out chairs for them to sit, and even walked on the outside of the pavement when I was with them.
Ultimately I saw women as fragile, porcelain, often beautiful, but asexual creatures. It did not occur to me that they were driven by the same physical desires that I was. And I did have physical desires. I masturbated on a regular basis from so far back that I can't remember at what age I started.
2.
When I was at school I both swam and played hockey and was pretty good at both.
When I left school I had already decided to give up swimming which I had come to hate. My father had taught me to swim almost before I could walk and when I arrived at school my ability was noted, and I was "volunteered" to swim for them. And it was so boring. Swimming one hundred metres in under a minute is OK, but it was the hours of mindless solitary swimming up and down a featureless swimming pool, often in the early mornings or evenings, that I didn't like.
I much preferred field hockey. This is a team sport requiring not just physical fitness and speed, but also strategy, tactics, and teamwork. I was a goalkeeper which requires agility, speed, quick reflexes, good positioning, good decision making, and importantly physical courage. When I was playing, facemasks had not yet been introduced and it was a high risk pastime.
And so, when I got to university one of the first clubs I joined was the hockey club. They were keen to have me. As a good goalkeeper I was at a premium. I ended up playing for the university first team on Saturdays and Wednesdays and played In the Sunday mixed hockey league whilst on Monday evenings I trained.
The Sunday mixed hockey league was composed of teams of six men and five women from various university departments or halls of residence. I opted to play for my department and not for the hall of residence where I lived, and this made me a little unpopular with some members of the hall team.
One of the girls who lived in my hall of residence was a Canadian called April. She was tall, slim, and very pretty with long brown hair and had the most gorgeous muscled athletic thighs which she showed off whenever she was on a hockey pitch. And I believed she didn't like me much mainly because she didn't think I was being loyal to the residence, and because she was a fierce competitor and wanted to win, and I could have helped her to do this. Having said that I don't think we had ever exchanged more than a few words.
3.
Sometime around the autumn of my second year I went out for a drink with a girl from the hall and after drinking too much went back to the communal area in the women's wing of the residence where she offered me a cup of coffee and I promptly fell asleep. Sometime later I became aware of the sound of three female voices talking softly in the background. One of the voices was that of April, the second was that of "my date," and the third I did not recognise.
And they were talking about men or more specifically about their boyfriends and their sex lives. So, I pretended to be asleep and listened.
What Aprils said both shocked and excited me. She was talking about a rugby player who she was going out with who she said was good enough in bed because he did at least understand that she wanted to be dominated by a strong man, but that he didn't understand that it wasn't alright to roll over and go to sleep after he "had shot his load" because she nearly always wanted more.
Although more was said, that was all that I could think about in the days that followed. And I started to look at April in a different light. Previously I had thought of her as cold and beautiful, but she had suddenly become hot, sexy, desirable, and completely unattainable.
4.
In the Spring my department and my hall played in the Sunday league and shortly after half time April was put through on goal with only me to beat. I came out of goal to meet her and attempted to kick the ball away from the end of her hockey stick but in doing so I took out the ball, the stick, and April.
She weighed around 60 kg whilst I weighed around 95 kg in my equipment including metal kickers and pads and we met at a combined speed of at least 25 mph, and I heard her bones snap as she went down.
After she had been taken to hospital by ambulance the game was continued and although my heart wasn't in it we won three -nil. I had wanted to go to hospital with her, but the ambulance personnel had said only one person could accompany her to the hospital and one of her girlfriends had gone with a promise to ring the hall with any news.
The hall was buzzing when I returned, and a good few people seemed to think that I was a bit of a bully, even though it was an accident. Later in the evening I was called to the hall wardens office and he gave me the comparatively good news that she had a simple fracture of the fibula in the right leg and the ulna in her right arm and should make a full recovery although she was in plaster. Furthermore, everybody present had confirmed it was "one of those things that happen." Her parents in Canada had been informed and would travel to the UK to see her within a few days.
5.
The following morning was Sunday and straight after breakfast I went to the hospital and asked if I could visit April and because she was on a single bed side room I was allowed. She was asleep with a cast over her right foot and leg extending to below her knee and had a cast on her right forearm which extended above her elbow. She looked very vulnerable and pale, and I felt very guilty.
She stirred and looked up at me.
"Hello April," I said.
"I'm so sorry."
"Don't be. It was an accident," she said, and then went back to sleep.
I sat with her for another twenty minutes, but she didn't wake again, and the nurse told me she had been given morphine for the pain and she would be groggy for at least 24 hours.
The following day I saw her during visiting hours but had to contend with several others including a large guy who I assumed was her boyfriend and I had time only to reiterate my apology which in her morphine induced fugue she could not remember. Her response was the same.
Two days later she moved to the University sick bay. It was agreed she would convalesce there until the casts could be removed and she could walk. It was impracticable for her to fly to her home in Vancouver and she wished to stay to study. And so, she moved into a single room with her books and her plaster casts.
I visited her again and this time she was relatively pain free and looked better and we finally got to talk, and I made my peace with her. And I found myself to very comfortable in her company quite possibly because I believed our relationship was, and would be, completely platonic.
After that I started to visit every day and I found my visits lasting longer and longer. About a week later I visited one evening as April was eating her supper and struggling to eat with her left hand, and she asked me to help. I took the fork from her, cut her meat with a knife, and started to feed her. It was a very sensual moment as she chewed her food and then opened her mouth for me to give her another morsel.
All this time I had not seen her boyfriend and was beginning to understand how selfish he must be. A few days later I found out. When I visited April she was visibly upset and very quiet. I did not push her but soon she confided in me.
"I don't know what's wrong with me. I always pick the bastards. John has finished with me. He's made all sorts of excuses, but I know it's because he can't fuck me the way he wants when I'm stuck in here with two plaster casts"
I said nothing but cut her food and fed her.
And I visited her every day. And I could not but notice that April was applying makeup and trying to look pretty for me.
6.
About a month after the accident, I visited, and April was sitting up in bed She looked beautiful, but she had a look on her face I had not seen before. It looked like indecision, and I asked her was there something troubling her.
"Malcolm," she said.
"Do you like me?"
"You know I do."
"I mean as a woman."
And I understood what she meant.
"April I like you as a friend and as a woman. "
