I've always been a little unconventional, at least where men are concerned. I had a bit of a different upbringing to most of the kids in my year at school. It was more like southern California than south London. California in the sixties and seventies, instead of the mean streets of the eighties in England, when it seemed everybody had an idea for a fast buck or they were on the dole queue and on their uppers, married with three kids and no hope left.
My parents had decided not long after they met, seeing as they already knew they had both found "the one", that they would have no expectations from each other. They agreed to support whatever dreams they had, over and above making concrete plans years ahead which would inevitably lead to regret if expectations fell short. So they travelled together as soon as they finished college, just pooled all their cash, sold anything they didn't need to take with them, and bummed a lift to the coast and got a ferry to the continent. Then they hitch-hiked from one country to the next, finding short term jobs on the way. Eventually a few years later they had found themselves on the southern tip of India, running a travellers hostel and a bar, making new friends every day, watching the world go by.
But now they wanted to own their own home, instead of feeling like they were camping out every night, and some nights literally camping out under the stars when the full moon parties were in full swing. The parties were the deciding factor, now they had me to think about. I was a toddler then, running about barefoot under palm trees. Mum and Dad didn't want to just hang out and party anymore, they wanted more security. So with a fond farewell and many tears one moonlit night on the beach, they partied their last party and then packed up and headed back westwards until they rocked up on a friend's doorstep in Wandsworth, brown and dusty, bearing gifts and stories in return for a place to stay until they found their own. So I had a different perspective from most kids my age. I always thought home was where the palm trees were, not this grey, wet, cold concrete jungle.
I was lonely, but not for long once I worked out that every kid in London just wanted to be like all the others, trendy, fashionable and popular.
I didn't let the trendies intimidate me into cutting my hair or wearing the same old things they wore. I got a job in a shop and worked my way up to a local department store, so I had first dibs on the latest fads before they were even noticed. Although most of the time I didn't even like anything I saw there. I was always looking for something else. Something unique, something rare. Something honest and real.
Once I'd decided that I wanted something different from the mass market offerings, my taste knew no bounds. I would trawl through market stalls and charity shops for anything I liked the look of, anything vintage, quirky or classic, so that I could mix and match into any style I needed to blend into on any given day. One day I would be in a skirt suit, with my hair up and smart, another I would be in shorts, long flowing shirts and knee high boots with studs and spikes everywhere. I had acquired a taste for tattoos and piercings too, and harboured a secret wish to buy a classic motorbike and just ride for miles into the sunset, following the wanderlust inherited from my trail beaten parents.
That was how, in a roundabout way I met Michael. I always hung out with the bikers whenever I went out drinking, or went to gigs in the city when I had the spare cash. I loved the rock bars and old fashioned pubs where they would line up the bikes outside. On any Sunday afternoon there would be at least five or six parked on the forecourt, ticking slowly in the heat while the owners lounged on the wooden tables, or crowded around the bar waiting for the music to start. Later in the evening the bands would start up and if the weather was good and people stayed out late, it could get quite friendly by the end of the evening. It always seemed more natural that way, you would bump into somebody in a crowd, start chatting about music or bikes and then in no time you would be best friends, drinking until all hours, talking about anything and everything and sometimes end up crashing on somebody's sofa for the night if you had too many beers. Even though you'd only met them a few hours before.
Then in the morning you'd wake up and make your way home, never knowing the next time you would see them. Somehow that felt a bit too much like an obligation to ask if they were around again next weekend. People like that never expected anything from me, never wanted to know everything about me or where I was from, they were just happy to enjoy my company and I theirs, until the next day dawned and it was time to go home, or go to work for another week.
Michael was one of the crowd, but not in the places I was hanging out. A friend of his was having a birthday and had invited him to stay for the week while he was waiting for parts for his beaten up old Norton, and he had borrowed an equally old and beaten up Triumph to buzz around on. I was admiring the paintwork somewhat teasingly and he asked me my name, and right from that moment we seemed to just feel comfortable together, not together so much as side by side, just sharing the company and the vibe and the evening, which slid by slowly aided by the music, beer and sunshine. It was midsummer, the pubs were heaving, the music was pounding, the vibe was decidedly relaxed..... somehow that first time we met it was different, like the first day of a holiday feeling, everybody just let go and everything seemed to just click together and flow like the golden liquid sky and the music and the sunshine reflected off the cars and bikes passing by outside.
There was no denying the attraction either. It was like magic, an unspoken understanding that we clicked. We knew we were both thinking the same thing as soon as we looked at each other. Do you want another beer? Yes. Do you want to come outside? Yes. Looking back I don't think we even spoke much after that. We just knew what we both wanted by looking into each other's eyes. Not just that we liked each other already, but that we knew we wanted to talk, to find out more about each other, right now, even though it was late and noisy and there were too many people around us inside to make ourselves heard. We were supposed to be partying at his friend's birthday bash, but somehow it was pointless to pretend there wasn't something already there. Something in our faces that we saw in each other, and recognised in ourselves.
So we wound our way outside with our fresh beers and found a seat on the corner of the wall to perch for a while and talk. We wasted no time in finding out where we both lived, several hundred miles apart as it happened but quickly moved onto work and family and quickly discovered that yes we were both single and no there was nobody special in our lives. It didn't even seem like that was the most important thing we needed to find out, we just kept talking, about bikes, music, films we both liked, friends and families.
Once I'd told him about my half wish to get my own bike and travel like my parents had, his face lit up. He had had the same idea and was just waiting until he could afford a new bike, one that could take some serious miles on the open road. Maybe even off-road, if he ever found himself in some far flung country with no tarmac to speak of.
