Looking back there were so many turning points in our lives but for me sexuality, and sex in general and its effect on our friendship and the different ways love developed became important in the autumn of the year we turned eighteen. I'm not talking about the "kids fooling about" stuff but the powerful sort that attracts and repels, the sort that drives you and changes your life forever.
Janey and I were now regulars at the gym. We had student passes which made it just about affordable. We were keen on hockey and the second round of the girls' county trials was coming up soon. I was already in the county team having been picked last season but Janey was still in the "possibles". A lanky beanpole from a neighbouring school had been awarded the "probables" place in attack because she was fitter than Janey even though she couldn't match Janey's speed and strength.
Janey had a couple of other problems. She was small, only five feet four in her trainers, but like a lot of small people she was tough and aggressive, very upfront and outgoing - a real party animal.
That was the other problem.
At our age there were lots of parties. seventeenth birthdays, eighteenth birthdays, even the odd nineteenth birthday. Sometimes we went to the local nightclubs or discos for student specials - no alcohol - and if we had exchange students from Germany or France (those were our language options at school) we always took them out to the local pubs - plenty of alcohol there! There were passing exam parties, passing driving test parties, end of term parties, you name it. Most of our parents were amazingly tolerant and allowed parties with booze so long as we didn't do go over the top. But any time anybody's parents were away - then it got really wild.
And Janey was the wildest of all, even the boys were a bit wary of her. She drank way too much and often ended up legless. I only got as far as the giggling stage before I couldn't take any more so I was usually sober enough to see us both back home. Usually I had to wait while she had a goodbye snog and a grope in someone's hallway as we were leaving. I can still see her that way; up against a wall swallowing some guy's tongue with her arms draped over his shoulder, cigarette in one hand - she smoked too, I really disapproved of that. Meanwhile he would have his hands under her top trying to get her bra over her tits, or one hand up her skirt and down her panties while she ground her hips into him.
Sometimes I would be similarly occupied - minus the cigarette - but my moments never seemed as wild and abandoned as Janey's. I was usually pulling wandering palms and fingers away, or maybe just keeping a wrist grip on an exploring hand in case it went too far but she didn't care what they did to her, though I never did see her go all the way - even upstairs in the bedrooms when we all went pretty far - but somehow I guessed she might have done it at least once.
So the gym was a must. Janey was determined to get into good shape for the trials and I was determined to help her. We had been best friends since our first day at primary school and we did most things together.
We attended an aerobics class on Monday nights, and either circuit training on Wednesdays or weight training on Fridays, homework came in somewhere in between - but we got it done. Despite all the parties and the sport we were conscientious scholars - both predicted Grade A's. I wanted to be a barrister - all my teachers said I had the sort of unemotional unrelenting logic that would probably make me a good lawyer; Janey wasn't sure what she wanted, either journalism or politics.
Tonight was aerobics and the gym was full of leotard clad bodies and sports bras as we all filed past the Reception desk to the main hall. There were a few men - nothing to write home about, mostly trying to get rid of middle-aged flab - and lots of middle-aged women too. Janey and I were always the youngest there. It was different for circuit and weight training - a mixture of young men and young women. All older than us but at least fanciable. Last season, two months before my sixteenth birthday - Janey's two months younger than that - we got chatted up by a couple of blokes about twenty-four. Smart haircuts, expensive smelling aftershave or shower gel or something else equally heady, and new, smart sports gear - and smart suits when we saw them in the bar afterwards - no alcohol with our student passes. They asked us out for a drink and everything. Janey would have said yes of course but one of their friends on the periphery of the conversation, the flirting and chat up lines, said something about "jailbait" and they backed off pretty quickly. After that they were just polite, though the next week one of them was on the weights machine next to the one Janey and I were sharing. He asked a bit jokingly when were we eighteen. "Midnight tonight," Janey said, quick as a flash as she took my place ready to do her set.
"Oh yeah?" he said with a smile and then he turned to me as he stood up. "What about you then?"
At five feet ten I'm tall, and kind of rangy compared to Janey. She can pass for eighteen when she's made up but I've walked into some 21 and over nights at the disco with no trouble. He was looking down into my eyes and I had to look up a good couple of inches. I caught my breath and my legs turned wobbly and I couldn't help but stammer the truth.
"March 24th." I said, and looked down in embarrassment. He had well muscled, dark hairy legs and new Reebok trainers. Back then March 24th was nine weeks away.
"Hmm," he said as I looked up. "Might see you around after the summer." He grinned and threw his towel across his shoulder as he strode away.
"Idiot!" Janey hissed as she heaved the bar upwards. "You should have said you were eighteen, you can easily pass for it, then we'd both have had a chance."
I wished I had Janey's confidence. Now that he'd gone I could see the missed opportunity, but I was really thrown. This was the first time I'd been seriously approached by a proper, grown up man, and he was serious, I could see that in his eyes. Suddenly I'd taken a step up from the world of the gangly, acne-ridden lads who hung around us at school. Even the upper sixth form boys weren't in this league. My pulse, which had just about returned to normal after my set, was now racing and I'm sure that if I hadn't already been sweating and red from exertion my colour would have been up too.
I looked towards where he was now standing with two or three of his friends. "They're not going to be seriously interested in us." I defended my lack of enthusiasm, no - more than that; my real anxiety about what we might get ourselves into. "They wouldn't settle for a snog and a quick feel." I leaned forward and almost whispered as she breathed in deeply and hoisted the bar for the last one of her set. "They'd expect us to go all the way."
"So, it's got to happen sometime," she returned, lowering the bar carefully. "How would you like your first time to be? With someone like him, probably in a smart flat? Or up behind the bike sheds with Darren Clarke after the May Ball?"
"Oh God no! Not Darren Clarke," I said with feeling and we both burst out laughing and my embarrassment and that peculiar sense of ashamed arousal disappeared with the break in tension.
But the gym was now a place of sexual tension in a way that it had never been before. That was good as it made motivating Janey easier. She was forever pointing out good-looking blokes in their twenties or even thirties. "What about him then?" she'd say with a nod in the strategic direction. We'd even started giving them points. Not uncommon I later found out, amongst both men and women in groups.
We had to give the women points too, just as a way of seeing if we stood a chance in a straight competition between us and some of them if we were ever after the same man. Over a Lucozade Sport in the bar we gave ourselves six out of ten and rated the other women above or below that. Mostly we won, well, in her own mind Janey always won, I wasn't so sure. Some of the women in here were very attractive.
For instance, in our aerobics class they were mostly pretty old but there was one younger woman who we kind of envied really. We'd given her an eight on our scale, I'd argued for nine but Janey wouldn't go that far. Her name was Deborah Sullivan and she had long blonde hair and was in her early twenties. She was already married with a ten month old baby boy so we couldn't really count her in our "who would get off with who" chart but if she were available she'd have been way up there. I guess she was trying to get her body back into shape after the baby - and it was working. Her husband was a few years older and they seemed quite well-off. He brought her once or twice in a Mercedes but she mostly drove herself in a new BMW. She usually brought her baby in with her but he was always fast asleep in one of those carry-cot come buggy type things. She put him just inside the doors where she could see him if he woke up. He never did - that kid was so placid, even with all the music and calling. But then so was she, so cool and together, so focussed on her exercises. She hardly ever spoke, although the baby was always being cooed over by the other women. Even Janey and I had a peek and came over all gooey. She just smiled and said what a good boy he was.
On the day that she first really came to my attention she was in the front line like she always was so she could be near the door if her baby cried. We were in the row immediately behind. The aerobics instructor turned on the CD. "Pump Up the Volume", we always started with that, and soon we were all pumping away like mad and breathing was hard and the sweat began to run off us. Janey was breathing real ragged - she'd had a smoke on the way here. "Yeah, I know, " she'd said when I'd looked sideways at her. "Well, you're not my mum." But she'd thrown down the cigarette anyway.
In front of us Deborah Sullivan was also working hard. We were doing repeating knee lifts and her light blue sports crop top had an even darker blue line of sweat down the middle of her back. She was very slim with a good shape, even after the baby, and a bottom to die for. It's perfection was accentuated by the rhythmic lift of her right leg swinging from down on the floor right up until her knee was under her chin. Her waist was bare where the crop top ended but the sweat continued running downwards into the cleft of her buttocks and made the tight lycra pants as dark down there as the crop top. I didn't realise I was staring until Janey paused in her rhythm to lean across, "Great backside, now I know why you wanted to give her a nine - I reckon you fancy her more than the men!"
I knew better than to answer. Denial would be useless, it would be better to play along so I sort of winked and nodded. Janey grinned and picked up her rhythm.
