By reading this you will gain nothing but an insight into someone you don't know. I go to an archaic boarding school in of England. There I met a boy whom I shall call Adam, for anonymity’s sake. We became very good friends indeed, spending three years talking to each other until two in the morning. We knew everything about each other. At the start of the fourth year (of five) he began to drift away, as was most probably inevitable, and I saw less and less of him, and knew him less intimately, but when we did talk we still got on famously (quite literally). A girl from another continent whom Adam had met on the net called Eve professed her love for him and he reciprocated, and then spent hours every night sending mammoth emails to her, becoming in general from my p.o.v even more reclusive, and this withdrawal made me sad and jealous and many other selfish things. Nonetheless, we made plans to direct a play together, and here the plot thickens.
We chose/were steered towards choosing The Birthday Party, and we started rehearsing this summer before term ended. We continued into this term, the start of our fifth year, as our slot was at the end of November. As Lulu, (for those of you who know this great, disturbing, fantastic bitch of a play) we cast an attractive girl from a local sixth-form college who I’d known vaguely having been in a big production with her before.
Two months on, at the end of October, with the whole play blocked (i.e. who moves where when and to say which line- the framework of the play onto which acting is then built) and lines being learnt, I was forcibly removed from the production of the play by my Housemaster and my father. It was like being denied a drug. It was being denied an addiction. With two weeks to go I rejoined the cast and Adam, and it was fantastic. I’d really missed it and it was great to back and getting know the cast I’d auditioned again, besides which things were now very busy, and all the help possible was necessary.
Although the audience, being almost exclusively 13-18 on the first night, laughed at the conclusion to Act 2 (and if you know the play, you’ll know that’s sick ) we were all so pleased. I just couldn’t watch, so I spent most of my time backstage talking to the actors/resses. Midway through Act 2 on the next night, (six days and 23 hours ago) just before the party itself, Lucy told me that she was going out with Adam, but told me not to tell anyone
/dull factual history
I just stood and opened and closed my mouth. Adam, who had been mid-LDR for fifteen months, and still emailed and called every day? This didn’t make sense. She asked why I was so surprised, and I shelved my thoughts and just said I hadn’t expected it at all. Which was true. I’d not noticed any longing hazes from Adam to Lucy. That’d been me , in a kind of wouldn’t-it-be-nice way. We’d spent some time talking on quite an intense level for near-strangers, but mostly it was just idle lust. Come the last night of the play I was so upset at end of play-ness that I cried and it was all very emotional compared to Adam’s ever-present stoic front.
That Sunday we all met up for a meal and got drunk, all eight of us. It was most convivial. That evening Adam told me that he and Lucy’d been kissing these past two weeks but that it’d got out of hand. There was, he said, no emotional attachment, but was so desperate for human contact after not having kissed anyone for so long that he’d done so. He still loved Eve and felt disgusted at himself and at Lucy’s suggestion that they have sex- he’d do anything to avoid it. What was even worse was that he really liked her, but only in the context of a friendship. He wished he’d told her about Eve 2 weeks ago, and then everything would have been fine. I said she’d told me, but explained why I’d not mentioned it to him: because if it was true then he might be upset at Lucy for having told me, and if it wasn’t then likewise, but more so. For some reason here I stopped eating, too confused and preoccupied, possibly.
I’d arranged to meet Lucy on Monday and when we did so we talked a lot about her, and it transpired that she’d been fucked over so many times she was now very self-protective and tried not to commit to any relationship so that she wouldn’t be hurt by the eventual inevitable breakup. As a romantic idealist, this failure to be young and carefree etc upset me quite a lot; to be disappointed with life at 17 was depressing. I told her so. We talked a lot about a lot. She said she was despite herself becoming emotionally attached to Adam and had great hope for their relationship, but had tried not to let Adam know this, but was still keeping herself outwardly reserved. That night Adam told me he was going to write her a letter to explain it all, because the truth was the least anyone deserved.
On Tuesday I rang Lucy in the evening and we talked for about an hour about lots of stuff that runs very deep with me, like insecurity and self-acceptance, and Adam started the letter. I started eating again. I met Lucy for coffee again on Wednesday and she gave me a letter not to read in her presence. It was really touching and about lots of what we’d spoken about on Tuesday night, and that evening we talked again for about an hour about personal histories and the like. Adam finished the letter (I think) and might have posted it by now.
Term is over. I’ve gone far away from where school is and won’t see Lucy for a month . Adam knows of my interest in Lucy, but I don’t. Is it purely physical? Emotional? What’s going on? I know that she’s currently attached to Adam but that changes nothing for me, possibly because I know Adam doesn’t really reciprocate. But it’s all so horribly complicated, and I don’t know how I do feel, or should feel, and I’m going to ring her tonight and if she asks me why I didn’t tell her about Eve, what am I going to say? There’s nothing I can say really, but you can see why I didn’t, can’t you?
For whom have I written this? Why have I done so? What do I want from it? Reassurance? Attention? Reference to My Fascinatingly Detailed Teen Angst Bullshit Day Log - Part 1 ? Answers to all these questions on a postcard, please.