On the walk to Justin’s house

The streets are slippery and it’s freezing outside. JVL is clearly freezing to death, and I’m not so warm either, so we make small talk about my horrific lack of geography knowledge and my roommates and how I stopped going to school for over a month in grade five and how he finished high school and got admitted to UofT and we cross some train tracks and then we arrive.

I finally meet Andrew

His roommate mistakes me for another of the Snail girls. Into the kitchen to grab plates for our noodles and spring rolls; JVL reveals the tantalizing fact that he actually enjoys washing dishes and doing laundry. With these seductive words, I am lured down into the cozy wood-paneled basement.

So here we are, alone at last

Alone and trying to be non-awkward. We take the high road and avoid the bar altogether: tonight will be carried out, for good or for awesome, in complete sobriety. I try out the absurdly oversized bean bag chair again, and learn that it’s been his since his Dad bought it for him at age four. He’s been taught to cherish things, that’s for certain. I like that thought.

There’s some joking around about how much more humongous it seemed when he was little enough to get lost in it, and then we settle down to eat and watch MTV. JVL suggests that I cannot possibly enjoy hip hop because I am Irish; I promptly retort that I’m offended by everything but Enya and the Rankin Family and could he please change the channel. Which he does. To ‘Novacaine’. I freak out because of my ridiculous fear of dentistry, and ‘Novacaine’ becomes the threat of the evening. We finally decide to watch the Kevin Smith University Tour, and settle down at opposite ends of the sofa.

Thus begins the teenage sofa odyssey

At first, there is some gradual inching along the sofa until knees touch, elbows touch, and finally, blanket is shared. I get tummy tickled, slipping down further into the couch to escape, I unfurl into the crook of an arm. There is some adjusting until my head is under his chin. He stretches out and I realise he’s too long for the sofa. We twist and tuck until the situation has lost all subtlety and we’re lying next to one another, faces hovering together. And at last, the kissing. Oh, the kissing. The glasses come off and there’s soft hair and necks and napes and earlobes and noses rubbing and long eyelashes and

…and the curtain of decency falls there, and I bid you goodnight.

(No, “and then”! NO, “and then”! NO, “AND THEN”!)