There must be a moment in a boy’s life when something in him clicks and he just gets girls. That’s what I reckon. That one day he doesn’t and then he does and it just happens with no warning at all.
Like I heard this weird fact as how adults don’t hear the same as people who are younger and there’s these alarms and the sound is pitched so it is an irritation to young men and young women, but it isn’t even heard by anyone over the age of twenty-five.
And I also heard that when a person gets older, they don’t see the colours in the world same as when they was young. It’s like the world loses its colour and is a little greyer because a person is grey, but it’s nothing to do with the world and everything to do with a change in the person looking.
I reckon it’s the same with boys and how they see girls. There’s a time before when girls are just boys in dresses, no real difference, ‘cept girls is all ribbons and curls and playing with dolls and a boy don’t want nothing to do with that. And then there’s this moment, and it must be a moment, and it’s maybe as sudden as a door slammed, and the whole world is stood on its head, and girls are a different creature altogether and something to be yearned for.
That’s what it was for me with Yulia. One day she was just this girl to laugh at and to say no to when she asked if she could play our games, and then she was different. Then she was beautiful, like I said, and I thought the change was in her at first and not in me. Like when a caterpillar makes the shift from something creeping to something that flits in sunlit wonder from flower-head to flower-head, its wings the colour of butter or berries. It was Yulia’s hair, or the way her dress stuck to her figure, or her smile. I don’t know – it was everything.
I wrote her name in pen on my arm, like a tattoo, and I kept it out of sight under my shirt sleeve and I didn’t wash it for nearly a month, carefully inking over it if the name lost its definition. And I kept putting myself where she’d be, where Yulia’d be, so we’d see each other, and I’d just stand there looking and no words coming out of my mouth if she asked what I wanted. And when I was by myself, I said her name over and over like a prayer and sometimes like a song.
I don’t know how it happened, only that it did. It was late one night, I recall, and the sky was pricked over with stars and me and Yulia we were at the back of The Chase bar. From inside we could hear something playing on the jukebox and the rise and fall of people talking and glasses clinking. The yellow light spilling onto us through the frosted glass, it was like the sun.
I was holding Yulia’s hand or she was holding mine; I still can’t explain that. And she was fidgeting, like she wanted to dance, her feet shifting on the grass and her body swaying and the broken bits of song in her mouth. And she looked up at the sky, her neck craned back, so I looked too, and then she leaned over and kissed me.
I didn’t make much of it at the time, but afterwards I took it home and I turned it over and over in my head till it was shiny and smooth and hard as a pebble in my memory.
I didn’t see her after that night. I heard she moved away. Just like that, sudden as another door slammed. I felt sick when I found out and I called her all the bad names I knew and I went to the back of The Chase bar when it was dark and I spat on the ground, like I was spitting out that kiss she’d given me.
There were others after Yulia, and kisses behind The Chase Bar more than I can count and I don’t remember a single one in any detail; and more than kisses there were one day, and stars in so many different skies, and yellow light like the sun, and music playing. And one day I loved a girl called Lucy and the next I didn’t, like seeing her in colour one day and seeing her grey the next, or hearing her voice all sweet as sugar and then hearing it full of cracks and whistles. But Yulia, when I think of her, even now, she is just as she always was – in my head she is, and that’s just beautiful, and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop thinking of her like that.
Patricia Ann McNair 
There must be a moment in a boy’s life when something in him clicks and he just gets girls. That’s what I reckon. That one day he doesn’t and then he does and it just happens with no warning at all.
Like I heard this weird fact as how adults don’t hear the same as people who are younger and there’s these alarms and the sound is pitched so it is an irritation to young men and young women, but it isn’t even heard by anyone over the age of twenty-five.
And I also heard that when a person gets older, they don’t see the colours in the world same as when they was young. It’s like the world loses its colour and is a little greyer because a person is grey, but it’s nothing to do with the world and everything to do with a change in the person looking.
I reckon it’s the same with boys and how they see girls. There’s a time before when girls are just boys in dresses, no real difference, ‘cept girls is all ribbons and curls and playing with dolls and a boy don’t want nothing to do with that. And then there’s this moment, and it must be a moment, and it’s maybe as sudden as a door slammed, and the whole world is stood on its head, and girls are a different creature altogether and something to be yearned for.
That’s what it was for me with Yulia. One day she was just this girl to laugh at and to say no to when she asked if she could play our games, and then she was different. Then she was beautiful, like I said, and I thought the change was in her at first and not in me. Like when a caterpillar makes the shift from something creeping to something that flits in sunlit wonder from flower-head to flower-head, its wings the colour of butter or berries. It was Yulia’s hair, or the way her dress stuck to her figure, or her smile. I don’t know – it was everything.
I wrote her name in pen on my arm, like a tattoo, and I kept it out of sight under my shirt sleeve and I didn’t wash it for nearly a month, carefully inking over it if the name lost its definition. And I kept putting myself where she’d be, where Yulia’d be, so we’d see each other, and I’d just stand there looking and no words coming out of my mouth if she asked what I wanted. And when I was by myself, I said her name over and over like a prayer and sometimes like a song.
I don’t know how it happened, only that it did. It was late one night, I recall, and the sky was pricked over with stars and me and Yulia we were at the back of The Chase bar. From inside we could hear something playing on the jukebox and the rise and fall of people talking and glasses clinking. The yellow light spilling onto us through the frosted glass, it was like the sun.
I was holding Yulia’s hand or she was holding mine; I still can’t explain that. And she was fidgeting, like she wanted to dance, her feet shifting on the grass and her body swaying and the broken bits of song in her mouth. And she looked up at the sky, her neck craned back, so I looked too, and then she leaned over and kissed me.
I didn’t make much of it at the time, but afterwards I took it home and I turned it over and over in my head till it was shiny and smooth and hard as a pebble in my memory.
I didn’t see her after that night. I heard she moved away. Just like that, sudden as another door slammed. I felt sick when I found out and I called her all the bad names I knew and I went to the back of The Chase bar when it was dark and I spat on the ground, like I was spitting out that kiss she’d given me.
There were others after Yulia, and kisses behind The Chase Bar more than I can count and I don’t remember a single one in any detail; and more than kisses there were one day, and stars in so many different skies, and yellow light like the sun, and music playing. And one day I loved a girl called Lucy and the next I didn’t, like seeing her in colour one day and seeing her grey the next, or hearing her voice all sweet as sugar and then hearing it full of cracks and whistles. But Yulia, when I think of her, even now, she is just as she always was – in my head she is, and that’s just beautiful, and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop thinking of her like that.