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Sport 29: Spring 2002

Samantha

Samantha

I haven't heard from Chris for ages; we've drifted apart. Andy is teaching English—of all things—in Korea. Kirsten has resumed a second page 131 promiscuity; it's a kind of grief. Kathleen has a new guy.

Samantha wears black; the colour suits everyone but it's particularly fetching on her. Hair falls evenly from her pale centre part to frame her face. She's been waiting ages for this style to come back. Such patience. ‘I'm no longer a girl,’ she says.

Three days ago Samantha was in New York. There she met Greg, her first love. That's right. Shane wasn't her first love at all. You think you know people. Shane's all over with. It was over for a while, but they kept trying. Then she stopped trying, which I admire. And Kathleen didn't attempt to steal Shane after all. They've discussed it, woman to woman. Apparently he initiated the whole sordid thing.

With Greg, the first love agreement is reciprocated. Samantha is Greg's first love also; now gay, now living in New York. As she speaks of his apartment, I imagine a huge room overlooking the skyline. A light breeze massages the curtains, their lazy billows conveying indolence and taste. Apart from a stopover at JFK, I've never been to New York, so I can't say what an apartment there might look like, whether the windows would even open. I want to know, I want to be cosmopolitan enough and know enough to daydream accurately. Will I get out of my parents' house? I had a full-time job, then the place shut. My money's as low as ever. I'm temping, again; sometimes the present feels so foreign.

‘Hey Samantha,’ I say. We've hung out a bit lately. We've laughed at how freakish some of our old mates have become. In honest moments, we've admitted that we resemble them also in our compromises and alterations of plan. But we are different. They've had failures, we've had setbacks; we've been tactical at every point. Once we kissed, but she stopped me. She's going out with Andy 2, who gets back from South-East Asia, where he's been on business. They're an item now. Andy 2 came home after his Serb found someone richer. Then Sam broke up with Shane and she and Andy 2 met by accident. Some say a new environment is like an x-ray image, detailing hidden flaws. Coming home can give the same effect. Andy 2 has not changed at all, apart from detesting poverty: apparently it robs you of the capacity to form sound values.

Neither Sam nor I have mentioned the kissing episode again. I've page 132 thought about it. We all have this little cinema sitting on our necks and at the back, in a pinprick of light, that's where love begins. Samantha and Andy 2 have been together for almost a year. Apart from jaunts, their travelling days are over, on that they're agreed. Before leaving for New York, she gave him an ultimatum: marriage or nothing. What an improbable couple. They've each been unfaithful once, she at the beginning of the relationship and he more recently, with a young woman Sam says looks like a badger. He disapproves of her friends. If they ever go out, he has three drinks and starts calling her names. She weeps and phones her friends who scold her and tell her what a bum he is. But they tacitly accept that a mediocre relationship is better than loneliness. I understand. Between the ages of 18 and 24, a veil covered the isolation that I sometimes felt as a kid. Despite my vigilance, this magician's hankie is rising, revealing unexpected complexity.

I want to tell Samantha there's more to life than this. I want to tell her I'll be able to lose some weight, I just haven't had the motivation up until now. These pants are not me! For the last year that Samantha's been with Andy 2, and not returning my calls, I've imagined that she's in London. I've imagined her taking subways, I mean the tube, buying fruit off the barrows and rugging up against Arctic weather. I've walked beside her in my daydreams. We've slept together in those also, and it was fine, better than fine. I wonder how she might react if I reached into the hair she is so proud of. What am I worried about? I don't owe Andy 2 anything. I don't expect that Samantha and I will be two halves of the same bill meeting fatefully but I'll be different from Shane or Andy 2, and perhaps a little like Greg. Inserting my fingers into that fringe (she's in front of me, I don't want to scare her) will be a propitious gesture; it won't have the indifference to consequences that youthful infatuation has, nor it will show the acquiescence I see in relationships now, as if my friends bought a product and the guarantee expired then it broke but is still functional, so why not keep it? This country is comparatively young; there aren't too many corpses below our feet. It's home. Familiarity requires courage yet has a power that like love may transform so I do, I reach out.