The Boy Next Door

So.... those firsts. I have another one I'd like to share with you.

Nope, not "my first time" - let's just say that's never all it's cracked up to be, is it?

Instead, it's the first time I had my heart broken.

I was 11, and in Standard 4 (Grade 6, for those of less advanced years). I was in love with the boy next door. His name was Ryan, and he was just gorgeous. He was also one of the popular kids, and completely unattainable to a semi-nerd like me.

My best friend at the time, Elke, and I used to spend hours climbing trees outside his house and spying on him over the wall. He had an older brother (a free pass into the realm of Coolness), a dad who let him do what he wanted and no visible female presence in the house, unless his brother had brought one or more of his girlfriends home. In which case we'd also spy on the ethereally beautiful girls as they sunbathed by the pool in impossibly tiny bikinis. His house was the like the Holy Grail of Cool.

One time, we were perched in our usual position, waiting for (stalking?) our quarry to emerge in the backyard, when the most exciting thing ever happened. Ryan came out wearing shorts, and proceeded to strip them off next to the pool, leaving just a pair of white underpants between his boyhood and our virgin eyes. Then he dived in.... and to our tangled dismay and excitement, those wet white underpants suddenly revealed a whole new world. It was my first real glimpse of the male bum, and I think from that moment on I always knew I would be a bad girl. We never got a clear look at the front, but it didn't matter - our illicit thrill was more than complete.

The memory of the clingy white underpants only served to enhance my crush. I was obsessed. I would daydream about how he would tell the whole class he loved me, and we would walk down the corridors together holding hands. I would listen to him playing his music super loud (his family was known in my family as The Noisy Neighbours for about a decade) - Rush Rush by Paula Abdul and I Touch Myself by the Divinyls - and imagine Ryan was secretly sending messages to me over the wall through the songs.

Elke and I, together with another friend and my little sister, hatched a plot to get his attention. We invented a girl called Llem - an acronym of all our names. We wrote him letters in disguised (read messy) handwriting saying how Llem was a girl who lived near him, and who thought he was really hot. We described our virtual self as being a stunner with long blonde hair and blue eyes (clearly the influence of Barbie still held much sway).

It worked. Ryan brought the letters to school with him, and soon everyone was discussing the mysterious Llem. Since the field of girls Ryan knew who lived near him was narrow, the day came when he asked me point blank if I was Llem. I almost died from sheer joy at having him talk to me, but managed to keep my cool long enough to deny it. I even speculated with him on who it could be, and this opened a previously impossible channel of communication between us. Sometimes he'd pass me as we walked to school in the mornings, and he'd always smile and say hi. Once or twice he even walked with me.

I was in heaven. I finally knew what it meant to fall in love, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he went public with his feelings. It didn't matter that he had never told anyone he liked me - the only acceptable way at age 11 to let a crush know you're interested. I knew. And I was convinced that he did too.

The day of our school fete dawned bright and clear, and I was stricken with nausea from the combination of nerves and excitement. One of the most anticipated events of the day was the Dedication Booth. It consisited of a table with a PA system, and cds of the latest chart hits. The idea was to go over, write a dedication to someone and pick a song, and have the MC for the day read your note out over the microphone before playing the accompanying song.

At age 11, I did not have the confidence to make the first move. I would wait for him to dedicate a song to me - I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it would happen. My heart was a-flutter and my hands were clammy. When he walked up to the booth, I stopped breathing. I watched as he wrote his note and flipped through the cds, his mates gently jeering and egging him on.

He walked away, laughing coyly. Time stood still. A few other dedications were read out, a few songs played; I remained motionless and unhearing, frozen by hope. And then it happened.

"And this next dedication is from Ryan Watts, and it goes out to......"

I squeezed my eyes shut....

"Mandy Smith!"

My world stopped turning. For the first time, the sound of my heart shattering into a million pieces rang in my ears.

I vaguely remember dashing to the bathroom, tears stinging my eyes. My friends were concerned, but I hadn't told them of my lofty expectations for that day. I might have said I didn't feel well.

I will never forget how much that moment hurt. Of course, my heart has been broken since then, in far more cruel and adult ways. But there is something uniquely intense and bittersweet about your first.

Ryan never knew. But everytime I hear a Paula Abdul song, I think of him.