Eventually, we returned to the arrivals hall and took our place at the barrier and waited. My mind was spinning when the doors finally swung open. There she was, with her tangled curly hair falling over her shoulders, looking like she’d just got out of bed. She had the swagger and maturity I had both hoped for before and dreaded now. She might as well have been holding a sign that said: ‘I’ve been in LA with older boys and I’ve been having sex.’ My plan now had failure written all over it. What little confidence I’d arrived with had vaporised into the ceiling of the arrivals hall and I was now feeling dull, English and no more than a little boy.
I had a whole speech worked out with witty jokes about my flight from London along with updates about my family. Instead, now faced with this confident and sexy young woman, I could hardly find the words to put a sentence together. I was trying to work my way towards saying something useful when I was ambushed by something completely new and unexpected: an incredible heat and suffocating humidity which hit me as we stepped out of the air-conditioned TWA terminal. I felt like a lobster that had been taken out of a fridge and dropped into a pot of boiling water. I hadn’t experienced anything like it before. The south of France was really hot, but that was a wonderful dry heat that made you feel completely alive. As we searched for the car, Nonny was excitedly telling us all about her trip. With each story I could feel my self-esteem sinking into my shoes. Now, with bright sunlight in my eyes and the feeling that my clothes were melting into my skin, I had become completely mute and depressed. I just wanted to go home.
As soon as we got onto the freeway, with all the windows open and a warm breeze starting to blow around the inside of the car, the heat and humidity began to feel bearable. In the front seat, Nonny’s mass of curly brown hair was blowing wildly around her face as she laughed and chatted to Nelson. She was looking so relaxed and pretty, which reminded me of a fantasy I’d had about being older and driving in a sports car with a beautiful girl. As my mind and body started to cool down, the panicky suffocation started to disappear and my spirits lifted as a glimmer of hope returned.
Everything around us was so much bigger than I’d ever imagined: the freeway was enormous, and the cars were like huge boats floating effortlessly on their suspensions. And the drivers were slouched back in their seats, one hand on the wheel and an elbow resting on an open window. In spite of the heat, everyone seemed laid back and untroubled. The vast freeway swept in long curves through the suburbs, past factories, shopping malls and cemeteries. Finally, it rose up onto the Triborough Bridge, and as it did so, the Manhattan skyline came into view. Here were the buildings I knew so well from photographs: the Empire State, the Chrysler and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. On the other side of the bridge the road spiralled down onto a slipway that took us south on the FDR Drive, which clung to the edge of the city with the East River on the left-hand side. Before long we turned off and headed into the heart of Manhattan.
We drove through the city, crossing avenues that stretched up- and downtown like canyons, and then through Central Park and out the other side towards the Aldriches’ apartment on the Upper West Side. Everything I’d seen in films and on the telly and in the picture books we had everywhere at home was there right in front of my eyes: the sweltering heat, the yellow taxi cabs and streets filled with people of every nationality coming and going in every direction.
The city felt so alive, and I loved everything about it. Thanks to something as simple as my place of birth, I felt a true sense of belonging – I was as much an American citizen as I was British, and that had always made me feel different from the rest of my family. America was my country, and New York was my city.
I would get to spend time in New York properly later on, but a plan had been made for us to head up to Boston the next day to stay with another of Nonny’s sisters, Alison, whose boyfriend had managed to get us tickets to see Bob Marley and the Wailers at the Harvard Stadium. I’d never been to a pop concert before, but my hope was that by going to one as massive as Bob Marley I’d get the chance to show Nonny that I had the edge on the boys from LA. I wasn’t entirely sure what that edge would be, when there was also the nagging question of having to dance. I’d once made a complete fool of myself to some grown-ups at a wedding, so I knew that dancing to impress a girl was a risky strategy. I’d therefore decided beforehand that if I stuck to some safe but gentle swaying from side to side, maybe with a little foot-tapping, I might just be able to give off the right vibe.
There was no protection from the heat on the stone terraces of the Harvard Stadium. Before the concert started, a tall black man with a long beard and a fancy white suit came onto the stage. Nonny’s sister Alison told us he was a famous comedian and civil rights campaigner called Dick Gregory. He gave a long speech, which no one seemed to be listening to, about apartheid in South Africa and the murdering of American Indians. Just as the heat was getting unbearable, Bob Marley came on and kicked off with ‘Positive Vibrations’.
It wasn’t long before my simple dance plan had gone up in flames. I quickly realised that if you don’t get up and dance at a reggae concert, you’re going to look and feel pretty stupid. There is nothing that stands out more than a white boy swaying like a moron and tapping his feet. Nonny wasn’t holding back, and by the time Bob Marley was singing ‘Buffalo Soldier’ she’d been adopted by a group of ageing Rastafarians standing next to us and sharing an enormous joint.
By now I had only been in America for three days, but the more time I spent with Nonny the more relaxed I felt around her, and I was beginning to think she might be feeling the same about me. I was even making her laugh, which, as Keith had told me, was the best way to make a girl like you.
On Sunday evening Nelson drove us from Boston to their farm in Connecticut. As the sun went down on the freeway and I sat in the back seat of the car, I noticed Nonny’s arm fall between the two front seats and her hand reach back towards me. I wasn’t sure if this was my moment. Was she reaching out to take my hand? What if I took it and had misread the signal? Either way, I knew it was now or never and slowly slid my hand into hers and held it. She didn’t pull back. I’d never held hands with a girl like this, and my heart was beating so fast I thought I would faint. My terrible jokes and our easy chatting had paid off. This was it: she liked me and I liked her – I had got myself a real girlfriend.
I don’t know why the Aldriches call their house a farm. There is nothing farm-like about it, other than it’s in the middle of the countryside, next to a field of melons and surrounded by low scrubby woodland that goes on for ever. The house, a mile up a dirt track, is modern, with brown wooden shingles covering the outside walls. On one side are large sliding doors that open onto a deck that wraps around the house. It was here that I stood the next morning, trying to get my bearings, as a beaten-up car came bouncing up the track towards the house. A slim girl in her twenties, with a tight T-shirt, cut-off denim shorts and long red hair, got out of the car and dragged a duffel bag into the house. A few minutes later she reappeared on the deck with Nelson and Nonny. Her name was Doreen, and she had been hired by Anna-Lou as our au pair for the summer. Doreen looked like Daisy Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. This left me wondering if she’d been hired to look after us or to help get Nonny and myself into trouble. If Anna-Lou had hired her, she must have done it over the phone and without ever meeting her, and I could tell Nelson had doubts about her suitability for the job. As he walked back into the house, I saw he was shaking his head and mumbling, ‘Oh Jesus Christ, Jonathan and Rachel will kill me!’ Had Anna-Lou been there, I’m not sure she would have left the three of us alone, but five minutes later Nelson’s car was heading down the track on his way back to New York. Whatever our au pair’s qualifications were for the job, or even her lack of them, I liked her straight away.
We soon settled into a chaotic but happy routine eating junk-food meals and picnicking and swimming in a local lake. On the weekends, when Nelson and Anna-Lou returned, we hung out at the
yacht club in Stonington and took the family’s dinghy out across the bay for sailing lessons. It was probably down to Doreen’s lack of sailing knowledge that she then let us go back to the yacht club during the week, where, with no experienced adults around, Nonny would take charge of our days in the dinghy. On one trip we attempted to cross a two-mile stretch of open water to Fishers Island. As you would expect when two kids and their au pair head out to sea unprepared, the weather decided to teach us a lesson and turn nasty. On this occasion we had to be rescued by a fishing boat, which towed us, by now shivering and wet, back to the yacht club. A man from the Coast Guard turned up to give us a serious telling-off for heading out to sea without notifying anyone, checking the weather or wearing suitable clothing. Having thought we were going to die out there in the storm, I felt he might have had a point.
Perhaps it was because of our near-death experience that things started to heat up between Nonny and myself. It began with us kissing when the au pair wasn’t looking. This moved on to a fair amount of lying in each other’s arms on the sofa as we read or listened to music. Doreen was fine with this as it usually happened when her boyfriend, who had only recently been let out of prison, turned up in his pick-up truck. They would then disappear into her bedroom for an hour or two and make noises like cowboys at a rodeo.
Left by Doreen to entertain ourselves, Nonny and I had soon moved on to lying on my bed together, late at night, talking until we fell asleep. Then one night, out of nowhere, she asked if I thought it might be time to try something else. Surely this was the moment I’d been building up to, waited for and talked about so many times with friends like Simon and the Roebers? I’d had to listen to one or more of the Roeber triplets going through every detail of how it’s done. Simon had bragged about it every time he took a girl out. Now I was being offered that very thing, by a girl I really liked, who was right there next to me on my bed, thousands of miles from all the people I most worried about judging me. But in the confusion of the moment I panicked and my first instinct was to say, ‘Can I think about it and get back to you?’ As soon as I did so, I felt stupid and a coward. Nonny smiled nervously at me, rolled over and soon fell asleep as I lay staring at the ceiling with a zillion thoughts going through my head. Why, after all the talk, was I so scared and unsure that this was the right thing to do? If I was ever going to lose my virginity, hold my head high and join Simon, Nick Ayer and the Roebers’ special club, this would have been the moment.
When I woke up the next morning, I’d forgotten Nonny was there – I wasn’t used to having a girl in my bed. I watched her as she slept, lying naked next to me with the covers half over her legs. I lay there for some time just staring: her hips, her breasts and the smoothness of her tanned skin. It was the body of a woman and, what’s more, a woman who had offered herself to me, and I’d said, ‘Can I get back to you?’ There were so many thoughts racing through my head, but the one that worried me the most was: was I physically mature enough to do it? I just didn’t know if I was or not, but not knowing was holding me back, which I was hardly going to admit to Nonny. Somehow I was going to have to get over it, take the risk and do it or I’d have to keep making excuses for the rest of the holiday. I also knew that if I didn’t man up and do it, I’d never be able to live with myself. To top it all, how would I ever explain my bottling out to someone like Simon? ‘Yes, Simon, we spent several nights together naked in a bed, and no, Simon, we never had sex. I just didn’t want to do it because, look at me, I’m still just a boy.’ Surely saying that to any of my friends, let alone Simon, would be worse than being laughed at by Nonny.
Nonny eventually woke up, and after a slightly awkward conversation about breakfast she went downstairs to look for Doreen. When I finally made it down to the kitchen, it was obvious I was walking in on a private conversation between the two of them. The conversation stopped, and Nonny and I both sat in silence as Doreen attempted to make pancakes. Watching her burn our breakfast and set fire to a tea towel felt like a good distraction. She looked at us and smiled knowingly, which I found a little uncomfortable.
‘I think what you guys need is something to help you chill out a little. I have a friend over in Rhode Island who can get us some of New England’s finest weed.’
I turned to Nonny and she looked back at me with a smile. Looking straight into my eyes she said, ‘Great idea, Doreen. I think William has some cash.’
Nonny’s eagerness to get stoned was another side of her I wasn’t ready for. I was also pretty sure my parents hadn’t intended the money they’d given me to be used to buy drugs, and I still had a long shopping list of gifts to buy and bring home with me. But maybe Doreen had a point, and if this was what Nonny and I needed to help move things forward, I was prepared to give it a go.
Setting off in Doreen’s Ford Pinto, we headed across the state line to Rhode Island to meet her friend. He was waiting for us around the back of a supermarket car park in a town called Westerly. We pulled up next to a battered pick-up truck. A man with a goatee beard and a greasy ponytail wound down his window. There was no small talk, and the deal was done in seconds. Doreen handed over my cash and the man gave us a sandwich bag stuffed with the same leaves I’d seen Dee drying and handing out to her friends. Before we knew it, we were on the road back to Stonington.
After a lazy day of picnicking and swimming at a nearby lake, we returned to the farm and settled down on the deck to watch the sun go down. Doreen rolled three small, neat joints and handed one to each of us. It wasn’t much of a surprise to find that Nonny knew exactly what she was doing, while I tried my best to look as if I did too. As I lit mine up and took a timid drag, I coughed and spluttered, but soon got the hang of it and sat back in my deckchair and pretended getting stoned was an everyday event.
Did you know, if you stare long enough at the Moon, there really is a face on it? I’d never noticed it before, but as the sky got darker and the Moon brighter, there it was, looking back at me through the white and grey patterns of its surface, and it was definitely smiling at me.
‘Hey, Nonny, can you see the face on the Moon?’ I said.
‘What face?’ she said, staring at the Moon with me.
‘There, look, can’t you see those two big eyes and the grinning mouth?’
‘I think you might have had a bit too much of that weed, Mr Miller.’
She was right, no more weed for me. I was also beginning to think again about the inevitable bedroom situation later that night.
Dee had always joked about having the munchies after smoking marijuana, and after getting stoned she would dance around the kitchen with Hylan, making elaborate Asian stir-fried meals for everyone. While I was trying to show Nonny the face on the Moon, Doreen went off to the kitchen to cook us all a big bowl of pasta. By the time we’d polished it off I was feeling a lot less high, but at the same time nicely mellow and relaxed and certainly less freaked out about the inevitable challenges of bedtime. At least, I was, until we actually went to bed and Nonny slipped out of her clothes and stood there naked in the middle of the room. Suddenly the panic returned.
‘Can you excuse me for just one minute,’ I said as I bolted into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I stood in front of the mirror, gripped the edge of the sink and took deep breaths.
‘OK,’ I said to myself, ‘this is it, no more messing around. It’s now or never.’ To calm myself down, I fixed my gaze on the tiles on the wall and found myself starting to count them one by one. It was at this moment that I came up with an idea, or maybe more of a deal with myself. I reckoned that the width of a single tile, from one edge to the other, might be about the same as someone would consider acceptable for the length of a grown man’s penis. So, the deal was this: if mine was close in size to one of these tiles, or even more, I was man enough and it had to be a go. Any smaller and I would tell Nonny it was never going to happen and I would have to live with the consequences.
When I finally returned to the bedroom, Nonny was lying on top o
f the covers waiting for me to join her. We started off with some slow and gentle kissing – and the rest I’m not sure how much I can actually remember, but Nonny was definitely taking charge. I know there was a lot of fumbling around and things started to move faster and faster, but it was quick and seemed to be over before it had even started. Nonny pulled herself off me and without saying a word left the room. I lay back on the bed with a mix of confused feelings. I’d done it, I had finally lost my virginity and clearly she had lost hers too, but it all felt like a big let-down. To add to it, she’d run out of the room without saying a thing. I felt completely crushed.
We didn’t do it again. In fact, during the days that followed we didn’t return to sleeping in the same bed together. For Nonny, our brief moment of chaos had been enough, and in her mind she’d done what she’d set out to achieve and it had clearly been something of a disappointment. To my relief, the affection and jolly joking continued, but we chose not to discuss what happened that night. I remained confused; much of what my friends had told me about sex and the glorious and intimate moments of doing it had clearly been exaggerated. What I was certain about, for now, was that I was in no hurry to try it again any time soon. In a way, the build-up and anticipation of losing my virginity felt rather similar to trying to get my Blue Peter badge. It was something I’d talked about for so long and had planned for, and when it finally arrived it turned out to only be any good for wearing on my jacket so people knew I’d got it. With losing my virginity, I had the badge and could tell my friends – as long as they didn’t ask too many questions about how I got it.
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