AD


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Me

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John's hypertextual youth Why? Who? How? Really? Leave this self-indulgent tangle!
My career as a stalker began, and ended, in 1973. Infatuated with the sister of one of my classmates, but suffocated by shyness and embarrassment, I could find no way to spend time with her that didn't mean actually talking and being found out. I was sure that if we did talk, she'd realize what a  mistake talking to me was. So instead I followed her home from school. I don't know why I did this, whether it was simple obsession, or whether I was looking for some piece of information about her that would make me feel closer to her, or that would confirm me in my inadequacy. I am sure, though, that the reason wasn't simply lust. So far as I remember my adolescent infatuations, I always longed for closeness with some particular girl. My fantasies might have gone a long way, but I don't think they objectified their subject; they were based on a desire to be together.

My current crush's older brother was involved, with me and eight others, in the Wisewood/Schessel exchange programme. When the Schessel students came over to Sheffield in the summer, I frequently took Jan (my penfriend, staying with us) over to their house. They had the record "Layla" by Derek and the Dominos (Eric Clapton) whose B-side, "Bell-Bottom Blues", I illegally taped. I used to listen to "Bell-Bottom Blues" repeatedly. It became the expression of my undisclosed, unfulfilled longing. I  fantasized a perverse hope that over at her place the object of my love was doing the same thing. Two solitary souls who could not express their need for each other. I'm fairly confident that the truth is she never noticed me.

Photographs draw the imagination into the past to release forgotten moments. Music does the same, but diffusely. "Bell-Bottom Blues" is my link to an adolescent broken heart, but not, now, to a particular person. Perhaps this shows that despite my protests, she was a love object rather than a personality.