A trio of losses. 1 : 1988.

In 1988 she was younger than me by a year, more naive than me by five. She was intelligent, pretty and pure; a fresh girl from a private school who excelled at her studies and dreamed of being a doctor. We could not have been more different back the. Her idea of excess involved filling a second wine glass full of M&Ms - and even back then at the age of sixteen my idea of excess was much more defined, much more fervent. We had little in common, her and I. We went to different schools, lived in different areas and could easily have grown up having never crossed paths. That we met at all was due to her sister.

Her sister was three years older and was going out with Monkey, one of the three friends from whom I was inseparable at the time. Their pairing had come as a surprise to us, had spawned many jokes when it first appeared out of nowhere - yet three months had since passed and they were still together, still going strongly. We continued to make jokes at their expense but our jokes were losing their veneer, their potency - and we were losing the argument. For all the ridicule we levelled at him, Monkey knew he held a winning hand because no matter what was said or suggested, Monkey remained the only member of our close-knit and tragic group with a girlfriend. In 1988 we were sixteen and Monkey knew the truth as well as we knew it; knew that a three month relationship was serious stuff which could not, would not bear ridicule. By sixteen-year-old standards, a three month relationship equated to a lifetime of togetherness. Monkey had passed the test of time and, throughout it all, the rest of us had remained unattached and untouched. No matter how hard we tried to transfer it, the joke was always on us.

Looking back now it seems a strange concept - but it was a strange time, that sixteenth year of our lives which fell across 1988. It felt as though we dwelled in a grey no-mans land, living out our days in a compacted, concentrated world which was segmented into school terms, weekends, school holidays. We felt lost in limbo, in transit; stuck in a purgatorial stopover between every relevant landmark, every possible milestone. We were a million miles removed from becoming adults, a million miles removed from being boys again - so we set out to cope as best we could. We continued to gloss over the truth, made jokes about Monkey to try and mask our own inadequacies. We would ridicule him for his messy hair, his acne, his rag-bag clothes - and he would just smile; remind us that he had a girlfriend now, a relationship now. He would remind us that we did not and his smile would reveal a newly discovered confidence. A confidence born from knowing that he was closer to the light than we were now, closer to dragging himself out of the amorphous pool in which we lived our days and dragging himself out of our reach, onto dry land. We resented his success; resented him for it whilst all the time secretly admiring him for it.

We would gather with Monkey at his girlfriend's house, spend evenings talking and laughing, playing darts and watching television. That explains how I first met her - how I first noticed that pretty girl with the dark hair, the pale skin and the enquiring mind - but it does not explain what drew us together, what possessed us to pair up. Ultimately her and I had too little in common to last, were too different to share anything enduring - but these were strange and pupative times where compatibility mattered little to me when compared to the boundless opportunities for fulfilment that a girlfriend represented. Maybe it was a simple case of her being ready for a boyfriend in 1988 and maybe I was the best of the worst; the least poor choice available. I paid it little mind in 1988 because the rationale then was simple: she seemed to like me, I seemed to like her. She seemed to want a boyfriend, I seemed to want a girlfriend. That was as complicated as the reasoning got and finally I summoned my courage, asked her out. She said yes and like that, I found myself with a girlfriend once again. Suddenly I was on equal footing with Monkey once again. Suddenly he had me for company as he scraped for a handhold, an anchor point with which to drag himself out of the pool we existed in. Suddenly I saw that the light was closer than ever before, all the time remaining just out of reach - and it was clear that all I needed to find was one more success, one final demonstration of my maturity. Only then could I truly claim to be ready to dig my nails into earth; to pull myself free from the anchor of childhood and stride into the free expanses of illuminated and unfettered manhood.

It was 1988 and I was sixteen, a typical teenage boy complete with typically raging hormones. To my mind, there was only one solution - one very obvious demonstration which would guarantee my passport stamped and allow me to continue my journey - and I set my mind to my task with enthusiasm and intent.

My patience and gentle, empathic coercion was finally rewarded some months later, one summer afternoon in her bedroom. The act itself took longer than I was expecting, was less enjoyable than I was expecting. Ultimately it was unrewarding; giving me nothing more than an objective to cross off my teenage to-do list. It was not the rite of passage, the passport stamping I had hoped for and I did not get to watch the sun rise as a man, as the song promised. Instead I greeted the new day as the same confused and conflicted teenager; unencumbered now by the burden of my virginity but still weighed down, still unable to drag myself upwards and out of the hinterland we occupied.

The only thing which had changed was my relationship. I did not know it then, but my girlfriend and I would never be the same after that afternoon and we would part within weeks of our protracted and negotiated procreation. She would return to her normal life with her normal friends and later she would move on to university, eventually graduate from medical school and have the life she had planned. Through this time, through all of it I would stay motionless; concentrating only on my excess. She would move on quickly, successfully from 1988 and my friends would do the same - but I would stay anchored there, treading water in that familiar pool for many years to come. It would be a long time before I finally managed to find a handhold, to finally drag myself clear.