Peter’s Story

Section Five - Episode One

A Teenage Boy Discovers Girls

The “swinging sixties” may have been fun and “free love” for some, but not for me.....

In my mid to late teens, I really began to notice girls, but I was far too shy to approach the ones that I fancied.....






There was an incident at school in the sixth form, when I was aged sixteen.....


There was a girl, let's call her Kate (not her real name), who had come through Riccarton High School in the same group as me.  I cannot recall even noticing her at all until we were in the sixth form, but suddenly I found myself feeling really attracted to her.  She was quite good looking, dark hair, slim, with a cute turned-up nose and an attractive personality, although, like me, she was very shy.


I kept my feelings to myself.  I would not have dared breathe a word of this to my male friends, it was just not the sort of thing that we ever spoke about.


One day, I can very clearly picture exactly where we were, the sixth form math class was waiting outside for some reason.  There was a group of maybe twenty of us sixteen year olds, standing alongside a two-story classroom building (“E-Block” at Riccarton high School), waiting for our next class.  This incident is so indelibly etched in my mind, that I could go back today and recognize the exact spot, where I was standing and where Kate was standing.


One of my friends mentioned that he had heard that Kate really quite liked me, and some of the other kids heard him say it.  Everyone looked at me and at Kate.... all eyes were on us.  I looked over at her, and for a few seconds our eyes locked.  I felt my face turning a bright red with embarrassment, and then I tore my eyes away.  I said nothing, she said nothing, and the incident passed.  Nothing more was ever said by anyone.  Not by my friends, not by Kate, and certainly not by me!  No way could I ever risk exposing even the tiniest hint that I might have feelings like these about a girl!


The sixth-form year passed by, and Kate finished school at the end of the year.  Over a year later, soon after I finished school at the end of the following year, I was still being haunted by the memory of Kate.  She had been a tennis player, as had I, though we had never played together.  I went several times, as a much bolder 18-year old than I had been at the time of the “incident”, to the tennis club close by where she lived, in the hope that she might be a member there, but she never appeared, and I gave up and moved on.  I never saw nor heard of her again.


I recently learnt that there is a minor past-life karmic connection between Kate and myself, and it was this that was driving the powerful energy I felt towards her.  I have never seen her, nor heard of her, since she finished school.  She did not attend the 25th anniversary of Riccarton High School twenty years later.  I sometimes wonder what became of Kate, and of some of the other people I knew back then.  I suppose I will never know, and it does not matter.  Life moves on, we move on.  We connect briefly with many fellow travelers, dance the dance of life together, and then move apart again on our separate paths.




Another girl who I had a crush on at school was Ruth.  I first became attracted to her in the sixth form, and this continued through the seventh form (aged seventeen).  Ruth was very slim, with long dark hair, and very large eyes.  Funnily enough, I did not consider her to be terribly good looking, she was very flat-chested with virtually no breasts.


But she exuded a powerful sexuality that was like a magnet to most of us boys.  And she was very self-confident in the company of boys.  One of my friends had a very major, very public, crush on her.  He was like a little puppy dog, and she had him on a string; he was putty in her hands.  Unlike him, I kept my feelings hidden, although I suspect that Ruth knew how I felt about her, but nothing was ever said by either of us.


In the chemistry class, I had been allocated Ruth as my partner in the laboratory, which meant a whole year of close collaboration with her, much to the envy of the other boys!  Our lab. bench was always a popular gathering place, and it was not my company that the other kids were seeking!


Our seventh form class would split up into groups of various sizes, for the various class options that we were doing.  The whole class did English, which was compulsory.  But for all other subjects, we split into smaller groups.  There was a quite large group of us following the science option, and we all did physics and chemistry together. But Ruth and some of my male friends were doing biology, while I was doing applied math.


The chemistry class would often immediately follow the applied math and biology class.  The biology class did a major project of dissecting fish, and would turn up smelling all  “fishy”;  especially towards the end of the project when the fish, that was kept preserved by being soaked in formalin, began to show its age!


I came to associate this fishy smell with Ruth.  For several weeks, most times that we spent together in the chemistry lab she had this faint fishy odor.  It became almost like a aphrodisiac smell to me, I would sit there beside her immersed both in my emotions and thoughts, and in this fishy odor.


I found out years later that some of my friends were secretly sabotaging the lab. experiments of Ruth and I, by adding a little dilute acid to our distilled water bottle!  Such is the power of teenage sexual jealousy!


I became part of a small group that was centered on Ruth.  I would even sometimes go to her house.  I even began drinking coffee, which I had hated up until then, to impress her, as she drank coffee.  I remember the first time I was asked, at her place, by her father, whether I would like a cup of coffee.  I made a very fast decision.  In two seconds, I went from being a non-drinker of coffee, to a drinker.



Class photograph of that 1964 Seventh-Form Class.....






In the seventh form, we would hang out together, a group of maybe three or four boys and two or three girls, although the exact membership of the group varied.  We went to concerts in Christchurch together, and would hang out in coffee bars.  This was in 1964, and was long before the “cafe scene” hit New Zealand.  Often these outings were school related, they might be performances of something we were studying in English class, and I was happy to use this as an excuse to hang out with this group.  I can remember attending a performance of T.S. Elliot's  “Murder in the Cathedral”,  at the Christ's College Chapel, and actually quite enjoying it.




It came the time for the annual school dance, and I began to fantasize about attending with Ruth.  I was pretty sure that no-one else had asked her, and on the “big day” I really thought that I would not manage to pluck up the courage to ask her.


I decided to telephone her and ask, rather than facing up to her in person.  I sat for what seemed like hours, a love-sick seventeen year old, sitting by the telephone, desperately trying to dredge up enough courage to make the call that I was so desperate to make, but at the same time so afraid of.  I was torn between my powerful conflicting emotions of desperate need to ask her, and the extreme fear of possible rejection.  The rejection fear was, I am sure, the same terrible rejection fear that I experienced later in life in my adult relationships, as described earlier in this story.  Just a little taste of what was to come later.


Every time my mother or sister would walk through the hallway where our telephone was located, I would pretend that nothing special was happening and wait for them to disappear.  Each of these interruptions was also a welcome reprieve from having to do the fatal deed and actually make the call!


I must have dialed the number dozens of times, and then immediately hung up before it rang, in a last-minute chicken-shit panic.  I rehearsed exactly what I would say dozens of times.  Finally, I did it.  I let it ring, and she answered!


I was so nervous, she must of been able to tell.  But she pretended not to notice, bless her, and she graciously accepted my invitation for us to go to the school dance together!  She said yes!!!  Ruth, the “queen of the school”,  the most desirable seventeen-year-old in all of New Zealand, had said yes to me!


When we entered the Riccarton High School assembly hall together, the eyes just about popped out of my friends' heads!  They could not believe it! Peter, walking boldly into the school dance, with Ruth on his arm!  It was so sweetly satisfying to see the envious looks on their faces!  I still have a much treasured black-and-white photograph of Ruth and I together that evening in the assembly hall.  It's the only really pleasant memory that I can recall of the assembly hall, in all of the five years I was at Riccarton High.


But after this minor victory, nothing happened.  We went back to school, and it was “business as usual”, in the chemistry lab, and in the classrooms.  The same boring old routine of dysfunctional teachers droning on about chemical formulae and math equations.  No way could I have found the courage to have told Ruth how I really felt!  Not in a million years could I have done this.  A few years later, I would sometimes fantasize about going back into my seventeen-year-old body, with all the knowledge and sophistication of a twenty-year-old, and sweeping both Ruth and Kate off their feet!  What a pity I could not do that!  On second thoughts...... it's probably just as well....... who knows the trouble I might have got into if I could have done this!




In the little group that hung out together, there was a girl that I shall call Stephanie.  I did not fancy Stephanie at all in a romantic/sexual way, but we became quite good friends and used to sometimes hang out together.  Stephanie was Ruth's best friend, and by becoming a friend of Stephanie, I could get to spend time with Ruth!


There was one notable incident involving Stephanie and I.  Together, we deliberately lit up cigarettes at a school dance in the assembly hall.  Open defiance of a very strictly enforced school rule!  We were very quickly seen by a teacher, our maths teacher.  He very discreetly but firmly told us to get rid of the cigarettes and to see him tomorrow!  He gave us a tongue lashing about maturity and responsibility, telling me that if I was not a seventh former, he would cane me, but would spare both himself and me the indignity of this.


We eventually all finished school and moved on.  I went to Canterbury University, in Christchurch, but Ruth was heading to Otago University, in Dunedin, to study medicine.  She wanted to be a doctor, and I never saw her again.  Years later, one of my friends, the same one who confessed to tampering with the distilled water bottle, told me that he had heard that she had not made it through Medical School, but had married a fellow student who had become a doctor.  I wonder where she is now?  Also, I find it quite ironical that, years later, I was to become a full-time “therapist”, when, back then when choosing a career-path on leaving school, I had zero interest in anything to do with medicine or healing.




You know that old love story?  The story of the boy and girl who grow up together as next door neighbours, play together as pre-schoolers, he carries her school-bag, he proposes marriage to her when they are seven or eight, and they eventually marry, have kids, and  “live happily ever after”.


Well, that never happened to me, much the pity.  Life may have been a lot simpler for me with a childhood sweetheart to marry and stay with for ever.  It certainly would have saved me from all of the drama that I am about to relate.  But, I would never have had the opportunities for all of the learning that this drama brought me.


The daughters of our next door neighbours were, on the poultry farmer side, older than me and already had boyfriends by the time I would have been old enough;  and in the house on the other side, they were younger than me, and we moved away before they would have been old enough.  In primary school there was one girl that I used to walk to school in a group of kids with, Helen.  I quite liked her, but nothing happened and we went our separate ways when we reached high school age.




But I did have a special childhood girl friend.  There was a family of two boys and a girl who were the nephews and niece of the poultry farmers next door.  They would often come to stay next door.  They were from a farming family from out in the country, and I became friendly with them.  Their father owned racehorses, and would often bring the racehorses to stay at the poultry farm when attending the nearby races at Riccarton Racecourse.  The girl, let's call her Lucy, was the same age as me, and we got on really well with each other.  I looked on her as a mate, she was a bit of a tomboy as I recall, and we used to climb trees together, as if we were brothers.


I had never, ever, had even the slightest even vaguely sexual thought or feeling towards Lucy in all those years we were mates.


Until, one day when I must have been seventeen or maybe just turned eighteen, and she would have been the same age.  It was suggested that Lucy and I might like to go out on a date together.  I do not know who the suggestion originally came from, it may even have been Lucy's uncle or aunt, and certainly they approved of the idea, as did my parents.  Maybe they even had thoughts of a possible future romance between us two, and were approving of the idea.


Anyway, we went out on the big date.  I was even lent the use of the family car by her uncle.  I cannot recall where we went, probably to a movie, but I can recall what happened on the way home, and when we got home.


Lucy told me, in quite some detail, about this lovely experience that she had recently had with a boy back home who she had spent time with.  How he had taken her breath away by suddenly grabbing her and kissing her, and how it felt!  Nothing more than kissing, at least that's what she told me, and I believed her.


She went on and on about this  “stolen kiss”, and I can remember, as if it happened yesterday, sitting in her uncle's car when we arrived back home, with her still talking about it.  My thoughts and emotions were totally confused.  What should I do?  I had decided that I quite fancied her myself, although it felt somehow strange to have feelings like this about my childhood “best mate”.  Almost incestuous, like she was my sister.


Anyway, I had thoughts of shutting her up by grabbing her and kissing her myself, but I chickened out.  My arm was resting on the seat-back behind her, just itching to drop onto her shoulders and wind itself around her, and then pull her towards me and turn her face to mine for our lips to meet.


But I was so afraid, my heart was racing!  I had never kissed a girl, and had no idea how to kiss.  What if I messed it up and she hated it!  Also, maybe she really fancied this other guy and was telling me this to warn me that she was not available!  What to do???  The agony of unfulfilled desire, and indecision.  Eventually the moment passed, and she said good-night and went inside, and that was it.


I cannot recall ever seeing her again, although for months afterward my life was an agony of regret for not having had the courage to take the risk and just go for it.




By the time I was eighteen, in 1965, I had finished school, was attending Canterbury University, and was finally ready to pluck up the courage to approach girls.



One day in May, I bumped into a girl, who I knew vaguely, in the Student Union Cafe.  I impulsively asked her to go to the capping ball with me, and she accepted.  We attended the ball, and I still have an old black and white photo of us from that night.  We talked quite a lot that evening, and discovered that we had some common interests, including an interest in motor sport.  I asked her if she would like to attend the car racing at the Ruapuna Track with me in a few days time, and she did.



I really liked this girl, during our brief time together on those two dates.  Although I cannot now recall her name.  She was very attractive, with long red hair.  She had a lovely personality, and we seemed to be very compatible.  But, I still had not overcome my fear of making any sort of sexual type advance, even a kiss.  I still had not kissed a girl, and was afraid my inexperience would be obvious.


She did have some previous experience, as she had had at least one boyfriend, and I was afraid that she would find me somehow inadequate.  So, even though, like with Lucy and Ruth, I desperately wanted to slip my arms around her and kiss her, I held back.  And she did not make the first move, so nothing happened.


After the second date, I made a judgment on myself that I was hopelessly inadequate for someone like her, with her sophistication and experience, and I never called her again, nor can I recall ever seeing her again.  I sometimes wonder how much different my life would have turned out, if I had of plucked up the courage to make that first move with her.

Click here to continue on with the next episode of this section of this (1998 version) of the story......

Section Five, Episode Two.....  The agony of teenage love.