Dancing solo

MAEVE HIGGINS remembers a St Valentine's Day disaster

I DON’T MIND St Valentine’s Day. It’s sort of cute because it’s a reason to talk to and about the people you love and what’s better than that? Although it is also the day I found out that love, or even one misguided attempt to find it, can hurt.

In 1995 I was a teenager and I was in a gang. I don’t mean drug dealing tough guys with tattoos of tears on our cheeks. I mean we had been in national school together and had shared interests such as reading and comparing the snacks available at various babysitting jobs.

Something funny was happening with the gang that year, and I didn’t like it. Basically the girls were acting stupid and giddy in front of the boys, who in turn were acting stupid and macho in front of the girls. I hoped it was a phase they would grow out of. I didn’t understand then that hormones aren’t a phase, they’re a life sentence.

That evening we all got ready in my friend Deirdre’s house, chosen because it had the most mirrors, for the St Valentine’s night disco in the GAA hall. It was my first disco. I had much loftier ideas about how to spend my time then, such as writing overly personal letters to political prisoners in China and choosing which historical biography to read next.

The boys were sent to watch television, and in the bedroom talk turned to “who would ask who for who”. I had never kissed anyone and didn’t particularly want to, but that day I wanted to shake the left-out feeling, so I thought I should. My plan was to stand really close to one of the boys with my mouth slightly ajar.

That works, you know. At the time though, there were other concerns I wasn’t taking into account. I had big metal braces, with head gear. My hair was down to my waist and I wore it in a permanent plait with a halo of vertical frizz around my forehead.

My weight matched my age: 13 years old, 13 stone. I was delighted because I only had to remember one number. Acne had just kicked in, but I did a great job of ignoring it.

I was sure that I was a knock out. My parents made me think this. They instilled in me the idea that I was perfection personified. My only concern, then, was that the boys might not realise that I was willing to kiss them. That’s why I decided to take my hair out of its plait and let it all fall around my face and shoulders, then walk casually through the living room as a woman. A sexy, grown up woman.

After I’d dropped that bombshell (me) there would surely be a stunned silence and then a big argument between the boys about who needed me the baddest. I was a teenage girl version of Samson, with headgear.

You can imagine the rest. Hair all over the place, the boys certainly looked at me in a way they had never looked at me before. I left, very pleased, and waited outside the door to listen.

The silence happened on cue, but the loud burst of laughter immediately afterwards shocked me. I looked in the hall mirrors as 15 years of intense confidence-building from my parents drained away in seconds. I went back to the bedroom where Catherine was shaving her legs for the first time, using her father’s razor. I expressed concern at the amount of blood she was losing, then walked home, all the while trying to figure out just what had happened.