Heel Head Over (1996)

Summer 1996.

I think I fell in love. 

And that's supposed to be a good thing, right?

I was in a daze. I couldn't sleep. I was distracted and couldn't concentrate at work... I was happy, scared and confused all at the same time. Is that what life's supposed to be like when you're in love?

I'm still not sure.

It's not like anybody gives you a badge or a certificate.

At the time I was a copywriter at a radio station on Teesside. Most of our adverts were made by an office in Gateshead and I'd spend a lot of my working day talking to their production department. 

I started having long phone calls with Becky*. She was one of the few people I worked with who was the same age as me. We'd share horror stories about sales-people and advertisers as well as talking about football, the X Files and music. I dared to think our chats might be described as 'flirty'. But it was all new to me.

We laughed a lot. Some of our colleagues started to notice how much time we were spending on the phone, so we started calling each other at home in the evenings instead. It was cool.

But things changed at a North Eastern Press function in Newcastle. Becky had produced an advert that I'd written and together we won an award for 'Outstanding Radio Campaign'. We had our photographs taken for an industry magazine and got very, very drunk. At some point in the evening we ended up snogging. I don't remember exactly how it started but I do remember one of our co-workers tutting very loudly and telling us to 'get a room'.

I was shocked. That sort of thing didn't happen to me. At work, most people thought I was gay because I wasn't constantly leering at women and/or bragging about 'shagging'. I just wasn't like any of the other blokes at work. I was intensely shy and completely terrified of social interaction. I'd become friends with Becky because of all the phone calls - I'd have never been able to start a conversation if we'd been sitting in the same room. Talking on the phone had broken the ice. Maybe alcohol did the rest.

The big problem was - Becky had a boyfriend. And I knew she had a boyfriend. They'd been together for a couple of years and lived in a flat on the outskirts of Newcastle.

During our long phone calls we'd both talked about people we fancied and Becky hadn't made any secret of the fact that she considered herself to be in 'a serious relationship'. Our snog was probably just a stupid mistake. But we were suddenly spending even more time on the phone and we started meeting up on Saturdays.

Every weekend we seemed to be going on dates - drinking in city centre pubs, going to the cinema... but we could only meet up on Saturday afternoons because Becky's boyfriend worked at the weekend.

We made mix-tapes for each other.

I'd listen to them on my long bus journeys into Newcastle every Saturday morning.

We liked most of the same bands and planned to see Oasis at one of their enormous Summer gigs. Somehow, Becky had gotten her hands on tickets for a show at Loch Lomond in August so we booked train tickets and a hotel in Glasgow. We booked separate rooms so maybe neither of us were expecting anything to happen. 

I wondered if Becky wanted to ditch her bloke. Was she expecting me to tell her to leave him? Did she think I could offer her more? I knew fine well I couldn't. I still lived with my folks. I couldn't imagine saying; "run away with me, Becky - I can make you happy! We can share a single bed at my Mam's house!"

Maybe it was all just a mistake and Becky was too polite to say so. Maybe we were just daydreaming our way through those Saturday afternoons. We were people-watching in cafes, browsing in record shops, buying comics in Forbidden Planet, chatting about Oasis in Scotland... I kept asking myself - is this love? This excited, giddy feeling... Is this what it's supposed to feel like?

On the one occasion she invited me back to her flat I got to see her book collection; they were all film and tv tie-ins from the eighties and early nineties. And they were all books I'd owned when I was younger - the novelisations of Gremlins, Back to the Futures 1,2 & 3, Batman, the first few Nightmare on Elm Street movies... It was like looking at my bookcase from a few years earlier. It felt like we should be together.

I loved spending time with her - I always felt happier and brighter as we wandered around Newcastle. I didn't know if we should 'take things to the next level' or if Becky even wanted to. We snogged whenever we got the chance but it never went further than that. For me, it was like having the girlfriend I'd always wanted when I was 14. Going to the pictures... buying comics... dinner in McDonald's... and lots of snogging. I'd missed out on all that when I was a teenager. 

I think I also knew Becky would regret it if we did go any further. And it would make things very awkward at work. I was already feeling pretty guilty about things.

Should I have been more selfish? Did I see a future for us? Did I want to shag Becky? I don't know. I assumed any kind of sexy business would destroy our friendship and I knew I didn't want that. 

We did go to see Oasis. We held hands and sang along to Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova as the sun went down over Loch Lomond. We didn't share a hotel room. But we kissed all the way home on the train. 

After that, things just kind of fizzled out. 

Did Becky get sick of waiting for me to make some kind of move? Or was I just her weekend boyfriend - a substitute for when her 'real' bloke was at work? Or maybe she finally realised she was risking her 'serious' relationship by spending so much time with me? Sometimes I wanted to tell her how I felt. But I knew I could ruin everything.

Not long after that, I left my job and went to work at a different radio station. I didn't have an excuse to call Becky any more. She went off Oasis before Be Here Now came out.

On the last Saturday we spent together we sat in a bar next to the bus station. We were ready to go our separate ways and neither of us had very much to say. And on the pub jukebox, Dire Straits was playing. It was the sort of grown-up, plodding, dull bloody music that had never gotten anywhere near the mix-tapes we'd made for each other. The irony wasn't lost on me. Maybe it was just that the time was wrong.

About three years later we bumped into each other at another radio industry event. We got drunk. We snogged. Becky told me she'd bought a house with her boyfriend. 

I was more confused than ever. 

As far as I know, thirty years later, she's still with the same bloke. I guess that means they were always supposed to be togerher.

Even now, I still don't know what we were doing. I don't know what we meant to each other. But I don't regret a single moment.

*Not her real name, obv.