Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - You always remember your first

When I was a teenager I started to get very into punk rock at about 14 years of age. I  then started going to the various hangouts of hardcore Brum punk fashion, such as the Rag market and Oasis. When I was 15 I continued my wasted youth by starting to drink, I started going to the main punk rock pub in Birmingham city center at the time, the pub was called the Crown.

I've heard all about the free love that was shared in the 60's, although I was not old enough to compare I would say that there was plenty of free love to go around in early 1980's punk rock Britain.

Getting started took me a while, I had lots of  punk girlfriends which usually entailed a drunken fumbling feel, fingering the girl and maybe a wank or a blow job if you were lucky.

 Of course being a young early teen guy at the time you bullshitted  to your mates that you went all the way with the young lady (or got a shag as they say in my neck of the woods).

On my 16th birthday I spent a drunken 16th birthday afternoon in the Crown pub with some fellow punk rockers including a ' punkette' called Cathy. Cathy had short spikey blonde hair, and a black leather jacket with  the name of a punk rock band called ' Killing Joke'  emblazened in red and white paint on the back of it. She also had very large breasts and was reasonably attractive.

After getting drunk Cathy and I caught the bus back to her house in Quinton, Birmingham, where I finally lost my virginity and had sex with her.

The experience was not that great, lots of fumbling and it did not last long at all being my first time, afterwards I could sense her disappointment since she was much more experienced than me.

I continued to see Cathy in the pub and at various gigs after that fateful birthday. We remained friendly, however we never repeated our 'one afternoon stand' liason. After all, we were young, single carefree and full of the joys of the sex, drugs( for many) and rock and roll lifestyle that punk and numerous available sexual partners offered us at that time.

Over the years I often wondered what had become of Cathy and remebered our drunken liason which led to me losing my virginity, leading to the start of a a trail of numerous girlfriends both in the UK and US over two and a half decades.

This evening I met with a friend that was  in the punk rock scene at the same time and hung out with the same crowd,  surprisingly he has remained  in this scene over the last 2 decades.

We chatted over a few pints about old times and I threw names of old punk rock friends at him to see what had become of these wild, rebellious teenagers I recalled  from 20 odd years ago. In chatting, the picture he painted  was not quite the fond memories that I have been left with.  At least three or four guys had commited suicide over debt, depression and spurned love, many seem to have ongoing drink and drug addictions, quite a few have been in and out of prison and some are still football hooligans in their mid to late 40's.

 I finally found out what had become of Cathy since she too had remained in the Birmingham punk scene, along with many other people from those bittersweet days of my wreckless youth.

Cathy was battered to death about 7 years ago by her current live-in boyfriend, she had 2 young sons under 10 at the time.