Possible side effects

a. Sleepness nights 

Sarah walked into my life in the first week of my second year at university. I had started a writers’ group with a couple of friends, in the North Arts Coffee Bar in the English building. 

I was nervously waiting for people to turn up, when she swept in, long red hair, kooky-good-looking, exactly my type. 

“I saw the poster in the foyer,” she said.  

“Yay,” I said, “I put up that poster.” She looked unimpressed, as if anyone could put up a poster. Oh, but what a look.  

We all went to the pub after the session.  She was a first year English Literature student, living on campus, who wrote occasional poetry. I walked her the few metres back to her halls. She said she’d see me next week.   

That night, I couldn’t sleep, I was all adrenaline, energy and imagination, tossing and turning until the undersheet was rumpled as a gravel drive.  

b. Uncontrolled release of cortisol 

I was nervous all week. I should have asked for her number, arranged to meet her outside the group, but I hadn’t wanted to be over-pushy.  As a result, I was a wreck.  It may not have been love at that stage, but it was certainly a high grade of lust.  

The next time I saw her was a writers’ group social,  pints at the Bryn Y Mor and curry on the Kingsway.  I managed to nab Sarah to myself for most of the evening.  Afterwards I walked her home, not a long walk, but long enough for us to arrange another meet. To arrange a date. 

I had hoped to kiss her good night, maybe even to cross her threshold, but there was a problem. Let’s call it lovesickness. The excitement, the anticipation, had caused the uncontrolled release of cortisol, contracting the blood vessels in my stomach. This, combined with the pints and the curry meant I really needed to puke.  

I hurried a goodbye, retreated a respectable distance, checked that she was out of sight, and threw up. 

c. Not getting invited to dinner parties 

The third time I saw her, Sarah had shaved off her hair. Sarah’s hair had been her most striking feature, long, winding, down past her shoulders, stand-out red, but she'd got a bit bored with it and shaved it all off.  

She gave no reason for this, beyond wanting a change. This is how I knew this was real life, for in fiction no character would make such a dramatic move without an equally dramatic motive. 

“You’ve shaved off your hair and I’ve grown a beard,” I said.  “It balances out.” 

She ran a finger over my extended stubble.  “My hair filled a sleeping bag,” she said, “Yours wouldn’t fill an ashtray.”   

I didn’t ask about the sleeping bag, instead I ran my fingers over her hair, caught the thrill of bristle against my skin.  Words. I had to say words, an excuse for this one-sided physical contact. “It’s different,” I said.  

With wit like that I wouldn’t be invited to many dinner parties, but it didn’t matter. She echoed my headstroke with another finger across the beard.  We had exchanged physical contact. 

d. Reaching the end of the universe and just keeping going 

Our first ‘date’ was to see the Bunker Band (a blues ensemble) at the Cardiff Arms.  Afterwards we walked back along the beach, stumbling and bumping into each other as we walked along the sand.  

We talked as we walked.  We kissed for the first time, laughed some, and walked on.  

“It’s mad living by the sea,” she said. “Having all this here, metres from my digs. It’s as if I went to sleep and when I woke up god had built an entire world around me.” 

I admired the view. “It’s pretty splendid,” I said. “But which god? Eric, the god of rather fine, rolling-blue ocean views, or Keith, the god of extended sand pathways.” 

She laughed.  

“Oh, definitely Keith, the god of sand pathways,” she said. “I went to bed and while I slept Keith dumped a load of sand all over the walkway.” 

That’s the problem of sleeping alone,” I said, “there’s no-one there to stop passing gods dumping on you.” 

“Is that an offer,” she said. “You offering to do a god-watch-sleepover.” 

“Something like that,” I said.  We kissed again. 

We walked on in comfortable silence. She leant against me as we walked. 

“It’s amazing,” she said. “It’s as if we reached the end of the world and just kept going.” 

e. Aardvark Explanations 

“I don’t understand your T-shirt,” Sarah said the next time we met.  “Lots of anteaters and no bloody money.” 

“Those aren’t anteaters,” I said, “It’s a picture of aardvarks. It obviously wouldn’t work with anteaters.” 

“Lots of aarvarks and no bloody money.” 

“It’s a joke,” I explained.  Aardvark sounds like ‘ard work.” 

“But you don’t work,” she said. “You’re a student.” 

“It’s a full-time job explaining this T-shirt to people,” I said. 

f. Dealing with a visitor from another time 

We staggered into my room, not drunk, just overcome with passion. I closed and locked the door and we collapsed onto the bed, arms and tongues groping crazily like a tangle of octopi at an all-octopus-orgy. 

I reached my hand under her bra. “No,” she said. 

“Sorry,” I started to say, thinking I’m misread the signs, but she interrupted. “Take it off, get the bloody thing out of the way.” 

I removed her bra, and returned my attention. Then suddenly, BANG! 

A thumping on the window.  “I forgot my key,” a woman shouted from outside. A voice I’d never heard before. 

My room was on the ground floor by the front door, near the street. I often heard drunks and noise at night, but never this.  

“Who is it?” I shouted back. 

“It’s me, Cheryl.  What are you doing in there?” 

I declined to answer. This was a private activity between two consenting adults. Okay, maybe in thirty years time I’d decide to write about it and post it on a public forum, but in all other respects this was private. In other words, none of Cheryl’s damn business.  

One of my flatmates must have opened the front door, as I could hear Cheryl staggering into the house, then trying the door of my room.   

“Oy, let me in,” she said. 

We clumsied back into our clothes and I went to investigate. 

“What are you doing in my room?” Cheryl demanded as I opened the door,  

“You must have the wrong house,” I said. “This is my room.” 

Realisation dawned across Cheryl’s face. “I forgot I’d moved. This was my room last year.” 

“Where do you live now?” asked Sarah 

“I can’t remember,” Cheryl said. 

“Do you have anything with your address on it?”  

“I ..., I think I need to puke.”   

I guided Cheryl to the toilet, while Sarah searched Cheryl’s handbag for an address.  She found a student card. “You live in Cardiff now,” she said. 

“Shit,” said Cheryl. “I forgot.” 

“Well, you can’t have your old room,” I said. “It’s occupied.  

“We can’t kick her out,” said Sarah. 

We ended up giving her a spare blanket and letting her sleep on the sofa.  

“Right,” said Sarah, “I think I left a penis somewhere.  Let’s go and have a look.” 

g. Making a straight choice between poetry and sex 

This was it. I was made for life, I had found THE ONE, a woman in all capitals. The sex was amazing, but also the talk, she had a mind so fast, so loose, she could rip the government, solve world hunger and make a fart joke in a single sentence. 

We met every night, I would wake up at her place, or she at mine, always with rumpled sheets and a smile on our faces.  

Her poetry suffered. “I don’t have time,” she confessed, but in a straight choice between sex and writing poetry no great poet would ever choose poetry. 

I found time to write, time to study, time to visit the library, time even to eat, breathe, and those things we do, base animal survival, but these things served on function, to stay alive to be with Sarah, to stay on my course to be with Sarah, to write stories to impress Sarah. Gravity bound me to the planet, and Sarah too bound me, one of the great forces of the universe, gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and Sarah. 

h. The smell of new-wound-blood 

Term passed in a mad gale of time, as if ten weeks were nothing more than a dashed-off sentence by an omnipotent writer describing events with all-consuming brevity, as if afraid to bore the reader with too much detail. For love is only readable in its ending. 

We were parted, severed by the inevitability of the term-based structure of the higher educational system. Two whole weeks. Too long. She came down to visit at the end of the first week, by train, I met her at the station and we ran towards each other, arms outstretched at quarter to three. 

She slept downstairs on the sofa bed, except of course she didn’t, we practiced silent sex, betrayed only by our noises.   

I shared her with my friends, with my town, with my roots, my home, memories of her would fill every place she visited, there were even photos taken. 

We wrote letters, on paper, by hand, this tale is ancient history you understand, so long ago, but to me, still fresh as the smell of new-wound-blood. 

i. Being stood up for Keats 

Two weeks passed and we rushed back to university and into each other’s arms, into each other’s beds. 

Except, the season had turned, it was Easter term. “I have exams,” Sarah said, as if she were announcing a fatal diagnosis. 

“It’s only first year exams,” I said. “You’ll pass them in a breeze.” 

“I need to write an essay on Keats,” she said. “I can’t see you tonight.” 

“I can come round after the essay,” I said. 

“I just need a night off.” 

“That’s fine,” I said, but was it? Was she leaving me for an essay on Keats, or was it, as she assured me, just a one-night thing? 

More nights off followed, essays, revision, seeing her other friends, Keats again, or was it? Beauty is truth, but the beautiful can lie when they need to.  

Exams happened. Sarah was free, we were together again. We shared time, talk, beds inevitably, it was back to perfection, all-consuming love, and then summer came and wrenched us apart. 

j. Turning into a fairy without a wand  

I took a summer job in a factory, Sarah went back to her old life. 

My hold on her dwindled across the summer. My letters went unanswered, as did my phone calls, I felt like an astronaut watching my colleague slowly float away from the ship. 

I went up to visit her, but it was like a different world. In her home-town, with her home-town-friends, I was like a tourist who didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand the culture. We kissed, we even had sex, but it felt like a gesture not a bond. 

The summer was long, the letters sparse. “I don’t have time to write,” she wrote. 

We arranged to meet for a drink at the start of term. It was awkward, forced, but we got through it. There was no animosity there, just a disconnect, and by the end of the evening the disconnect was starting to mend.  

The evening didn’t end in sex, I never thought that was on the cards. “I have to get up early tomorrow,” she said. 

However, after an awkward start, back in our university universe we slowly reforged our old passion, with scars barely visible, we saw each other daily, shared laughs, lives, beds, and everything was fine. 

But it wouldn’t last forever. 

I would finish my course at the end of the year and make life choices.  

And Sarah would spend her third year in France, studying French Literature, in French. 

And we both knew, deep down, that our love wouldn’t survive a year in France. How could it. And with that knowledge, every moment together lacked a preciousness.   I willed it to survive, but I was as sterile as a fairy without a wand. 

 k. Reaching the word limit 

“We can’t go on,” she said. 

“Yes, we can, it’s an infinite universe, there are no limits, no boundaries.” 

“The universe may be infinite and eternal, but we’re not, and this story isn’t - it’s character-restricted, so we can’t just go on and on.” 

“We can try.” 

She laughed.  “And what, just end mid-sentence.” 

“Why not?” 

“It’s not a proper ending. A proper ending is where I walk out the door and you write that: ‘The last I saw of her was the back of her new-blonde hairs as she left. I fancied a redhead, dated a skinhead, and was dumped by a blonde’.” 

“It’s a nice ending,” I said, “Perfect really, but I’d like to try to keep it going, just