#15 THE BOY WITH THE GREEN JUMPER

The charming Oldham boy I met at a nightclub, how some people stay with you as they represent something bigger, a change in thought

In 2006, I visited England for the first time since childhood. It had been nine years. My older sister had visited me when I was ten (and she was fifteen) and she’d lived in New Orleans when I was around sixteen and I visited her, so I’d seen my older sister as well as my Grammy; my Grandad and Grandma Gill; some of my cousins, who had all been to visit, but I hadn’t seen my father in nine whole years. It was a heart-wrenching reunion. 

This is a photo of the cemetery at the end of mine and Joanne’s childhood streets in Oldham, England. Joanne lived on the street behind mine in a much nicer house but we could all see a view to the Pennines and my street was even tree-lined. As children, we spent hours playing in the cemetery (the cemi), being respectful of the graves, of course.

Father had written me letters weekly for all the years I was gone. He’d phoned regularly. But neither side had thought to send me back to England for a visit. I stayed for almost three months that summer, soaking up the love and joy that is my English family – and close family friends. 

HSS tried to call me every day. We’d been together over a year at this point and I missed him, but mostly I was just enjoying being around people who felt like home, including close family friends Jenny and Derek and their daughter Sarah.

In 2008, I visited England again. I’m not sure if I came for my entire summer which was close to three months or if I’d just gone for two. That summer, I travelled to Paris for a few days visiting a friend, Nassim, who had been an exchange student at my high school, getting to meet up also with my high school friend Jake under the Eiffel Tower. Paris was a magical trip, riding around on the back of Nassim’s moped; meeting his brother, Karim; his friends; and his girlfriend; trying amazing French food; visiting the Louvre and Sacre Coeur and other tourist destinations. 

This picture is of me in Paris that year. This was before anyone knew how to do Instagram poses but, then again, I never did learn how to do Insta poses. I also thought these pictures were terrible and I looked fat. Those were my favourite jeans and my fave Vera Wang shirt.

Our family friend, Jenny, had arranged for her daughter Sarah’s friend to take me to the airport; the friend had an interesting backstory as she’d lived in California years previously and had been a dog walker to the stars, including Quentin Tarantino and she was regularly invited to movie premieres! 

After Paris, HSS was going to fly to England and then we’d all fly back together (with my older sister Jae too as she was going to Las Vegas to visit a friend she’d known from her New Orleans days).

As a random aside, Dad gave us both a card with money in it that year (around $200) and I’d tucked mine into the pocket of the aeroplane and lost it – I was never really one to lose things so it was a mystery how it had happened.

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Our meeting

I can’t recall if the year was 2006 when I was 19 or in 2008 when I was 21. In 2008, I stayed for a few nights with one of my childhood best friends, Joanne, at her beautiful house (that had belonged to her Grandmother – how fancy was she owning a home at 22 when I was still deciding between vodka and rum?) where she lived with her long-time boyfriend, Carl. 

In 2006, she was still living at home and I had gone to stay with her and her parents. Either way, one of those years, probably the earlier one because I wasn’t drinking, we’d all gone out clubbing in Oldham.

Photo by Antoine J. on Unsplash - the club distinctively did not look like this one. It was quieter with sticky floors but still cool to me!

I’d never been to a nightclub because either I was 19 and definitely not allowed in the States or I had only just turned 21 that summer in England, so also had been precluded.

I remember spotting the most handsome, tall man I’d ever seen on the dance floor. He looked sort of like Orlando Bloom had in his early 20s with curly hair. He was wearing a green jumper (sweater for the Americans), despite the fact it was summer and fairly mild outside. 

He was smashed but he danced with me and I was thrilled, twirling me around the dance floor. Then, he grabbed my hand, led me into the stairwell, and tried to kiss me. I had a boyfriend so I didn't kiss him back (even though I wanted to, so badly). But it electrified me. Even if the boy with the green jumper didn’t remember me and all I took with me was a name.

I remember Joanne’s boyfriend, Carl, being furious with me because he knew I had a boyfriend – but I’d done nothing but dance and flirt with a random man. Maybe he felt that if I displayed this sort of bad behaviour Joanne would get ideas! They did break up years later, though, after dating for something like a decade.

Oldham’s a small place (or relatively small to its inhabitants and absolutely massive to the person who had left Oldham and was now living in the sticks in Georgia) so I asked Joanne if she knew who he was and she gave me his name, saying he was a friend of her friend’s boyfriend: a name that a thousand other people have.

Photo by Michael Discenza on Unsplash

Confessions

When I told HSS I’d danced with someone else (why I bothered to share I’m not entirely sure but I thought it was the right thing to do), he cried. 

I realise now that I wanted to be free to explore; I’d outgrown this relationship but its tentacles would be wrapped around my organs for years, taking months and years to extricate themselves slowly. If it was 2006, then I’d wanted freedom only a year into the relationship; if it was 2008, it had survived slightly longer.

I mustn’t have added Green Jumper on Facebook then. I found him using my exceptional FB stalking (research) skills which included going to Joanne’s friend’s boyfriend’s friend’s list and then searching everyone with that name on his profile (there were a lot of them) and finding the boy who looked like the one in my memory. (A shit Cinderella story where instead of the girl with the glass slipper I was finding the guy in the pink cowboy hat – as a hat featured in one of his profile pics.) 

I found him in 2009 and I’m positive he didn’t remember me. Why would he? It was just one night in Tokyo’s (the name of the club) Oldham, maybe one of many nights to him that blurred together, dancing with a million nameless and faceless girls, but he humoured me and we struck up a friendship that spanned years. We’d make half-hearted plans to meet up when I came to visit but it never materialised for one reason or another.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

In 2011, we emailed each other for a year where I’d tell him all the stuff I was getting up to in my last year of uni which no longer included HSS. I was in the midst of frustration over the two people I was seeing from New Year, one I met at a party, but that’s for another time.

Seeing each other again

I’d fantasise about moving to England and dating him but that was never to happen. We met up in January 2012 at a pub in Saddleworth but I was dating Captain Thor by then. 

He is now married with two children, but I remember his kindness most of all. He was sweet, raw, and open in his email exchanges with me – and we messaged over the years. 

I’m sure he has a chronicle (hopefully forgotten) of all the people I dated from HSS to Michael, including the Jewish Doctor, the Auburn Professor, and many more.

Like my Ginny Weasley diary years, he was another meaningful internet friend, for whose life I only wish the best, another person whose friendship and kindness I couldn’t ruin with my messy beginnings and endings.

Next time, I’ll talk about that time I hooked up again with First Kiss.

Don’t forget to check out the other fourteen posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter in the first place.