i longed for her when i was just 18 she was so pure to me i couldn t even picture her nude and when she told me she didn t want to be my lover i cried for hours up on carlton hill while the sun set behind the unfinished monument ten years later at my sister s wedding drunk on champagne in an upstairs room she let me take off her all her clothes i d had to wait so long for that first embrace from that miserable day in 78 the first dry kiss to this she invited me back to her empty place where the irony hit me like a slap in the face either i was too big or she was too small but there was no way on earth we would ever ball not even vaseline and a lot of mutual pain could put humpty dumpty together again like a square peg forced into a round hole this into that just wouldn t go though of course we could still kiss history plays the first time as tragedy the second as farce