Reminiscing about the past...some romantic nonsense

For the past week I have been in a certain nostalgic, romantic frame of mind. Earlier, my mind went back to all the different women I have loved or been attracted to in my life, trying to see a pattern or commonality. For the first time in over twenty years, I remembered her... P was Lebanese, her very rich parents having left Beirut because of the then still raging civil war. She was probably fifteen or sixteen and I was about six. Dark haired, olive skinned and speaking in that international school accent, something about her intoxicated me. She had style, her accent fascinated me, yet she also spoke the same language we spoke at home. She also liked me and thought I was cute. To make me shy she would give me a big smooch on my cheek and I would pretend to hate it and wipe myself. As a girl, she might as well have been a different and alien species to me.

Once in the summer - it was usually summer in Cyprus - we bumped into them at the Hilton in Nicosia, where there was a huge swimming pool. She was dressed in an amazing black and white one piece swimming suit and she had a body to die for. She was swimming laps, as I noticed out of the corner of my eye as I splashed around with my friends. The thing is, at the end of each lap, she would do a strange flip in the water, without ever stopping, and continue swimming. Just like a mermaid..

I would be invited to their house, as I was friends with her brothers, and I remember one day they were having a party there later that night. Excitedly, I saw the very beginning of it before my parents came to pick me up. This was the first time I had seen her wear a mini-skirt, fully dressed up. She looked gorgeous, from her earings to the way her hair had been done. There was eighties music playing in the background and the lights had been dimmed. I remember that Berlin's song had played that night, I know because my father didn't allow me to watch Top Gun and I knew that song was for that film. She was smiling that warm smile which showed her beautiful white teeth and she had just enough makeup, not too much, not too little. My little heart melted. You don't understand, for me as a six year old boy, everything about this girl was stylish and intoxicating. From her dress sense to her taste in music, she flooded my senses.

That night, I was quiet as my parents drove me back home. They thought I was tired, but I was thinking of her and dreaming stupid boy dreams of whisking her away somewhere, but without really knowing what for. I didn't realise, but I wanted her to be mine. I don't know where she is or what her life is like today. She will never know what I felt for her or that today, somewhere in the world, somebody remembered her and how beautiful she was...