I must have been about ten years old. When I had a friend called Jessica Kim.
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A tiny Asian girl with long dark hair and a little mole near her mouth. Bad accent... She was new. We met at school. Both of us products of globalisation; picked up as if by pinched fingers from our home countries and plopped into an International school in the Middle East. I have no recollection of the beginning of the friendship, I was young. But flashes of house slippers and visiting her family's apartment in the city remain strong. I lived in a house in the suburbs and so the inner city (Haifa? Tel Aviv? I don't remember...) where she lived was daunting, made even more so when we went roller-skating down the streets. My childish mind questioned the safety. We may have had Burger King.
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Bad accent... I remember her ruining my surprise farewell that another friend was throwing for me when I was leaving to come back 'home'. Sitting on the kitchen table struggling to speak with her on the landline, it was clearly obvious that the surprise was now anything but... But I kept up the facade for the people around me, never letting on that I knew and gasping wide-eyed when the streamers came down. But that's another day and another memory, involving my first horrific 'slow-dance' (of which my father took an equally horrific photograph).
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One blurry day I was sitting in the back of one of my parent's cars, in the middle seat, squeezed inbetween a few of my friends, Jessica to my right. We were speaking of nothing... Maybe of the indiscreet party. I remember her face looking up at mine - she was so small that I picture myself as an ungraceful galumph next to her. She was asking a question, something along the lines of "Hey, aren't you going? You are hey? Aren't you? Aren't you?" (bad accent). She was squeezed right up against me and her one hand was on my back I guess and the other she was rubbing on my chest, in circular motions. Asking: "Hey, aren't you going? You are hey? Aren't you? Aren't you?" (bad accent). And I was staring back at her with restricted shocked eyes and a pinched mouth and I couldn't say a thing. All I could think was... "What are you doing touching my boobs???"
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Okay, so let's be honest, my 'boobs' were up in the air at this point. I was 10 for pete's sake. So boobs, baby nipples, air, whatever. But I was aware of my 'female' body. (My nipples tingle just writing about this.) I was aware that another female was touching it; touching me. And it was obvious that she was not aware of what she was doing, or how she was making me feel. It was... weird. Potentially uncomfortable, or embarrassing. But the little people-pleaser that I was just kept her mouth shut and went with it, letting Jessica's petite hand feel up my pre-pubescent chest, rubbing her hand over and over and over and all over while I stared, stunned, down at her face.
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...
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I have no idea where she is now; in the world, in her life. I can't even find her on facebook (gasp, no really). But if I ever do, I hope she'd be happy, or at least relatively amused, that she took me to second base for the first time.
One love Kim.
