Was it something I said?

My first girlfriend was a boy.

I don’t mean literally, of course. In the parlance of the day, she was a “tomboy,” even though she met neither of the criteria of this appellation, neither possessing the requisite bodily accoutrements nor having been christened Tom. In fact, her name was Katie.

In my junior school, that innocent time when children of both genders still chatted and played together without sexual overtones, Katie was a big hit with the boys (the biological ones, I mean). Partly, I suppose, because she played football with us. In fact, Katie was much better at football than nearly everyone I knew. But we didn’t mind. After all, this was still the era when girls weren’t allowed onto school football teams, as a result of which we far less skilled male players knew our places were not under threat. Sure, she still literally ran rings around us in our playground games, but at least we had the honour of freezing our fingers off on a Saturday morning, standing around on an icy pitch in mid-winter, vainly hoping that Daniel, our star player, would pass the ball rather than, as always, heading straight for the opposing goal (the one time I actually scored a goal, more by luck than ability, Daniel ran over and, instead of congratulating me, drily commented, “I would have scored that better”).

I can’t remember when I first started having a crush on Katie. Probably when I was about 8 or 9. My parents had just gone through their divorce and my brother and I were bouncing back and forth between parents, so things are kind of vague in my mind. I can’t say precisely what it was that attracted me to her. Perhaps it was her shoulder-length, brown hair, which she always wore in two pigtails. Perhaps it was her openness and her infectious laugh. Whatever it was, I was besotted. 

The problem was, so were all the other boys.

I was a scrawny kid, lightyears from hitting puberty and painfully shy with regard to the fairer sex, a trait I was to perfect once my hormones hit. But I had one decisive characteristic: I was patient. So instead of asking Katie out, as the more forthright of my friends did, I simply waited until Katie had been the girlfriend of what seemed like every other boy in the entire school. And eventually, sometime in our last year of elementary school, there was no-one left and it was finally my turn.

Ours wasn’t a romantic relationship. But she was my girlfriend at last, I was her boyfriend, and that’s all that counted. At least, in my book. We never kissed. We never even held hands. As far as I can recall, we had just one sleepover; a very chaste affair in which Katie got my bed and I slept in the bottom of my brother’s bunkbed next door. Yet even that wasn’t an all-nighter, because when I woke up the next morning, my room was deserted. 

Apparently, Katie had got so homesick that she couldn’t fall asleep and had had to be taken home in the early hours.

I’m not sure whether we ever went to the cinema together or “went out” in the classic sense. But every Sunday we took the bus to a nearby sports centre to play badminton, a sport in which – fortunately for me – we were more evenly matched. Unfortunately, our paths were about to diverge, and after only about 50 games of badminton, we each went off to very different secondary schools. She to a single-sex establishment with an excellent reputation, me to a secondary modern that was about to do a spectacular nosedive educationally.

I hated my new school and my classmates hated me back with a vengeance, although I did gain some kudos with my – now entirely fictional – claim that I had a girlfriend at an elite girls’ school. But as far as our entirely platonic relationship went, that was essentially that.

A few years later, adolescence finally hit me, and I eventually had my first “proper” girlfriend (a subject I have written about elsewhere: http://bit.ly/2McsTVM). Much, much later I met a French woman in Berlin and we had kids who were born in Paris and grew up in the States. However, I never saw or heard from Katie ever again. 

Until, that is, a short while ago. When I discovered (through a friend of a friend of a friend) that she is now a lesbian. And a human rights activist. 

As you may have guessed by now, I am steadfastly heterosexual – in spite, I should add, of an attempt by a very drunk university friend to convince me otherwise, as he rather surprisingly inserted his tongue into my ear (“Want to come back to my flat?” he drooled. “I can’t,” I replied, trying to pull my head away. “Why?” he asked, clearly disappointed. “I just… can’t!” I answered, at a complete loss for words). However, I genuinely have nothing whatsoever against homosexuality. Not least since some of my favourite fantasies involve lesbians.

My only concern is this: was it me that made Katie forsake men forever? After all, I was the last boyfriend I knew she had had. And furthermore, was I to blame for her subsequent activism? 

I know we were 10 or 11, but should I have kissed her – or at the very least held her hand? Should I have been passionate, even as a preteen whose parents had just split and with absolutely no idea of what love entailed? More damning yet, perhaps, can repeated platonic badminton be considered a human-rights violation, the year-long repetition of which led her now to fight so vehemently against oppression in all its forms?

My wife and I recently divorced after 22 years of marriage. Given my past form, I now fully expect the imminent announcement that my ex has come out of the closet, given up her job and decided to devote her life to defending the rights of others.

Maybe I should have taken up my university friend’s offer after all.