keilly

the thing that has stopped me actively looking for keilly is that i have no recollection of her last name. it feels strange to be haunted by people i can only half remember, a little pretentious because if they meant that much to me, surely i'd remember more about them. but i guess the fact that in my mind these women are faded and incomplete only makes them more ghostly.
keilly went out with damien, the first boy i officially fell in love with, when i was sixteen years old. damien moved into the inner-city house where i'd started spending nights between the end of high school and my first year of uni, when i didn't want to or couldn't afford to go home. i'd sleep on the foam sofa in searing summer heat and my tight black jeans would start to stick to my body.
damien was skinny and cute and alcoholic, he played acoustic guitar and made up songs about beer. i knew he probably wasn't gay but i told him i liked him, the first boy i ever did that to, and he said fine, whatever. it didn't really change anything, we remained friends. keilly was at university when i got there, almost impossibly old and mature at the age of about 23, and slumming in perth from sydney for some reason. she seemed sophisticated and intelligent, but she fell for the inarticulate and the immature. other girls didn't like her because she had a reputation for sleeping around, but she preferred the company of men anyway, most of whom were intimidated by her.
as was the fashion in perth during the height of grunge and shoegazing, keilly had long straight henna-dyed hair, and wore flowing, post-hippy dreses. she had a round, pretty face and an excitable, sometimes sarcastic nature. keilly and damien started going out, he was younger than her by three or four years. i had no idea what she thought of me, but i was still hanging around that house and mooning a lot so we got to know each other. one night she told me that i had 'a kind of natural cool' which of course i remember vividly even though so many other details have disappeared.
we became good friends and remained so even after she dropped damien for being too young and hopeless, and started going out with uni's resident death metal head, who was a big soft baby inside a fearsome exterior. keilly also had a pet rat and i stayed a few nights at her house (i wasn't to move out of home until the next year, age 17), in her bed with her white, inquisitive rat.
as well as the young and dumb, keilly also loved older, hairy guys. she fantasised about her professors and her boyfriend's older brother, singer in a local thrash band called elf and the goon gut babies. one day she told me i would get better looking as i got older and said 'won't it be great, when you're 25 we can meet up again and have an affair' . keilly said that about fifteen years ago, and it has been a while since i was 25.
then at the end of the year keilly announced she was going back to sydney. she organised a party at the same house i always crashed at, and everybody went. i had to take a friend to her year 12 school ball (i did a lot of that that year, i was the non-threatening date for gothic girls and their tough younger sisters) but i went afterwards, and when i got to the party keilly was very drunk.
i didn't stay long because i was getting a lift home, but as i was leaving, keilly grabbed me and started making out with me. i had almost no idea what to do, but tried to kiss back. then i left and keilly went back to sydney, and i didn't see her again.
the next day at uni there was a lot of talk that i had gone straight and been seen making out with a girl. i had to laugh.
many years later i went to a bush dance party for new years eve (once and once only!) and ran into damien, who was living in adelaide with another old perth friend. he had no idea what had happened to keilly, or was embarrassed talking about her in front of his new girlfriend, and i couldn't remember why I had been in love with him.