The lesson I had to learn - 2 of 3

Second was Jullie. That’s the correct spelling – her dad was drunk when he registered her birth. ‘Nuff said. She was a good friend of a girl I worked with at the time, Laura, who was also a very good friend of mine, one of my best friends in fact. She’d had her eye on me for a while apparently, even while she was dating a guy, Paul, who I worked with. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Jullie drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney and got stoned like it was going out of fashion. She was from one of the scummiest parts of Cumbernauld (my home town) and her brother, who was actually a really nice guy, was pretty much a layabout drug-fiend. She was also the first girl I slept with. She had her own flat in Cumbernauld, and I ended up spending a lot of time there, sleeping over for days at a time and only going home to grab new clothes and keep my parents happy by spending time in my own bed. I think we dated for about 6 months or so.

She was nice enough, and while I can’t say I was exactly head over heel for her, I liked her a lot, and she’d even given me keys to her flat. We had plenty of fun, and we spent a lot of time together with mutual friends which was great. I’d also finally managed to kick my depression into touch, and was doing large amounts of Extacy at the time, so my perceptions of how much fun it was may have been skewed somewhat.

I’m not sure if things started to get too serious for Jullie, or if she figured out that I wasn’t as interested in her as she was in me, because things came to a halt when I caught her swapping spit with another guy one night when we were all out clubbing.
It was a Friday night, and myself and ‘the guys’ had been out on our own, while ‘the girls’ had been doing the same. We met up later on in one of the many dingy clubs in Cumbernauld. Immediately I knew something was up, as Jullie was distant, wouldn’t sit near me, hardly said two words when we came in and had a face like thunder (as we say over here). I paid it no mind at first, as I was drunk and a little high, but as time went on it started to work on me, and our friends noticed it too as the atmosphere started to dampen. Eventually she staggered back from the dance floor with a stranger in tow, some guy her and her brother knew from way back and hadn’t seen in years. She paraded him round us for a bit, then dragged him away to dance with. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, getting a little annoyed at how close they were dancing, but tried to put it down to paranoia. I was wrong though, and when I was going to the toilet I saw the two of them against a wall, tongues down each other’s throat. I just walked past them, not really sure what I was going to do. On the way back out of the toilet, they’d gone. When I got back to the table we were all sitting at, Jullie was pulling her coat on, and saying that the guy (I’m not sure if I even knew his name) was leaving and she was going to walk him to the taxi rank, then go home on her own. I didn’t believe her, and felt sure she was taking this guy home with her now. I’d had my doubts about the relationship for a while, and I knew immediately that I didn’t feel like fighting for or about it, so I just nodded and let her go.

As the rest of us were leaving the club later, I took my friend Laura aside and told her what I’d seen. She wasn’t sure whether she sold believe me or not, and kept asking if I was sure about what I’d seen, but I was adamant – I knew what I’d seen. I was drunk and a little high, but not enough of either to be seeing things. Jullie denied the whole thing, but I knew what I’d seen. I suppose it gave me the excuse that I was probably looking for to get out of the relationship, but it still left me feeling pretty down. I refused to return Jullie’s phone calls for a week, and moped around the house. My mum realised something was up, but I didn’t give her any details for a couple of days. The one thing that really pissed me off was that the majority of my friends seemed to think that, even if it was true, and she had slept with the guy, that I should forgive her and move on, because I was just being stupid and should settle for what I had. Given that one of my friends had got his girlfriend pregnant then dumped her in her 8th month, and another was regularly seeing his ex – the mother of his baby girl – behind his girlfriend’s back, I wasn’t too inclined to listen to them. On of them had the nerve to give me shit after I went over to collect my stuff. I’d said to Jullie I’d come over to talk things over, but when I got there I finally realised there was nothing to say, and just handed her the set of keys she’d given me, grabbed the few belongings I had and left.

I was bummed out for a couple of months afterwards, but nothing too serious I don’t think. It hurt for a while, given that I’d lost my virginity to this girl; I caught myself almost crying once or twice, but fought them down – I wasn’t going to waste any tears on someone who treated me that way. Picking through the rubble with Laura later, she mentioned that Jullie had told her she was worried the relationship was getting too serious too fast, and that she was thinking about slowing things down. Well, her methods may have been unconventional, but they were certainly effective :P