You will always remember your first love. That was the tagline of the teen romance series of books that I used to devour. ‘Love Stories’, I think that was what the books were called. Stacked next to the Sweet Valley Highs, Sweet Valley Twins, the Babysitters’ Club, do you remember all those paperbacks sitting on the shelves of the used, new and second hand bookshop? All the silly plots about puppy love, all wells that ends well? Polluting the minds with saccharine young courtship. The boy on the wrong side of the tracks, pursuing the model student with a secret passion? What a load of truly bullshit crap. But it was fun while it lasted. These fairy tales that rolled off the conveyor belt fed young malleable girls a web of lies and kept them protected and sheltered in a imaginary world of hypothetical romance.

Well, I certainly have grown up. In fact, what or who warrants as ‘my first love’? The first boy I kissed? Or the first punk who I had a crush on? Or perhaps that first one that shattered my heart in smithereens?