A FRENCH EDUCATION

Lezza” was an abusive term at school when I was growing up in England during the late ’80s, but I don’t think anyone really knew what it meant. It seems extraordinary, looking back, but being gay wasn’t something anyone seemed to think about. It wasn’t exactly that people were prejudiced, more that it simply wasn’t part of the everyday landscape. Elton John was still married to a woman, there was

Boy George, but he was a pop star, and the groundbreaking gay kisses on popular UK soaps that were instrumental in changing British people’s perception of homosexuality were several years in the future.

It seems quaint now, but my generation of teenagers mostly got their information about sex from books – furtive thumbings of our parents’ copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, or the racier goings-on in bonkbusters by authors like Jilly Cooper. I had read Radclyffe Hall, and Zola’s Nana, but I still didn’t have any idea of what lesbians actually did. Sex education at school consisted of an agonising science period when poor Miss Griffiths had to demonstrate unrolling a condom on a test tube, but I don’t recall that same-sex relationships were even mentioned.

So when I met Aurelie on a beach in France when I was 17, I had no idea what was happening to me. I had lost my virginity – well, mislaid it, really – to a boy and I’d had a serious boyfriend, so I considered myself quite sexually sophisticated. But when I saw her for the first time, in a navy jumper over black bikini bottoms, dark blonde hair piled up with perfect Parisian insouciance, I was entirely unprepared for the great wave of lust that crashed over me. Proper, drymouthed, knee-trembling, knicker-wetting lust. Aurelie was sitting next to a guy who worked in the restaurant where we all hung out, so I thought maybe the radar had been diverted, but no, the lust was definitely throbbing at her, in a desperately confusing way.

She knew, of course. There was a crowd of us, all working over the summer in the small seaside town, and we’d meet every afternoon on the beach between shifts. With her face bare of makeup except for a slash of poppy lipstick, her bohemian silver earrings and just-so men’s 501s, Aurelie seemed like the acme of sophistication. Next to her I felt like an ungainly child, not helped by the fact that I blushed like a traffic light every time she spoke to me. But at the end of the summer, when I was headed to Paris to study, she suggested we meet up at her mother’s flat.

Aurelie lived near Père Lachaise, the famous Paris cemetery, in a highceilinged 19th-century building. She had her own little apartment above her mother’s, and the afternoon I arrived, there were several ladies enjoying tea in the drawing room. To me it was like something out of a novel. We sat on the windowsill, smoking and looking out at the Paris skyline. I had planned to suggest we go for a walk in the cemetery, to see Oscar Wilde’s grave, but what had seemed like a clever, intellectual outing on the way over on the Metro now seemed hopelessly naive. Aurelie didn’t say much, just smoked and stared. Her eyes were tip-tilted and lazy, like a spoilt cat. Below, we could hear the teacups and the quick rap of French conversation.

“Do you want to go to bed with me?” she asked suddenly. She knew the answer, even if I didn’t.

Aurelie took off her clothes slowly, as unselfconscious as if she were alone. Then she lay on the bed and smiled. “So are you coming?”

That was how I learnt what girls did with girls. It was strange and wonderful and surprising, mostly in that it taught me so much about my own body. We went to bed every afternoon for about a month, as the endless tea parties rattled on below. Then one day, I arrived as usual, and Aurelie’s mother told me calmly that she had gone back to university. I never saw Aurelie again, but I had a lovely time in Paris with my broken heart, fulfilling all the chainsmoking, poetry-writing clichés as only a 17-year-old can.

I decided in the end that I prefer sex with men, but never say never. I loved Aurelie for her physical generosity, for the lessons she taught me about pleasure and for the poignant beauty of those languorous Parisian afternoons. It’s very seldom that your own life feels like a movie, but in terms of pure romance, it was the most perfect sex of my life. Maestra by LS Hilton ($29.99, Zaffre Publishing) is out now

“WHEN I SAW HER FOR THE FIRST TIME I WAS ENTIRELY UNPREPARED FOR THE GREAT WAVE OF LUST THAT CRASHED OVER ME. PROPER, DRY-MOUTHED, KNEETREMBLING, KNICKER-WETTING LUST”