We went to Latvia with our faculty. The trip was ok. Nothing special. I remember it was the first time I had to ditch drinking coffee, so I was drowsy the whole time. The few nice moments I remember consist of talking in the hotel room and the girl who would become my second girlfriend flirting with me. Though I had no idea that that was what she was doing. I also remember Latvian women laughing and pointing at me because I had really long hair and/or was wearing no hat when it was minus six. Oh, and I remember falling asleep in the opera and some women muttering in Russia what a scandal that was. And my best friend dressing up like a woman in a clothes’ shop and the shop ladies crying out: kak tebe nie stydne! How can you not be ashamed!

We returned on a Friday. We flew back. Some of us felt bad because they had been drinking heavily the night before.

My girlfriend and I lived in the same house. She had the room below mine. I will never forget that room. It smelled so completely like her, like the room came out of her pocket. There was a small sink, a big mirror, her computer, a fridge, a bowl with her goldfish. The fish stayed with me when she left for home. She smelled like paradise. My girlfriend, not the fish. She had dark blue eyes and natural black hair. White skin and freckles. A bigger nose. I like girls with bigger noses. She was small, but not too small. She had the perfect pert breasts, and when she walked there was a bouncy swing to her hips that few women can emulate. Her movements were highly sensual. I don’t know how she did that. She just got it.

All that week I had been away we hadn’t been in touch at all. Internet existed but it wasn’t a daily part of my life at all.

We landed and I rushed home. Nowadays I can imagine not being in touch at all. We have unlearned of what it is to truly miss someone.

I knew she would already be preparing to go home for the weekend. Something in me felt confident. She might still be there. We weren’t good at communicating. Except in bed. Ah, if I could ship my communication skills back to those years, how happy we could have been… Or perhaps not. So much erotic tension can be born out of friction and miscommunication.

I opened the door. She spotted me. She was about to leave to catch a train, but she instantly grabbed her phone, called home and said she wasn’t coming.

That was magical. She decided then and there not to go home. Her parents didn’t argue. She was 18, but her parents didn’t argue. It was deciced. We had sex all weekend and watched a ton of movies, but mostly we had sex. I don’t even know now how we could have that much sex.

We both had tiny beds, so in order to sleep together comfortably we had to carry her matrass up to my room and put it next to mine on the floor. During the night I usually slipped between those two matrasses, but I never felt better.

She put lipstick kisses on my fridge with her lipstick. I still have a picture of that. It brings tears to my eyes knowing I can never bring those moments back. I will never be as fresh and as innocent as I was back then. My ignorance ruined a lot, but not knowing what was going on made every moment a surprise, like an unbelievable gift. She was a goddess to me, this most impossible of all creatures, a beautiful young girl who just needed to see me walk through the door to decide to spend the whole weekend with me. And what perfect timing. Had I arrived ten minutes later she would have been gone.

I didn’t know back then that I would never be happier. Had I know I would have documented it better. would have kissed her a hundred times more than I did, and I kissed her a lot even so.

What I choose to take from it is that when I meet someone I like I want that person to feel as special, as adequate, as loved as she made me feel.

I know I have lived, because I have experienced moments like that. And I also know how it feels to lose it all.

So thanks if you have read all this, you have read something that is a vital part of me. My life was about that moment. You are holding my life in your hands by reading this.

And right now all I want is to make you feel as happy as I felt back then.