Dolly Alderton

Many times, I would invent a person in my head and create our chemistry as if writing a screenplay, and by the time we’d meet again in real life, I’d be crushingly let down. It was as if, when things didn’t go as I imagined, I’d assumed he would have been given a copy of the script I’d written and I’d feel frustrated that his agent obviously forgot to courier it to him to memorize.

When I finally have a boyfriend, little else will matter.

When friends have boyfriends they become boring.

As it turns out, I discovered I had absolutely nothing in common with most boys and next to no interest in them unless I wanted to kiss them.

I had always expected boys to carry themselves with a similar elegance and charm

But I found the reality of boys to be slightly disappointing. Not as funny as the girls I had met there, not nearly as interesting or kind.

I am, at this point, eighteen, six months into my sexually active life and at a uniquely heightened stage of sexuality; an ephemeral period where sex was my biggest adventure and discovery; a time when shagging was like potatoes and tobacco, and I, Sir Walter Raleigh. I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t doing it all the time. All the books and films and songs that had been written about it were not enough to cover all corners of how great it was; how did anyone see the opportunity in any evening for anything other than having sex or finding someone to have sex with?

For some, the sound that defined their adolescence was the joyful shrieks of their siblings playing in the garden. For others, it was the chain rattle of their much-loved bike, hobbling along hills and vales. Some will recall birdsong as they walked to school, or the sound of laughing and footballs being kicked in the playground. For me, it was the sound of AOL dial-up internet.

Because that was the soundtrack of my life. Because I spent my adolescence on the internet.

Morrissey once described his teenage life as ‘waiting for a bus that never came’; a feeling that’s only exacerbated when you come of age in a place that feels like an all-beige waiting room. I was bored and sad and lonely, restlessly wishing the hours of my childhood away.