I had my first kiss on the 13th of April, in about the year 2000, with someone who shares a name with a Wikipedia Page. I was two years her junior. I was very awkward, and wore a suit to the date. After the kiss, which had tongues, I said it reminded me of the way birds feed their young. That wasn’t an original observation, I’d taken it from a Doctor Who novel - The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch, which remains a favourite. Four dates later, my girlfriend called me late one night in tears, saying she had got drunk and snogged someone else, and so doomed our relationship. I didn’t really get it. I said ‘I don’t mind!’. I’ve always believed in forgiveness. But that was it. It was over. She was devestated. I was confused, and more upset about the end of the relationship than about any ideas of unfaithfulness. It was her eighteenth birthday. Of course she got drunk.

I think I had very little business dating anyone. Maybe that’s harsh. Love is something I don’t know if I understand. Maybe I wanted to lock in a close friendship and make it last forever by escalating things to romance, but every time I only damaged the friendship. Interlocking hands and tongues is warm and fun and unhygeinic and always slightly bad-tasting, but I never quite got the appeal of it as a way of life. With many partners, I’ve thought, with retrospect, maybe I wanted to be them, not be with them.

I’ve never had a best friend. When I got to senior school, the likely candidate, Nicky Moore already had a best friend. They were all a year older than me, his circle. I was a big fan of the lot of them, and greatly envious. They were sought-after performers and got cast in all the good roles. I only knew how to imitate, and come in with quotes and copies and echoes of things that impressed me. I was envious, and I couldn’t grow to match their talents. I don’t think it was the age difference. I was scrappy where they were disciplined. They could make things neatly and apply their skills with patient care. That hasn’t changed, I think. I never yet made anything with delicacy and precision, but I made a thousand semi-enjoyable messes. I always compared myself to Nick, who learned several languages and took a gap-year in Cuba, and studied theology and went into the church and has a family and a charismatic, yet grounded style. I always compare myself to him. It seems more sensible than comparing myself to my great grandparents and grandparents and parents, who at my age were fighting in World War one and fighting in World War two and were married young professionals raising children.

I don’t actually know if ‘best friends’ is a monogamous position, or if you can have more than one. I’ve feared to use that phrase, in case I one day have an unrequited best-friendship. I have a wide circle of favourite friends, and if you wonder whether you are one you are one. I think my attempts at romance and friendship were imitation and trying to navigate rules I never really comprehended. I denied for many years that I was on the autistic spectrum - like I did with the transgender spectrum and having depression - but looking back I think there are signs there.

My first kiss was on the thirteenth of April, but that wasn’t my first relationship. My first of those had no kisses. We were 13 or 14 or something. We met at summer camp. We gave each other joy. We were just good friends. I arranged to visit her house in Essex for a week. I think our hearts were both burdened with something we didn’t dare to say. On day four of five, she broached the topic. She held out a glass heart, and said ‘I got this for you’. I was thrown into panic. Was she saying she fancied me, or was she saying she wanted to sell me a glass ornament. The only response I could think of which fit both situations wad ‘’How much?’ either for quantity of love or price to pay. I forget, or didn’t even hear what she said after that, but my response was to stiffly say ‘I assure you the feeling is entirely mutual’. I phrased it like that so I could have deniability if it later transpired the conversation had not been about love.

I didn’t do a poo for the entire week, because I feared being heard to fart.

I never enjoy being in a relationship, but I get on very well with most surviving exes, once we reconnect as human friends. I would hate to be married, but I think I could have a cool relationship with an ex-spouse. Like Henry Higgins and Eliza in My Fair Lady, they’d be a wretched couple, even cruel, but as ex-husband and ex-wife? That would work. I’d hate to divorce, but it might be a relief once it was all over. As a child, I thought love and marriage was an obligatory part of adulthood. Around the mid-nineties I had a recurring thought in my imagination, that one day my wife would stand with a child in her arms, and give me an impossible ultimatum, ‘it’s me or Doctor Who’, and I would have to give up my central pleasure or else ruin everybody’s life. Funnily enough, when my old friend Nicky went on his gap-year to Cuba, he did give up his Doctor Who collection, and generously gave me the Key to Time on VHS. I wonder how much that action is the difference between him and me.