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When I speak of my first loves, I don’t mean it strictly in terms of chronology. The heart, after all, doesn’t keep time the way clocks do. What I truly mean are those early infatuations—the ones that struck with unexpected force, that left me breathless, bewildered, and utterly convinced that each extraordinary girl was, for a fleeting moment, the centre of my universe.

There were several of them, truth be told. I met them at different ages, in different places, each encounter unique, each one leaving its own distinct imprint on the young man I was becoming. Some I knew for only a season, others for years. Some made me dream, some made me laugh, and all of them, in their own way, helped shape the person I eventually grew into.

They weren’t simply “first” because they came early.
They were first because they mattered.

Florence

I must have been eleven or twelve when the story truly began, though I had known Florence for several summers already. Every year, without fail, we met in Cavalaire, that small paradise of sand and sea where childhood stretched out endlessly under the sun. Our days were filled with games on the beach, daring jumps in the waves, and the innocent complicity of two children who simply felt good in each other’s company.

We took water-ski lessons at the same school, learned to swim under the same instructor’s watchful eye. Our parents were friendly, the kind that shared impromptu lunches on the beach or dinners at little restaurants around the port. Everything felt easy then, predictable in the comforting way childhood summers often are.

But that particular July—1964 or 1965—I felt something shift. Florence arrived with the same bright smile, the same mischievous eyes, yet for the first time I noticed something else, something I couldn’t name at the time. A strange fluttering in my chest each time she looked my way. A warmth that had nothing to do with the sun.

As always, she and her family left at the end of July, while we stayed until the end of August. It was the unwritten family rule: July with our mother, and then, as predictably as the cicadas, my father joining us in August, always before the 15th.

That year, my parents made plans with hers to stop at their home on our way back north. They lived in Chasselay, just above Lyon—the very doorstep of the Beaujolais region. I strongly suspect the arrangement had less to do with hospitality and more with my father’s enthusiasm for visiting his wine supplier. Predictably, that is exactly what happened.

We reached Florence’s home just in time for lunch, as arranged. And there, in that hallway I still remember vividly, I saw her—not in her swimsuit, not in her casual summer clothes, but in the proper clothes of everyday life. A simple dress, perhaps, I can no longer swear to the details. What I do remember is the shock. A pleasant, dizzying shock. As if I were seeing her for the first time.

She was beautiful. Quietly, naturally beautiful.

It was decided that very day that she would come visit us in La Celle-Saint-Cloud during the autumn school holidays. She had never been to Paris, and we were delighted at the idea of showing her our city.

We drove home afterwards, and the following weeks were some of the longest of my young life. I thought of her constantly. I suppose that was love—its first raw, overwhelming version.

When the long-awaited day arrived, we met her at the Gare de Lyon. She stayed a full week. We did all the grand classics: the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe. We even went to the theatre with my parents—a first for me, one of those small rites of passage that quietly signal you’re growing up.

Life felt radiant then.

Florence was slightly older than I was—a few months, perhaps a year. At twelve, the idea of kissing her or holding her hand felt as inaccessible as the moon. Yet there is no doubt in my mind today: it was a love story, at least on my side. The purest form of love—timid, absolute, unspoken.

And then she left. Back to Chasselay. Back to her world. Leaving behind a hollow echo in mine. “Till next July,” I told myself.

The years slipped by gently. We remained close friends. We saw each other nearly every summer in Cavalaire. I stopped at her house once or twice on the long road south. She met my future wife; I met her future husband. Later, we found ourselves again on that same beach—only this time with children in tow, as if passing the torch of our childhood summers to another generation.

And then, quietly, inevitably, life shifted. I moved abroad a couple of times. She separated from her husband. The threads that had never quite broken suddenly stretched too thin. We lost contact.

For fifteen years, I made half-hearted attempts to find her. Once, I wrote to a woman with the same name and profession. She replied warmly—but she wasn’t my Florence. I searched online whenever nostalgia poked at me. And then, finally, in early 2025, I found her. Living in Chasselay, back where her parents had lived.

I wrote to her. She replied. Soon we exchanged emails, then telephone numbers. The connection rekindled effortlessly, as if the intervening decades had been only a long pause.

We haven’t seen each other yet—but we will. Of that, I am certain.

During one of our early conversations, carried by a mix of humour and honesty, I joked, “You should have married me, you know.”

Her reply came without hesitation:
“You should have asked.”

Of course the burning, youthful passion is gone. What remains is something softer, gentler—a platonic affection, an unshakeable bond. We are now the best of friends.

But she was my very first love.
And a first love, no matter how many years pass, always counts.

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Cathy

I first noticed Catherine — Cathy, as her friends called her — in the schoolyard. She stood out instantly. And judging by the circle of “older boys” who always seemed to orbit around her, I wasn’t the only one mesmerised.

I had skipped two years in primary school, something that felt less like an achievement and more like a curse. At fourteen, a boy is nowhere near as mature as a sixteen-year-old girl. I was always the youngest, always a little behind, always having to fight twice as hard against my shyness and my nagging sense of inferiority.

But fate — or luck — placed us in the same class: the famous 2C, where La Bande 68 would eventually form. I was over the moon. So I made my move. Then another. And another. I suppose it didn’t go unnoticed, because soon enough I found myself, together with my best friend Christian, walking Cathy and her friend Colette home after school. A considerable detour, rather defeating the purpose of owning a moped that ended up being pushed more than ridden. But I didn’t mind: I was slowly, steadily falling in love.

In the evenings, I used to hide in the bushes across from her apartment, waiting to catch a glimpse of her. I spent hours there, in all kinds of weather, and never said a word to her about it.

Then one day I saw her with a man — at least, that’s how he seemed to me. He was old enough to drive and had a car with Alsace plates. I was devastated. The car stayed there for several days, tormenting me, until one day it vanished. Life returned to normal. Except for me, of course.

Somehow, I still managed to get closer to her. I was even invited to her apartment, where I met her mother — a woman who impressed me deeply. She had that rare ability to make you feel confident, to open you up, to see you for who you were. She liked to call me a bit of a rebel. Maybe I was. I didn’t mind; if anything, it helped me feel I had a chance. Thanks to her, I had a foot in the door.

At the boums — those teenage parties full of perfume, nerves, and possibility — Cathy and I would sometimes find ourselves side by side. And then, one evening, it happened: we kissed. A kiss so intense it changed my world. I wasn’t merely in love — I was consumed.

Her parents were strict, far more than mine, who rarely knew where I was. I often sat for hours on the staircase leading up to their apartment, waiting, talking, dreaming with her. One evening, she gave me her soft black wool jumper. I slept with it for weeks. It smelled of her. I was floating.

And then, one day when her parents were away, I was allowed inside. And it happened. We made love — my first time. Nearly sixty years later, I still remember the feeling as if it were yesterday.

Then came May ’68. Everything shifted. I was sent to boarding school, and our paths diverged. We saw each other occasionally, always with the same thrill. She taught me how to love. But life kept moving. In 1973 I left for America. Our farewell was the most beautiful evening and night I had ever experienced.

Three years later I returned, did my military service, began my adult life. I met the woman who would become my wife. Yet Cathy remained somewhere in the background, a distant but indelible light. We kept in touch at least once a year — a birthday phone call, a few letters. My wife Carole and I even visited her at her home in Rouen during our years in England and later Germany.

And then, without warning, everything stopped. No more replies. No more calls. No more letters. Nothing. I must have made a mistake, said something that came across the wrong way… I will never know.

I still live in France. I know where she lives with her husband, but I would never dare knock on her door.

And suddenly, I’m fourteen again.

I send the occasional text, a birthday message. Silence. Perhaps I’ve been blocked.

It is, in the end, a beautiful story — one that ends in sadness.

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Aline

My parents had a quiet genius about them. Without ever raising their voices or laying down strict rules, they found the most ingenious ways to keep my brothers and me close to home, protected from the unpredictable temptations of the streets. Their greatest ruse lay beneath the house: a party room they had carved out of the basement as though it were a secret cavern meant just for us. It was spacious, painted in bold colours that seemed to pulse with our laughter, and in one corner stood a curious wooden construction—half bar, half command post—with a serving hatch and shelves perfectly measured for the stereo and its precious cargo of LPs. It became, inevitably, the heart of our small world.

My mother, though, had a flair for surprises that no magician could rival. One afternoon she asked me to follow her up the four flights of stairs, all the way under the roof, to the floor we had always known as “the students’ room”—a place where temporary residents helped us wrestle down our homework. But when she opened the door, the space I remembered had vanished. In its place lay a bedroom I could never have dreamed up: a wide bed, and beside it a mattress on the floor draped in what I remain convinced was fake fur; a desk bathed in the slanting light from the skylight; a bookcase waiting to be filled; my trusty stereo already set up as if it had always lived there; all my records carefully lined up; everything softened by a warm, almost conspiratorial glow. I stood stunned, unable to speak. I hadn’t known the room was being transformed, much less that it would become mine.

Though La Bande 68 met every day in the Chaumine, weekends had their own ritual. My parents were almost invariably away, and so our little tribe migrated to my house—drawn by the freedom, by the music, by the scent of something just beginning. We held our boums in the basement, the coloured lights shifting across our faces, and the quieter gatherings unfolded in my new rooftop kingdom, where the hours seemed to float rather than pass.

And it was there, one such evening, that time quietly tipped on its axis. On May 3rd, 1970—funny how some dates refuse to fade—Aline and I kissed for the very first time. A simple moment, almost shy, but it opened something inside me, something I had not known was waiting. It changed the air I breathed. It changed me. And even now, when I think back on that night, I can still hear the soft crackle of the record spinning, the creak of the floorboards, and the thrum of a heart discovering its new rhythm.

For once in my life, I was the older partner — admittedly by a heroic total of five months, but older nevertheless. Not that it made the slightest difference. Aline was soft-spoken, gentle, and elegant in a way that made my teenage self feel like an enthusiastic Labrador in comparison. She had — and still has — a wonderful instinct for clothes and anything artistic. When it came to sewing, she wasn’t just good; she was a magician with a needle. I secretly hoped some of that refinement would rub off on me.

She often came to our house, where we spent long, lazy afternoons listening to music and discovering each other — in the innocent, slightly awkward way only two teenagers can. I was completely smitten. And then evening would come, and I’d hop on our moped to take her home, bracing myself for the daily ritual: her father ceremoniously cracking open a bottle of Canadian whisky for the apéritif.

And there I was — a polite, underage, slightly intimidated boy — being offered whisky as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how I began my lifelong appreciation of the stuff. One could say it was a cultural experience. Or peer pressure from a friendly, mustachioed French father. Either way, I felt wonderfully at home.

My love for Aline grew by the day. But, even wrapped in my lovestruck fog, I sensed I wasn’t quite the one for her. She spoke so fondly, so dreamily, of the South of France — especially Hyères — where her parents had an apartment. The Yacht Club came up in conversation with suspicious regularity. I became convinced there was a rival somewhere, perhaps a tanned sailor with tousled hair and an unfair number of white teeth. We never discussed it, of course. I preferred to stew quietly in my jealousy.

That summer (or perhaps the next — nostalgia tends to blur timelines), she left for her usual holiday in Hyères with her family and her friend Brigitte, also part of our famous Bande 68. She was gone for three or four weeks, and I missed her so much it felt physically painful. I had a summer job in July, stuck in the Paris area, counting the days.

Then, as soon as the job ended, my teenage brain had an idea — a dramatic, wildly impractical, gloriously stupid idea. I grabbed a rucksack with a few clothes, some food, a couple of drinks, walked the hundred metres to the main road, and stuck out my thumb. Hitchhiking was common then, which doesn’t mean it was wise.

My first ride took me into central Paris. From there, I headed to Porte d’Italie, the gateway to all southern adventures. A driver picked me up for about 200 km, then dropped me on a small, dark, slightly creepy secondary road near Avallon in the middle of the night. I felt lonely, young, and, I admit, rather frightened. I was only seventeen, after all, and not half as brave as I liked to pretend.

The next lift took me to Lyon. After a long walk, I may or may not have “borrowed” a moped for a short distance. (Let’s call it youthful improvisation.) Then came a high-speed ride in an Alfa Romeo all the way to Marseille, wind in my hair and adrenaline in my veins. After that, my luck ran out, and I found myself waiting for ages.

I eventually reached Toulon and decided to walk the rest of the way to Hyères. Yes — walk. My teenage determination had fully taken over rational thought by then.

Thirty-six hours after leaving La Celle–Saint-Cloud, with almost no sleep, looking and smelling like a misplaced vagabond, I arrived. I found the building where the apartment was but arrived far too early, so I wandered around for a couple of hours trying not to fall asleep on a bench. When the time finally felt right, I rang the bell.

I was certainly a surprise. I’m still not entirely convinced I was a good one.

(More to follow)

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Alice

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Mme Laborde

When the events of May ’68 shook France, they also shook the fragile equilibrium of my school life. My parents—practical, cautious, and probably a little desperate—decided that the safest solution was to send me to boarding school. The only place available on short notice was a small private school not far from Rouen, where I grudgingly finished the school year. Unhappily, I should add. Very unhappily.

Every weekend I escaped back home to breathe again, to see La Bande 68, my group of inseparable friends. The school itself was so deep in the countryside that there was no point in “faire le mur”—escaping over the walls—because even if you managed it, you’d find nothing but fields, cows, and boredom on the other side.

So I chose the more efficient route: I got myself expelled.
A small triumph.
Brief, of course. My parents were resourceful people—infuriatingly so.

By autumn of 1968, I found myself shipped off again, this time to another boarding school of a very different calibre: the prestigious Collège Stanislas in Paris. A Jesuit institution with a list of former students long enough to fill a small encyclopedia—among them Prince Albert I of Monaco and General de Gaulle.

It was strict, structured, and suffocating. And worst of all: not everyone boarded. Most students went home every evening to warm dinners and familiar rooms. I, on the other hand, was locked in a dormitory twenty kilometres from my actual home. From my friends. From my life.

That, as I eventually understood, was precisely the point.

Luckily, I was not alone in my misery. My friend Hervé had been sentenced to the same fate—our mothers being good friends, they had likely conspired together. Misery loves company, and at least we had that.

It didn’t take me long to find ways to escape, even if only for a couple of hours. I am proud to say that I was never caught. The trick was simple: volunteer for anything that required going beyond the walls of Stanislas. Visiting elderly people. Helping at Notre-Dame, conveniently around the corner. Anything that provided a legitimate excuse to cross the threshold.

And then came Madame Laborde.

She taught French and Philosophy—two subjects I ranked just above sports on my list of least favourite things. And yet, I signed up eagerly for extra lessons with her. Not because of the subjects, of course. But because of her.

I had never experienced anything like it.
An infatuation so intense it was almost physical.
Her eyes had a shade—violet, purple, something undefinable—that I have never seen again in my life. They haunted me.

She was elegant, graceful, impeccably dressed, probably in her early thirties. Far, far out of reach. And yet, to my 16-year-old heart, she was the only possible object of devotion.

Then came the moment that set my imagination ablaze: she announced that the extra lessons would take place at her home—a few metro stations away. I fantasised for days. Weeks. I had a room of my own in the boarding house; a space where dreams had plenty of room to grow wild.

I remember that first Thursday with painful clarity. Arriving at her apartment, knees trembling, heart pounding. She opened the door with the warmest, sweetest smile—nothing like the formal, composed posture she held at school. That alone nearly undid me.

The lessons continued week after week. She must have seen through me quickly. After a while, she gently asked if she was the reason for my strange behaviour. There was no point in lying. I admitted it all—how she was the one, how I couldn’t think of anything else.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t scold. She handled it with kindness, almost tenderness. She explained, with the care of someone guiding a child across a fragile bridge, that nothing could come of it. But a special friendship—an understanding—could.

And so it went. Every Thursday, I visited her home, safe in the knowledge that for at least one hour a week, I would be in her presence.

We never went beyond the polite kisses on the cheeks that we French exchange so naturally. That was the full extent of our “affair”—if one can call it that. Yet for me, it was immense. A secret universe of emotion contained inside a year.

It was, in its own innocent and impossible way, one of my first loves.
And like all first loves, it never entirely fades.

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Carole

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