It's Not What You Think by Chris Evans Page B

happened: the wind of change had visited me, silently and deftly.
    I was both rocked and shocked. The Karen in question—Karen II—although captain of the netball team, was actually quite modest and quiet in comparison to the rest of the female jocks in the main gang. They liked her because she was good at sport, by far and away better than anyone else. Sport was her ticket to the back seat of the bus and the big girls were more than glad to have her on board. She also had the most spectacular thighs.
    This was the first sign of foreboding, I should have known. I hadn’t thought about Karen’s thighs ever before, but now the mere mention of her name instantly conjured up a snapshot of those muscly and impressive haunches, so adept at springing her forth, up and high to net another victorious goal.
    I started to notice her and her thighs around more, like when you buy a car and suddenly you see them everywhere. I would smile at her and she would smile back. What was I doing? To smile at the enemy is to sleep with the enemy, you fool. And although Karen II wasn’t a bad person, she was the enemy. She threatened everything I loved, everything that brought me joy—Tina, her smell, her mouth, her mum and dad’s spare room—her mum and dad themselves, our beloved bean bag, Queen’s Greatest Hits, Bat Out of Hell and even The King’s Singers.
    I was infected—the sickness had taken hold. All the symptoms I now recognise started to fall into place, lining up obediently, one behind the other, like a well-organised army getting ready to attack. I was surrounded by my inevitable doom. It was only a matter of time before I committed my first true act of betrayal—I began to compare!
    I began to compare my beautiful Tina with the imposter that was Karen II, skipper of the netball team. What a lowly and despicable thing to do.
    And even worse, I began to look for areas where Tina might be weak and Karen might be strong—rarely was it the other way round. When I was with Tina, I would almost wait for her to do something that suggested a chink in her armour, all the while looking for future reasons for us to split up, all the time comparing her against countless shiny images of Karen II gliding through the air in that damned navy-blue pleated PE skirt. Thinking about it now makes my stomach churn. This is not the behaviour of a decent person, a loving boyfriend, a doting partner. What a total loser! What were you thinking? Be grateful for what you’ve got, you fool. In fact, more than that, get down on your knees and thank God you’ve got the greatest girlfriend a boy could wish for. But it was not to be. I had become blind to the perfection that was our love and I was hellbent on tearing it apart.
    Tina’s heart was pure and true. She had given me everything and I had never been happier, but I was completely infatuated with the thighs of another. And this is what people do: especially blokes, they see a new nest and start to create an agenda that will justify them leaving their current one, even though if they were to stop for a second, they would realise there’s no better place in the universe than where they are now.
    The final act of the whole sorry tale began with a secret note and talk of, ‘If you don’t tell anyone I won’t.’ Karen II wasn’t as backwards at coming forwards as I had first imagined. Her mum and dad were going away for the weekend and she had invited me to come round and check out their living room carpet in their absence. After a whole night of rolling around on some of the finest shagpile, there was no going back.
    I was now with Karen II.
    I had moved on and my first true love was over.
    You only get one mum and you only get one first love and the passing of the relationship I had with Tina is a thing of gargantuan sadness. What can I say? I broke her heart and to this day I wish I never had.
Tina and Chris: The Epilogue
    Two days later, Karen II dumped me.
    Not five, or four, or three but