Title: Hey, Nonny, Nonny

Author: Triskell

Fandom: RENT (Musical)

Characters: Joanne, orginal character

Rating/Warnings: PG-15 (slash, f/f) – Don't like, don't read.

Disclaimers: RENT and all associated characters belong to Jonathan Larson; Sammi's my creation.

Summary: Joanne remembers an instance in her youth

Author's notes: I started this ficlet more than two years ago and I really wanted to finish it. Joanne's a character I find intriguing, but don't understand very well; I'm not entirely clear as to some of her motivations and feelings. I tried to "get-to-know-her" in this ficlet, although I think from the style of writing it's not really Joanne's voice.

The title's from a poem by Shakespeare to be found in "Much Ado About Nothing": Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more; men were deceivers ever … and be you blithe and bonny, converting all your sounds of woe into hey, nonny, nonny."

I'm sorry for any inconsistencies, or out-of-characterness. Hope you still enjoy, feedback's very much welcomed!

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HEY, NONNY, NONNY

© 28 March 2003, 30 January 2005

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When I was younger I wanted to be just like my mum. In truth, it was all I ever wanted. She was popular, strong, and independent – all attributes that I craved and could never live up to. I was always weak, no wonder I fell. So deep and so hard it hurt, each and every time.

I was fifteen when I met her, Sammi. She was a Finnish exchange student, petite, blonde, and unbelievably pretty. In a fragile sort of way perhaps, almost like a porcelain doll with large blue eyes, shimmering and sparkling. The boys worshipped at her feet.

She intrigued me from the start, her slight accent, harsh edges to her soft voice; I still hear it, sometimes; it's a distant memory now, with twenty years in between, but sweet, no bittersweet.

---

Everyone tells you you never forget your first time. I only remember bits and pieces of mine. I needed to have a boyfriend, otherwise I'd have stuck out in that holiday camp. I was fourteen, gangly and unsure and thought, from the first, that he was an idiot. His conversation was limited to video games and action films.

Not that I really wanted to talk to him. I know the first kisses were horribly awkward, wet and nasty; his hand was sweaty and hot when he held mine at the camp fire. We sang songs together and after a few days he gave me a ring to wear. That night we had sex. It hurt, it was messy, and anything but romantic. I hadn't really expected anything else.

I was already aware that I was a little too interested in the girls in the communal showers, but I told myself it was just because we were all comparing the size of our tits. It was normal, like guys trying to see who's got the longer dick, whose shaft is thicker.

The other girls wouldn't have understood, of course, so I made eyes at a reasonably attractive guy – he wasn't ugly at least, I remember that much – and got myself laid. He broke up with me in his first letter, mid-September. I was glad he didn't write his address on the envelope, because I'd already lost it. So much better to just forget and never bother about it.

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Sammi didn't laugh often. She was quiet, thoughtful, and reserved, the mirror opposite of what I'd always thought I should be. But though she didn't speak up, people flocked to her, guys, girls, all vying for her attention.

She was calmness, the steady rock in the pool of glittering water lapping about her. I envied her sweet temper, her good looks, her generousity; and I feared her. I was afraid of her because I knew I was looking at her too much.

After that summer, my eyes kept trailing over the other girls in the changing room, in the showers, and I was beginning to realise it wasn't the same kind of curiousity as for the boys. When I lay in bed, I touched myself and thought of breasts, long smooth legs, of women.

And while I was looking at girls in general, my eyes always lingered on Sammi a bit longer than they should have. Her pale skin, her rosy cheeks, the sweat on her skin after a work-out. She was different, she was untouchable, untouched, pure.

I began writing poetry, like so many other girls, and I compared her to an angel, a goddess, descended from heaven to walk among mortals, the drab grey masses. She shone and I worshipped her with my own inadequate words. My body burned for her, I thought my heart was yearning, that I would die if I couldn't have her and perish if I could.

My mother asked if I had a boyfriend, or if there was at least some guy I liked. She wanted me settled, with a class ring, a good-looking man, a prospect. I had a secret and I knew it was dirty, unnatural. I couldn't admit it to myself, couldn't accept then that I was in love, for the first time in my life, and that it was glorious to feel something so deep and special for another person.

I know now and I ask myself, sometimes, when Maureen's snoring beside me, if I love her the way I did Sammi back then. I dare not finish the thought.

Every question about my love life made my heart beat faster, I felt like a little kid, unequal to being in my mother's presence when she looked down at me.

"Mr Mason's daugher's engaged to a promising young man; he just finished Harvard, will go into the family business. Mrs Mason says Charlene's too young, but really, I was seventeen too when I met your father!"

Seventeen – my parents were still together, but my father was never at home. There was no boyfriend and I knew there'd never be again, even though I couldn't tell my mother. How do you speak of something you can't even tell yourself, something you feel so strongly and yet won't even leave your lips as a whisper at night, when you've buried yourself under your blankets?

How do you share a secret that you know will set you apart, demonize you in the eyes of those closest to you?

---

I'm not really sure how it came about, but one day I was partnered with Sammi in biology. We had to disect a frog, I think; some slimy thing at any rate and we made a dreadful slushy mess of it. I wasn't concentrating on the dead little body in front of us, my mind was taken up with Sammi.

She wore a touch of eyeshadow and a little toned lipbalm. The thin silver necklace with the teddy bear pendant around her neck swung against her chest as she bent forward. She smiled, whispering to me about what we had to do. Her breath was warm so close to me and she smelled of that cherry-flavoured chewing gum I'd never liked. She was wearing a perfume, something sweet and flowery, perhaps lily-of-the-valley.

We got a D on our disecting project for that lesson and the teacher said we needed to do better. He suggested we work together for the next couple of weeks; for once, the prospect of doing so wasn't appalling.

Sammi was a quick study and I was too absorbed in her to care much for anything else. I rushed through my classes, awaiting biology each day. It was only through Sammi's efforts that we didn't make as many blunders, although my fingers were suddenly clumsy.

---

Somehow Sammi and I got closer over frog entrails and insect legs. We weren't really friends, perhaps, but we spoke to each other, sometimes shared a table at lunch. For four months, two weeks, and twelve days, Sammi was the centre of my world. I didn't tell her, because I didn't think she would understand.

I asked Sammi to come over to my place for the afternoon once. We sat on my bed with its knitted red bedspread, listening to music, thumbing through magazines. Sammi came across a questionnaire and we went through it, giggling. I was giddy with her closeness the brush of her arm against mine.

"What do you prefer on your man? A) boxers, b) briefs, c) tanga, d) nothing?"

"None of these."

"What else is there, Joanne?"

"I don't like men that way." I don't know why I said it. The first time I uttered it, the greatest secret I'd ever shared.

Sammi cocked her head, blonde hair slipping down her shoulder. The sun was behind her, shining through the window, casting a light around her, making her glow. So ethereal, so heart-breakingly beautiful.

"You don't like men, Joanne?"

"No."

She nodded and my heart was thumping. She hadn't run and I reached out and put my hand on hers. I touched her skin, warm and soft and smooth and she looked directly at me. "If you don't like men, then…"

She trailed off as my other hand brushed her shoulder, came to rest on her upper arm. I pushed, gently and she let herself fall back easily, half-turned towards me on her back, looking up at me. Her hair was spread around her like a halo; an angel for me to mar.

I never wrote a poem about the way she looked, or about the way she tasted. Cherry flavoured lip gloss, cherry-gum breath; she didn't push me away and her lips were soft, warm, a little moist. I didn't mind the clumsiness.

I trailed my hand across her cheek, down her neck, felt the fluttering of her pulse, the shiver in her body as I lay against her. Her hand was heavy on my waist. We held each other, kissing. It seemed like a very long time, but it wasn't. My mother came knocking on the door, telling us to get down, Sammi's host mum had come to take her home.

Sammi smiled as we pulled back, and I think I was laughing, breathless as we got off the bed, stumbling, clumsy. There were so many colours in my life then and when I fell asleep that night I dreamt of them, of gold and silver, red and blue, green and yellow.

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A few days later, at school, Sammi told me she was leaving the US. She couldn't stay the whole year because of her family. She said something had happened and she had to go back; I wanted to ask if it was because of me, but I wasn't brave enough.

I didn't have her address in Finland and she never wrote to me. I desperately wished for an envelope or a dirty, grubby note with her handwriting to remember her by, but there was only that afternoon and my own disjointed memories of her colours, her scent, and her taste.

Only when she was gone I realised what I'd lost. The sun shone still, but there were no sparkles in golden hair, draped like a veil over a red bedspread. The sky never smiled up at me out of blue eyes again and I never tasted that cherry lipgloss again.

I burnt my diary on 31 December. On my sixteenth birthday I had already made up my mind: I was going to be a brilliant lawyer and I was going to move to New York and make my way.

Two years later I had moved in with my first girlfriend. My mother didn't speak to me for three years and my father called me twice a week. I wasn't sure I was happy, but for the first time I was not discontent.

End.