Here I am with my first girlfriend Rochelle at her step-sisters Batmizvah.

I was really privileged to have gotten some small insights into Jewish culture living where we did around St Kilda in Melbourne.  I remember I would go out and chat with a Hassidic Jew when I was working for the Catholic Church on St Kilda Rd.  He told me about Kabbalah, and golems, and the new moschiach.  Rochelle's family were non-religious, but I still felt quite privileged to get an insight into this ancient and fascinating culture.  Perhaps not by coincidence my wife Cathy also has some Jewish ancestry.

Rochelle was the person who tried to tell me to be an adult, and although I'm not sure I've made it still, it was the wake up call I needed at that age.  Ever since then I have been very open to learning about myself, and particularly the ways I can improve as a human being, through the mirror of my partners.   Each one has given me something different that is core to my being. 

We dated for somewhere between two and three years, when she finally went to Japan and realised it wasn't a healthy relationship.  It was a very emotional relationship for me, and perhaps for her as well.  I was never sure where my love, self-loathing, lust and my need for the intimacy I hadn't received growing up, began and ended, and it all presented itself in a ball of emotion that tossed me around like a storm. 

For all of that I became a better person because of it, so I'll always look back on it fondly.