My girlfriend was into dancing, had the pointe shoes on her wall. I asked her once (I was 16!) if it was exciting when her breasts started to grow. She snorted disdainfully. "I guess, until they got too big."

I didn't understand for many years. They were soft and silky to the touch; handling them felt like playing with mounds of vitality that had slipped down to Earth from the clouds. How could there be anything wrong with them? But I suppose it's easier to be relaxed about them when they aren't attached to you for life. While I worshipped them, I came to realise that they were hard to shop for and that they supposedly were less than 'perfect', that minimum standard for the appearance of women's parts. For me she was sexy not because she had a perfect body but because of the amazing soul that I could sense like a stack of Tesla coils between her keen eyes and her soft loins. All that I could touch and see made me happy, but it wasn't the reason I was drawn to her.

She did grow to like them. I don't know if my clueless paeans and greedy grabbings played a part. I would like to think they did, but I wouldn't bet on it: it was probably her own journey. On one of my birthdays when we lived together she sat me down in an armchair and came back in lingerie, with a colourful spot inside one cup. She teased me into looking, and I found a transfer tattoo of a rose. Oh, gods, how could she get the idea that I needed to be enticed? But it was a cute little kids' tattoo, and about as risqué as she wanted to go.

When I moved out of town decades later, she and her spouse came to help me pack up and clean out. She took me aside and told me that she had felt a hard lump but that it was nothing to worry about. And I thought about this a lot. What can you do for your love if one or both of them must go? What will it be like when she knows that you have her body in mind? Will she be happy or bitter about being pushed back into being sexy?

I will never be in that situation, but I still wonder. I have no idea how she thinks of me, but the feelings I had for the friend of my body and soul don't just completely die away. I have no claims to her, but I still care.