The kid couldn't have been older than eighteen the first time it happened. A gig in Sheffield, not two years before Bonzo died. Some local radio station had arranged for him and his band to meet us backstage, heaven knows how that happened, but despite their wide-eyed amazement they were nice enough boys – boys, at least fifteen years younger than us – and the broadcast probably turned out all right. I never listened to it. In hindsight I wish I had.

When the radio crew were finishing up, I asked the kid – Steve, his name was Steve, but I can't help thinking of him as "the kid" - if he wanted to jam (sure enough he'd brought his guitar along). He looked like five Christmases and ten birthdays had all come at once and could barely get a breathless "Love to" out of his mouth. I should have known, he was obviously the most Zeppelin-obsessed of them all, but I was somehow touched nonetheless. Because I liked him.

Liked the way he looked.

Showtime was still hours away and the sound and light guys crowding the stage, so my dressing room seemed like the most viable option. We played, he kept asking questions about my rig, tuning, picking, his enthusiasm only superficially contained, and after pestering him long enough I got him to play some of his own tunes. Rudimentary as they might have been, especially with the lack of other instruments, I knew there was potential in them and told him so, almost expecting him to swoon – so the simple "Thanks" I got in response surprised me somewhat. There was something in the way he looked at me, something that hadn't been there half an hour ago... and I felt a sudden flash of heat in my stomach.

Oh, fuck, no.

I had had occasional flings with Robert. Nothing to call a relationship – hell, he'd been happily married to Maureen all the time. Just something we did for... well, for fun, I suppose. In a way it was more fulfilling than what I had with women, but I never expected the attraction I sometimes felt for men amount to anything deeper than sex. Nor did I wish it to.

But this kid...

"Do you have a girlfriend?" I asked abruptly.

He all but flinched. "No...t yet."

"Well, when you get one, hang on to her." So I won't hunt you down 'cause you're hot. "I really think you guys are going to make it big. The last thing you want is to have your ugly break-up splashed across the front pages of the tabloids." What in the blue fuck was I blathering on about? Sure, I had snorted some... thing just prior to the boys' arrival, but I was far from out-of-it. And yet I couldn't take my eyes off him. And the tingle of arousal in my groin refused to die. Splashed across the front pages of the tabloids... Had I ever fucked a fan? Couldn't think of a single occasion. Groupies hardly counted as ones but...

The kid let out a nervous chuckle. "... 'Kay. I'll keep that in mind."

I rubbed my forehead. "Nevermind. My head's all over the place."

"Cos of this?" He swiped light brown powder off the table next to which he was sitting, raising an eyebrow. I swallowed, words escaping me.

"C'mon, didn't you admit yourself you're using?" A sideways grin. "My parents nearly confiscated all your records from me. I only wondered what it'd be like to get high with Jimmy Page."

Was there really more than one direction this conversation could have gone? "Want to try?"

The kid hardly needed persuasion.

I've forgot most of what followed... if it was in my memory to begin with. I made lines for us. Coke. I had enough conscience left to not risk giving him a seizure from heroin – you never knew how different people reacted to it. We continued mucking about with the guitars. At some point he said he was envious of the way I looked when I played. "Too rock'n'roll", or something like that. I said he looked good enough himself. He replied, or maybe not, I ended up kissing him anyway. After the initial surprise he didn't put up much resistance... against anything.

Afterwards he looked disoriented, the high slowly wearing off, and I felt dirty. "What happened between us stays between us, all right?"

"All... right." He had pulled his jeans back on and was fingering the unzipped fly like he'd forgot how it worked. I wished I had some way to make sure his mouth stayed shut, but, well, I had started the whole sorry ordeal myself, hadn't I? Better bear the consequences. Page, you idiot.

I walked him back to his bandmates, breathing an inward sigh of relief when he greeted them with almost the same starry-eyed excitement he'd been bursting with when coming here. Would anyone actually believe him if he spilled the beans about what had just happened? I wasn't sure, but in the end it was my word against him... and if it came to that, I had no doubt of which one would be taken seriously. I realised I'd hate to see him in such a situation.

Showtime came and went. Nobody was mad at me later on, so apparently I didn't fuck up too bad. I honestly couldn't tell. The kid and the others had already got their autographs (and more... much more) so there was no sight of them hanging around the backstage door. My brain was a whirring mess of emotions, but on top of those was relief. Relief that I didn't have to see his face again and wonder what was going on behind it, what he thought of me now.

Maybe it was payback then that the memory of him plagued me all of the following day... the following week... month... year. By that time I'd forgot his name and was hoping the face – feeling – would go with it... and then the bastards released an album. Which wasn't much of a hit, but just my luck that I got to hear about it anyway. Enter another year of guilt-tripping, which combined with Bonzo's passing that autumn didn't provide quite the best conditions for my musicianship and what I perceived as a healthy life. I hung up the guitars, blew more and more money on drugs, trying to forget anything and everything.

Of course the kid had to find me after the show that had included my triumphant return on stage. Of course it's glaringly obvious what happened, even though he refused to listen to any of my jumbled apologies, hardly said a word.

Neither of us was high that time. 

After that night I sent him a nameless message through their management. Call me next time, and my number. Fully aware I was putting basically my entire life in his hands. Fuck it – somewhere in the back of my mind I knew he'd call. Which he did, after another break of almost three years. If my number had changed during that time, would I have sent him the new one? Probably. Why? Hell if I knew. I wasn't in love with him, but there was some kind of an attachment that was eating up my life.

Their third album became a huge smash and for the first time we talked more than guitars. He was intimidated by the prospect of everyone recognising him on the street. I told him the public forgets about things pretty fast (ludicrous, considering my own obsession with him, but I guess I didn't count as a member of the public). The so-called voice of experience seemed to reassure him, and the matter was settled by the following morning, allowing him to again vanish into thin air. I still had no contact information of him whatsoever, aside from his name. Looking back I think it made things a lot less complicated than what they might have been.

Over the years we hooked up every now and then – I think two hands' fingers would be enough to count the total number of those times – never speaking of other than what was currently going on in our lives. I'd have been ready for more, but there was an unspoken boundary I didn't dare to stretch, so I came to accept this as merely the strangest relationship in my entire life. Maybe he viewed it the same way. I never got to knew. His death affected me surprisingly little – another young talent gone too soon, nothing special. I sent a bunch of flowers to the band, along with a card stating my condolences and how much I'd liked to meet Steve and the band all those years ago. A nondescript thank-you note came back. They may have mentioned my small remembrance a couple of times in interviews, I'm not sure. But what happened between me and him stayed between me and him, in every sense of the expression. Case closed.

Yet I still wish I had known him better. It's the strangest things that are hard to let go.