Everything I Know About Love

Alderton’s memoir opens with an exploration of her beliefs about love, sex, and dating when she was a teenager. She writes that romantic love is the most important thing in life, and once she has a boyfriend, nothing else will matter. Friends with boyfriends are “boring,” but she feels that her best friend, Farly Kleiner, will always be her best friend because they have different tastes in boys. Regarding sex, it is fine to make out with multiple boys for “practice,” but one must lose one’s virginity before one’s 18th birthday. If one turns 18 and is still a virgin, then they will be a virgin forever.

Alderton recalls the sound that defined her adolescence: the tones of AOL dial-up internet. Growing up, her family lived in Stanmore, a suburb in the “farthest fringes of North London” (5), which was neither urban nor rural. At school, she meets her best friend, Farly, and they are opposites in nearly all respects: height, hair color, attitude to rules and authority, punctuality, etc. They bond over eating junk food and watching American sitcoms while their parents are out. When AOL and MSN Instant Messenger become available, Alderton feels like she is “knocking on the wall of a prison cell and hearing someone tap back” (7).