My First Kiss

For Valentine's Day, I have a love story to tell.

MY WIFE is my soulmate. Without her, I'd be far less than fully alive. She is the yin to my yang; the peanut butter to my jelly; the Laurel to my Hardy.

(Damn, how do I come up with this stuff?)


However, our love story is a great story, so I'm not going to just dash it off quickly to fill space on Valentines Day. When I write it up, I'll take my time and do it right. Therefore, you can expect to see it some time in 2009. Maybe.

To fill space here, I had considered just listing all of the women I've had crushes on and love affairs with and otherwise stalked until they called the cops, but there might still be a couple of restraining orders extant, so I think I'm limited in what I can publish. Instead, I'll tell you about one woman from my past who probably wouldn't be terribly embarrassed about the tale I'm going to tell, mainly because I'm not going to use her real name.

When I was in fourth grade, I kissed the first girl I ever kissed.

My best friend, Stephen Murphy, was having a birthday party. Julie and her friend, Lorraine, classmates of ours, were invited to the party. Somehow or another, during the course of the party, Stephen and I had decided that his girlfriend would be Lorraine and mine would be Julie. I don't know how we decided this. It was his birthday, so maybe he chose first; I don't know. I would have chosen Julie anyway, so it didn't matter. She was a really cute little blonde and she was always friendly. Lorraine was a tall brunette, and just a bit scary. I was almost a year younger than everybody in my class, and skinny as hell to boot, so Lorraine looked like she might have been able to beat me up. I thought I could handle Julie if it came down to it.

Anyway, as the party was ending and kids were going out the door to head home, a propitious moment arrived where only Julie, Lorraine, Stephen and myself were left in his living room.

Stephen whispered in my ear, "OK, you kiss Julie and I'll kiss Lorraine."

I whispered back, "Ugh. KISS her? Why would I want to do that?"

"That's what you do with a girlfriend."

"OK, then, you kiss Lorraine first and then maybe I'll kiss Julie."

"It's my birthday. You should start."

"I already gave you a present."

"We could both do it at the same time."

"Well..."

"Come on! They're gonna leave!"

And, with that, he kind of shoved me at Julie, while he grabbed Lorraine.

I looked over and saw my buddy kissing Lorraine, so I planted a very dry quick smooch on Julie's totally unprepared lips. I don't know how Lorraine reacted to my buddy, but I know that Julie didn't seem all that upset about things. She smiled, as a matter of fact.

Of course, now that I had done what my buddy had explained was what you did with a girlfriend, I didn't have any idea what to do next. So, I just stood there like an idiot, blushing my fool red head off, while Julie continued smiling.

My friend now announced, loud enough for everybody to hear, "OK, now Julie is my girlfriend and you get Lorraine."

My guess is that Lorraine wasn't overly impressed with his kissing technique, so now he wanted to try it out on someone else - or maybe he was just way ahead of his time. My best friend was a jungle gym lothario; a pre-pubescent swinger! Fourth-grade girlfriend swapping!

Lorraine said, "I don't want to kiss him!"

She appeared to be pointing in my direction. I didn't have any idea why she wouldn't want to kiss me. I had watched enough Leave It To Beaver episodes to know that girls always wanted to kiss boys, although it was never explained why they did.

Julie pointed at my friend, and said, "Well, I don't want to kiss him, either!"

Stephen said, "You have to. That's the rules!"

Where he got these rules, I had no idea.

I stood there, blushing more strongly than ever and wishing I was home. Lorraine said, "Hmmph!", or something to that effect, and walked out the door. Julie followed, leaving me and my friend to ponder just what the heck had happened.

Eh. We were fourth-graders. We didn't ponder long.

"You want to go to Charlie's and get some candy? I've got birthday money."

"OK", I said, and off we went to drown our sorrows in Pixie Sticks and Mallo Cups.

So, that was the first time I ever kissed a girl. It would be another five years or so before a girl actually kissed me. The next day, back at school, it was as though nothing at all had happened. Nobody was embarrassed and nobody avoided anyone else; it was business as usual. If only romance was that simple all the time.

Soon, with more better stuff.