Pucker Up!

I still know the name of each boy I’ve ever kissed. (This isn’t as great a feat as one might think, as there are only eleven. Is that a little or a lot? I have never actually taken a poll, so you tell me.)

As referenced in a recent post, JBar was my first real boyfriend, and therefore my first real kiss. That peck from my tween years so does not count.

JBar and I had been flirting for a few sunny summer months. We weren’t yet a couple, but I was more and more hopeful as the first day of school drew near, due mostly to the fact that he would call me. My experience with boys I liked up to that point extended to my calling them whenever I spent the night w/friends since I wasn’t allowed to call boys—house rule even after Kat and I had our own phone line. (I hadn’t quite learned defiance yet, but would soon.) My crushes never called me of their own volition unless they needed help with physics homework.

JBar was new to town and I subconsciously understood that if I didn’t have him by the time he met other (cuter and less Puritanical but of course dumber and less funny) girls when school started, I’d never have him. One weekday—I don’t quite remember how—he and a mutual friend (probably at my insistence to said friend in order to manufacture more flirting on my home turf) came by our house while my parents were off at work. Said friend contrived a flimsy reason to leave, but called me soon after to check to see how things were going. This was pre-cell-phone-infestation, so I went back to my parents’ bedroom to talk to her. He followed me a few minutes later.

Just as I hung up the phone, sitting on the side of Mom & Dad’s bed, I looked up and JBar was in the doorway with his arms up, holding onto the top of the doorframe, smiling that devious smile that made his eyes disappear and made my blood run hot and my heart flip all over the place—it was a smile that made me catch my breath even after we’d been broken up for almost a year, a smile I could hear from miles away. He smiled at me and I think I said, “What?” and before I knew it he was sitting next to me with one hand on my jaw. The tiny part of my brain that could still think was thinking, “This is your first kiss. Remember it forever.”

[kiss kiss kiss]

Brain, continued from previous: “Hmmm. Shouldn’t be a problem, since you’re SITTING ON YOUR PARENTS’ BED!!!”

[kiss kiss]

Brain: “Shut up, brain.”

[kiss]

And then my first kiss was over, we were grinning at each other and heading back out into the den, and we were boyfriend-and-girlfriend. A done deal.

I was seventeen years and seven months old, almost to the day. I remember the date because it was the day we marked as our anniversary, and it just happened to be on the birthday of a guy I’d pined over for years. (HA! Take that, Adam!)

JBar and I had an interesting relationship—it officially lasted a year, until I went off to college and he stayed behind for his senior year. It unofficially lasted another semester; then we did the ill-advised but unavoidable “I’m lonely, I miss you, let’s get back together” thing mid-summer after my freshman year at HC. I haven’t spoken to him for years (I’ve lost count of the actual number) but will always remember him since he was my first kiss, boyfriend, and breakup.

I have had a kiss mark the moment I became someone’s girlfriend without going on a date first on one other occasion. Meet my husband.