My First Three Kisses

Everyone remembers their first kiss, unless you were drunk when it happened. I really consider three kisses to be my first kiss. Why three you ask? Well you’re about to find out, just keep reading, you impatient a-hole!

First Kiss Number One-

Second grade, there was a beautiful little girl named Jenny in my day care, which was really some lady’s house that she packed 15 kids into. It was your normal set up, kids stacked on kids, making noise and getting in trouble. My babysitter, Moana, would make us ‘ants on a log’ and graham crackers covered in peanut butter, basically anything with peanut butter, she was good like that. She wasn’t exactly the greatest babysitter, she would play solitaire for hours and hours while we ran around hitting each other, drawing on her walls and fucking her place up, without her even looking up for a second from her 2524th game of the day.

Jenny would always play with the fake kitchen play set while I played with the Atari 2600 on the old dial style television with rabbit ears (yeah, I’m that old… shut the fuck up.) Jenny would wear these hot ‘Osh’Kosh’By’Gosh’ overalls, a pink plaid button up shirt, ‘jelly’ sandals and pigtails. Man, if I ever see a girl rocking that outfit in LA, I’d have to marry her right there.

One day, a group of the kids got together and decided to play hide and go seek. As the sucker who was ‘IT’ counted down from 20, I looked for a place to hide. When 15 kids play hide and go seek in a two bedroom house, you kind of run out of hiding spots fast. I’d run to the closet, Timmy’s in there, in the cabinet, nope Will’s there.

I checked under the bed and there was Jenny, laying flat and quiet. I slide in with her and we laid there, not saying a word, her hand barely touching mine. There was so much palpable adolescent sexual tension in the air, talk about scary for my young self.

The IT kid yelled out that he found his prey. Jenny and I looked at each other, a smile and giggle happened between us. Suddenly, I had this rush, this sensation, this urge I had never had before. I had to kiss her. I had to do it, RIGHT AWAY.

I attacked her face with my own, part head butt, part kiss from hell. My forehead careened into her nose and then I made a quick move to crane my neck to get my lips to hers, like a dolphin jumping out of the water or a cat licking an entire wall. My lips hit her chin and then stuck on her lips, where I pressed so hard, I could feel her neck crack. We held our lips together for probably a tenth of a second, but it felt like two hours.

She coiled back in horror, grabbed her nose, and ran to tell Moana what had happened. All the kids laughed at me for hours afterwards, I was dubbed the “Kissing Bandit” by Moana.

Was I embarrassed? Yes. Would I take it back? No way in hell.

First Kiss Number Two-

In Michigan during the summer, there isn’t much to do. Kids find new ways to entertain themselves with varied results. The entire summer after my fifth grade year was spent out doors; riding my bike, building tree forts and playing war games with the kids in the neighborhood. When we would get sick of that, there was Nintendo, door bell ditch and Yo! MTV Raps. But all of that was scrapped when a new girl, Teresa, moved 5 houses down from me.

Teresa was the sexiest 6th grader of all time. She was a natural looking Italian with dark curly hair and guess what, she had gotten boobs already. Not big ones mind you, but nice little perky boobs that required the starter bra kit. Plus she ran track so her legs were like tree trunks with a butt that could move mountains. I tried every day to run into her, be around her, get to know her.

She worked at Food Town, the local grocery store, where I think her Dad owned the store. She would hand out samples of pineapple to the customers and basically look cute. I would ride my bike there everyday and eat pineapple samples until my mouth burned and I couldn’t taste food for weeks, due to the high acidity of the pineapple.

I thought to myself, “I have to kiss this girl, dear God, how!?!?!?!”

One fateful day in late June, God answered my prayers. All the kids were hanging out at the community pool, including Teresa, who was wearing a bikini that made me quiver. God moved a cold front from Lake Michigan to Milan, creating one heck of a storm. We all ran for cover. “What are we going to do now?” Teresa invited us all to her basement, JACKPOT.

Her basement was completely different from mine. My basement was a place where ghosts, goblins and creatures lurked behind stacks of moldy Playboys and an old long freezer where we stored meat from the 1950’s. Her basement was a converted entertainment room, like one that you see in richer Midwest homes, filled with nice shag carpeting, a big screen TV and a pool table.

Teresa, two of her friends and me and two of my guy friends huddled together in the basement, wrapping up in blankets and towels. “What are we going to do now?” I asked again.

“Truth or Dare,” replied Teresa.

At this point, I had only played truth or dare a couple of times, all with dudes I knew. Truth or Dare with young guys consists of daring each other to go pee on something or picking truth and asking who you think is cute in your class.

We all agreed to play the game and by luck of the draw, one of Teresa’s friends was deemed worthy of the first round draft pick. She asks Teresa the fateful question, “Truth or Dare.”

“Dare,” she replies.

“I dare you to sit on Justin’s lap and French kiss him for 10 seconds.”

Teresa looked at me and smiled. My heart skipped a beat. "Whoa, this is what Truth or Dare is like with girls?!?!?!?! Man, this is fucking awesome!"

The only problem, I had never Frenched anyone before. Fear filled my insides, what the hell was I going to do? I knew how Frenching looked on the movies. The boys talked about it, how you were supposed to rub your tongue against the girl’s in some sort of pattern. But talking and doing are two completely different things.

She climbed onto my lap and smiled again, wrapping her big strong legs around my waist.

My breath… crap, why didn’t I brush my teeth before I went to the pool!? Dammit!

She leaned in a kissed me, first a peck and then her mouth opened and she forced her tongue into my mouth. It was all wet and sloppy and she tasted like she just drank a glass of milk. She might have frenched before, but man, she wasn’t really good at it. Shit, I was ten times worse. But at the time, it felt like heaven.

The crowd chanted “10, 9, 8…” a countdown to the end of bliss… then it was all over.

Teresa climbed off me, this time with a coy smile on her face.

This was the first of many Dare French kisses I had with Teresa and her friends. I would try to start a game daily, but it seemed like it would only happen when the girls wanted to play. But I never had a ‘real’ kiss with Teresa, only when we played Truth or Dare. Man, I wanted to have a real kiss with her…

First Kiss Number Three-

Sixth grade skate day. Our school had tradition of taking its sixth graders to Shadow Mountain skate center on the last day of school. It was a rite of passage from the dark years of elementary school to the promise land of middle school.

Everyone looked forward to this day and talked about it constantly. “What are you going to do first when we get to the Skate Center?” “I’m going to play hours of free arcade games!” “I’m going to eat 50 free pizzas!” “I’m going to slow skate with Wendy!”

I had a mission for that day of my own- French kiss Kesina Tkupek.

Kesina was a gorgeous strawberry blonde with a round face that just made you want to squeeze her cheeks. We flirted every day in class, slugged each other in the arms, told other people how much we liked each other, those people in turn told us.

The Shadow Mountain Skate Center was a haven of 70’s motifs that we never replaced. Bright orange and brown fabric covered large decorative wooden cut outs placed randomly over the yellowing concrete walls. The industrial carpet was worn down to the floor. The music they played was dated, kids don’t want to listen to “Shake you Booty” disco music in 1990, but they didn't care. The only modern thing was the video games.

After biding my time with Kesina, skating and talking, eating and playing games, it was ‘last skate’. FUCK ME! I didn’t pull the trigger yet, how the hell am I going to do this?

Apparently Ms. Tkupek had the same feeling. There was an unspoken oath between us that we were going to kiss. She grabbed me by the hand and tugged me towards the ‘smoking room’. Yep, back in the day, they had room dedicated to smoking, where the already yellowing walls were coated in brown tar and it reeked for smoke.

No kids were allowed in there, especially on Sixth Grade graduation day. But we didn’t follow the rules.

We barraged in their and BOOM, her and I immediately kissed. I don’t know who started it, I like to think that we both did. After a summer of playing Truth or Dare, I had my technique down. This was my first true French kiss without someone instructing us to do so.

We finished just as the door opened and one of our teachers pulled us out of there.

We walked onto to the bus, holding hands. At the time, I was sure we would get married and be together forever. Man, was I wrong.