Early stages of experience

I feel like telling a few personal stories. The problem is, this is an open-access blog, and most of the people I write about would have full access to the blog. And just when I think I'm screaming loud into the internet vacuum, someone with whom I have virtually no relationship will come along and tell me how they read my blog one night when they were bored. Seems people will peek into every corner of the internet available to them, no matter how inane and uninteresting. So I can only hope that, if the people I talk about in the following post do, by some weird chance, happen upon my blog, they won't really care because it won't matter all that much to them.

My first kiss came on the later side of normal: 15 years old specifically. The circumstances were, as per my personality, and the common nature of these kinds of things, horribly and terrifically awkward. Let me dole out the specifics: I was with my friend Brian (fake name, sorry), who was the same age as me, and was not, previously stated nomenclature aside, a particularly good friend. By some weird paradox, my parents seemed to think that because I was friends with Brian, they should feign some strained facsimile of a friendship with Brian's very very irritating parents; and in the same vein, because my parents were invited so often to their Superbowl parties and New Year's bashes, I found myself being forced to hang around Brian far more often than I would have liked under any ordinary circumstances. My family went chasing its tale like this for years until my parent's divorce was finalized, Brian's parents moved to the city, and the whole charade just evaporated. But Freshman year of high school, just a year or two before my always-tenuous relationship with Brian completely vanished, he invited me to the city to meet a few friends of his. Friends that were girls. My ears pricked up, and naturally, I went along with it.

Brian, though I never liked him, always liked me. Why, I don't know; he was a cheery, optimistic kid who loved dancing and hip-hop, and I was a moody little prick, nose-deep in my own sticky depression and my well-worn copy of Less Than Zero. We had absolutely nothing in common. Yet he invited me everywhere, and I usually declined. This time, as it usually does, the prospect of girls made it slightly more interesting, and I accepted vigorously. We met them at a diner somewhere in New York, where I have no idea. I remember things going surprisingly well considering my usual ineptitude with flirtation. These girls were actually laughing and seemed to enjoy our company. I don't think it hindered at all that we were older than them, by how much I don't remember. A year? Two? Regardless, there were three of them. Brian was friends with one of them, and had kissed her previously, even. I remember her, Brian's friend, being the most attractive. She also happened to be the most sexually aggressive. She laughed the hardest, made the most tactless innuendo, seemed to stare at me the most. Things were going well.

I responded, naturally, by freezing up and acting stand-offish. After the diner, we went to a movie theater. I don't think I said a word the whole walk there. I don't remember the context, but I remember being outside the theater and being fussy and obstinate about...God, something, I don't even know what. But I knew it would lead to making out, and naturally, being the frightened little wuss I was, I was trying to back out. I recall the aggressive friend going so far as to say that, in fact, the two of us were virtually guaranteed to kiss someone in this movie theater. I remember, after her saying this, I said (and this I remember verbatim) "That's not really my style". The fates (and these girls) were banging me over the head with a sledge-hammer trying to get me to take that plunge, and I was actively trying not to kiss someone. The girls tried to organize the seating for optimal make-outs, but I just sat there, watching John Q (really) as my friend Brian swooped in and started kissing the second-prettiest (the one not his friend [sorry about all the parenthesis]).

We came back to Brian's friend's apartment. The five of us all went promptly into her bedroom. We all talked, and soon enough, Brian and his new make-out pal locked lips and kissed deeply in front of all of us for an extended period of time. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't carry on a regular conversation with two people making out in the middle of the room. I went to the opposite side of the room, where neither of the two available girls were sitting, and searched for something to keep my hands busy. I picked up a book of Far Side cartoons and started reading furtively, really desperate to avoid sexual contact of any kind. After a time, the aggressive one, the pretty one, the one I'd hoped to kiss to start with, actually sat down on my lap, wrapped her arms around me, and said, probably with more nymphettish lust than had ever been said before "You like those comics".

I remember saying "Yes", to which she responded by giving a brief, satisfied "Hmm". Then she moved in, lipsed pursed, and kissed me.

I got really extremely introspective at this point. I was trying to catalogue every feeling and sensation, realizing, oddly enough, that I would probably write about this moment later in some journal or autobiography. Of course it was no sensation other than your average, ordinary kiss, or at least so I thought. I remember being really curious about the sensation of feeling someone else's tongue. It felt oddly soothing, the little papillae rubbing against the inside of my mouth. I remember acknowledging that the rest of the world felt far away, and that my only thought was her lips, or some such thing. I enjoyed it. I relished in my first kiss.

She pulled away and said she was getting worried about her father, who was watching television in the nearby living room. She went out, and after a few brief words, told us that we had to introduce ourselves to him. I, of course, was still at full-mast. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me up from the couch, whereupon I doubled over at the waist and walked like a crazy old blind man. When she introduced me, I peeked my head out from behind a wall, my lower half still hidden behind the partition. She brought us all back into her room, we talked for a little while longer, and that was that.

A week afterward, I'd met Brian in the cafeteria, and he told me with a sympathetic frown that Aggressive Girl told him I was an awful, awful kisser. The worst she'd ever had, in fact. I apparently grabbed onto her like a bear and shoved my tongue down her throat until she could hardly breathe. No doubt it was just simple writerly curiosity, but nonetheless, I almost frightened the girl. It occurred to my paranoid fantasy (and maybe it was true, who knows), that the "introduction" was some kind of weird retribution for having almost choked her to death. My ego wasn't terribly damaged, though. I realized I was new at this, and was confident that I'd get better as I got older. From what I understand, I have.

I saw her only once more after this, about two years after the incident occurred, at the final Superbowl party before the family friendship was completely vaporized. I remember thinking she was noticeably less attractive than I'd made her out to be in my mind. As you could probably tell, I've totally forgotten her name, and remember nothing about her other than she had light-brown hair. A romantic I am not.