“The Bea stands for bitch.”
For those uneducated folks out there, numismatics is the collection of coins. A numismatist collects coins, a phillumenist collects matchboxes, and a deltiologist collects postcards. To catch you up from the prequel (which you should really just go read), I will tell you that I am none of those things. Rather I consider myself somewhat of a collector of first kisses.
If you’re a fan of the NIFL series, you’ll know that in Part I our hero (me) did not achieve any actual physical contact with another person, but rather attempted to convince the reader (you) that a poorly-planned “trick kiss” and a poorly-executed “stage kiss” were in fact actual first kisses. This is because our hero would like to portray himself as a bit of a “player” (as the kids say), thereby resulting in increased amounts of moxy. Not so in Part II. In the long awaited sequel, 2 Trashed 2 Curious, we explore the consequences that alcohol and curiosity can produce in a person’s romantic life.
My first excuse-me-while-I-pretend-that-didn’t-happen kiss
Let me warn you about something. If you should find yourself one very late night alone on the couch with a particularly attractive girl who happens to be interested in you and have actual lips with which to kiss you and has expressed a desire to do so, don’t think about it.
Just run. Clear the hell out. Tell her you that your dog is calling you and leave. Because it can’t end well.
(We pause now to insert a fact that is of some significance. Yes, dear Reader, I was in fact 20 years old before I shared my first real live kiss with another human being. You may think this is really late, and that my adolescence was sexually stunted or some such rot. But I can assure you, I was just saving it for the perfect moment, one I could look back on and think, “Gosh. That was literally the worst 10 seconds of my life.”)
It was your classic love story. Boy and Girl are friends, Girl develops feelings for Boy, Boy is completely oblivious to Girl’s advances, Girl finally has to just come right out and say it, confused Boy mumbles something nice in return. Then Boy ends up on couch alone with Girl, Boy grabs Girl’s hand, and Boy avoids eye contact with Girl for the duration of the hand-holding. Mind you, all of this happened within a span of about 6 hours.
Nicholas Sparks used this next part as inspiration for his next novel. This was the actual conversation, sans editing from me. (You can’t make this shit up, people.)
Girl: “What are you thinking about?”
Boy: “I was just thinking, ‘What would happen if I leaned over and kissed you right now?’”
Girl: “Well, why don’t you just try and find out?”
What followed was most unpleasant. Our hero would later come to describe the event as “probably what it feels like to make out with a baby walrus.” Her hair was long and stringy and rubbing against my cheek, which would have simply unpleasant had it not been also in our now-locked lips. Her breath was hot and smelled like Cheetos, which, I can say without hesitation, is my least favorite food on the planet. And, until they bring back that Dr. Pepper Lip Gloss, the taste of a woman’s lipstick will never be in high demand. It went on for what seemed an eternity and which was probably actually less than ten seconds.
Then, with hardly a word, I excused myself, went into the bathroom, and with God as my witness, WASHED MY MOUTH OUT. Still in shock and somewhat bewildered that someone so attractive could be such a terrible kisser, I said goodnight.
She graduated and left town the very next day. I haven’t spoken to her since. But I owe her a great debt. For if she had not made that kiss everything that it was, I probably would still be making out with girls and making grimacing faces at their Cheetos breath, which I am now convinced every girl possesses.
My first boys-make-much-better-kissers kiss
Remember Bill? We met via the blogosphere and after rendezvousing over a cup of coffee and some unfortunately large pit stains, became somewhat steady friends. Most of our time was spent in his living room watching inordinate amounts of TV, often late into the night until there was nothing to watch but paid advertising. Bill, being a lover of television and also men, was educating me in the ways of the small screen. This required a laptop, which required us to share a screen, which in turn required some actual physical contact in the knee region. Like some sort of sick cosmic joke (The Universe is so funny sometimes) I watched the exact events of my previous first kiss experience unfold, only this time in reverse.
You could have cut the sexual tension in the room with a handsaw and a team of flannel-clad lumberjacks. I watched the “put our hands down by our sides and rub the back of our hands together until someone takes it” move that I had used on the girl in the previous case. I watched the avoidance of eye contact as we pretended not to notice that we were holding hands. And just as before, the conversation started with:
Me: “What?”
Boy: “So….”
Me: “What?”
Boy: “You’ve never kissed a boy?”
Me: “No.”
Boy: “Would you like to?”
Those were our words. Dear Lord.
It was the perfect first gay kiss. What made it perfect was not the fact that this boy’s breath smelled decidedly less like Cheetos, nor that the only hair in our way grew from our chins; not even the lack of titanium dioxide on his lips made for the perfect first gay kiss. What made this moment incredibly apropos was the high-pitched voices and canned laughter from the television behind us, where Golden Girls was playing.
So God bless Bea Arthur, because that bitch got me my first gay kiss.
And I think I’ll stick with boys. Boys make much better kissers.
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