That First Kiss
Most people remember their first kiss fondly. They remember awkward, jerky, saliva-filled and hormone-ridden motions, but still fondly. Not me.
I can’t even remember the actual feeling of the moment, but I do recall every detail of what came after. (Get your minds out of the gutter, though, there was no humping afterward.) I remember the taste of him. I remember the excitement in his voice as he stammered, “Next time, I’ll get sweets,” to a stunned me.
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In his defence, it was a dark room. There was no way he could have seen the horror in my eyes. The knowledge that I could no longer “brag” about being a virgin. An untouched.
In those days, when I was still trying to live up to the ideals set for me by society, the church, my family, my friends. In those days when the mark of being a good girl was still being a virgin in spite of the lasciviousness and debauchery going on in our university campus (Yes, it happened well into my university years). How we loved to thumb our noses at those wayward girls thinking our purity made us better than them, but I digress.
Add a darkened room to the fact that I had snuck out of the house (again!) for that rendezvous and you have a perfect recipe for disaster. I was overcome with guilt or was it shame? I didn’t hate him or what we had done, I just knew the seal had been broken, I was never going to be the same again. Boy, did I ever! One other thing I remember from that time was how he never failed to tell me was how scrupulous I was (never even knew the word till I met him), and those scruples had me in a chokehold that night.
When I made my way back home, I ran straight for the bathroom. And to know me is to know bathing is a chore! I don’t know if I thought I could wash away the taste of him or wash away my sin. Or maybe I just needed the time away from everybody else to recoup, but into the bathroom I went, to brush my teeth and wash away any evidence of the kiss. It was just a kiss, mark you. Imagine if we had deigned to do more!
But I remember crying in that bathroom stall over what I’d lost. I didn’t hate him, I’m not even sure I hated what we had done, but I just remember knowing I just couldn’t deal.
