G.C. Jones, "Go Kiss"

I was eighteen years old, first semester in college and fresh from my Midwestern, all-girls high school. He was an upper-classman who lived two floors above me and looked at me, silently with large eyes that said more than he could in the hallways and elevators of our Big Ten university residence hall. He called. He called me on my dorm room phone. He was coming down to hang out. Cool, I thought. I wanted to hang out with him more, but was nervous as hell. They didn't teach us these things in high school. Sure, I'd thought about kissing him, but... well, I wasn't going to say anything.

He knocked on my door. We hugged, awkwardly and my stomach was churning. There wasn't much to do, so we decided to play cards - my lame idea. I didn't know Spades yet, so Go Fish it was. He would have done almost anything I said. I know that now. We sat on the carpeted dorm floor and placed bets on the game - his idea.
"If you lose, I get to kiss you"

"I'm not going to lose. I never lose," I boasted. I lost. I lost and threw a fit. Was this really about to happen? I was losing my first kiss to a game of Go Fish. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. Alright. I closed my eyes, sat there and let him do all the work.

It was awful - uncomfortable and slimy. He tried to put his tongue in my mouth and I felt violated by a simple kiss. Violation! He decided to leave. I wasn't mad, just confused. It was too much for one night. I called one of my best friends.

"What are you doing up?!"

"Carla, he kissed me."

"Are you crying?" she said. It was funny to her. It is funny. It
wasn't then.

"It wasn't special." I was waiting for that big bang, the sparks, the
fireworks.

"It takes a while." She was right. I felt better after talking to her. My friends were excited for me. My first kiss! Firsts always make me cry. Still do. But I know it's good for me. It only gets better from there.

Sandra Fowles, "Caught in the Act"

Ryan was everything I was not: he was rough around the edges, he skipped school, he never did his homework, he shunned school clubs and groups, he smoked cigarettes and pot, and he wore way too much cologne. I was in love. During the summer after our freshman year of high school we finally became an official "couple."

One August night, after a laughter-filled evening with friends, Ryan asked me to walk with him part of his way home. My stomach felt what my heart knew: knots and butterflies churned. Walking down the street, hand in hand, I felt my mouth getting dry, my chest tightening up, the skin of my palms dampening. He stopped in the circle of a streetlamp’s light and turned to me. His body was close to mine - very close. I looked up at him with a nervous smile and he brought his face abruptly near to mine. Before I realized it, our lips pressed together. A second later, they parted and…ouch! My teeth smacked into his - hard. "Great," I thought to myself, "sooo sexy." When we finally pulled away from one another I think we both silently decided to try and ignore the mishaps and opted for salvaging the experience as much as possible. I smiled sweetly, seductively, "Well...goodnight then." He grinned back: "Yeah, goodnight." I watched him walk away and into the night.

As I finally turned to head back, I suddenly heard a rustling sound from a nearby bush. Wait a minute, that wasn't just shaking vegetation. I ran to the leaves and hastily spread them apart: Deann and Jennifer, my best friends, were trying to hold each other up as they shook in uncontrollable laughter. My mouth dropped open in shock: they had seen that whole mess of thing?! At first I could not have felt more embarrassed, my cheeks burning against the cool night air. But then, another thought entered my mind…at least my laughable "perfect first kiss" would prove to be a precious, shared memory between my girls and me...one that would provide us with more and more laughter for years to come.

Justin Tiemeyer

Kissing and the Humorously Oblivious

After the fact, my mother had recounted a situation she witnessed when she came to visit me at work one time. She remembered walking into the doors of the video store and seeing Christina and I talking, and with the way Christina was standing and the expression on her face, she thought that she was going to witness this girl move over and kiss me. My mother was much more observant of the tell-tale signs of flirtation and crushes than I was.

Christina and I were working an evening shift with our manager Jeremy, and as she prepared to leave she mentioned the fact that it was now dark outside and she was a little frightened to walk to her car alone. Had her female intuition told her of my inclination toward those deeds that seemed honorable and noble or at least somewhat chivalrous?

I was unaware of Christina’s intentions until the very moment she brought her plan to action. I braced myself as she jumped into my arms, wrapped her legs around me and began kissing my mouth passionately. It was dramatic. This is true. But the moment was smudged by some degree due to the fact that I did not know how to kiss this woman back. What is one to do in such a situation?

My mouth remained firmly in the gasp that it had been in when I was first surprised by this woman, but I knew that I could not maintain this forever. "I must express my problem," I thought to myself, "Or else she might find this situation awkward." It was important that I did not ruin this moment, so I kindly explained into her open mouth that I did not know how to kiss.

Of course, she just kept kissing and when in Rome one does as the Romans do. When one is being kissed by a girl on a dark night just outside a video store, one kisses back. After the fact, I realized what a simple deed kissing was. I remember hearing a rumor that if a child is birthed into a swimming pool, it will swim about as if this were the most natural thing a baby can do, as if the baby had been given nine months of swimming lessons prior to birth. It was much the same with kissing and all those acts associated with kissing.

After that, however, it was no longer a question of being able to kiss - such is a given - but now a question of being able to kiss well. Perhaps in ten or fifteen years there will be a blog regarding when you became a good kisser, and perhaps in ten or fifteen years I will have such a story.

Erin Roof, "Tongue Techniques"

"I don't like tongue."

I wrote this in a letter to Clay - the kind filled with circles instead of dots and lots of loopy handwriting.

I was in 8th grade and still a member of the ever-shrinking group of girls who had yet to get their period, grow breasts and, most importantly, experience their first kiss. There wasn't much I could do about the first two, but I decided that night at the school dance I would orchestrate my first smooch.

"I don't like tongue," I wrote in the letter. I had no idea what a kiss with tongue felt like, but I knew Clay had kissed girls before and I didn’t want him to see I was inexperienced. Maybe I was worried our tongues would get stuck in the braces filling our smiles - smiles so shiny I thought they could be seen from outer space.

The entire note was filled with detailed description and heavy hinting about how the kiss should go down. I passed him the note before 7th period. All I had to do now was wait.

I got ready for the big dance in the bathroom of the public library where my mom worked. It was packed with other girls spreading huge clumps of mint green eye shadow across their lids. I was getting butterflies, but played it cool. I didn't want anyone to know I hadn't kissed yet.

But during the first slow song of the dance, I was so nervous I thought I would puke. Clay wrapped his arms around me and we swayed together, not really sure which one of us was leading. I couldn't bring myself to look at him.

It wasn't until that last R. Kelly song filled the gymnasium that I looked up expectantly. He leaned in toward me and our open lips smashed together. Just one time. I was too nervous for another try.

We hugged goodbye as the lights came back on. Walking toward my mother's car waiting outside, I no longer felt like a child. I was too young to realize that was a horrible feeling.

Anonymous, "Kickin'"

His breath... was kickin'
I mean really kickin' It was hot messy sloppy
I mean... why would first kiss have to be a tongue... a french
I was haitian He was pakistanian
It was all wrong
from the way his pizza and hooka-fied tongue entered
my mouth
to the way I gagged and ran out of pizza shop
I was disgusted
How unhygienic! WAS THAT HIS CHEWING GUM IN MY MOUTH?!
I threw up on the street corner
composed myself
and went back in to try it again