Edition #141: An Ode to First Kisses
Plus, writers reflect on failure, a roving dance party, and the best SNL sketch of all time
A Note From the Editor
Date: somewhere around September 4th, 2005. Location: the Nickelodeon Hotel, a former Holiday Inn decked out in orange and green garb with blown-up images of Spongebob and melty green slime as far as the eye could see. Occasion: my 13th birthday party, wading through the murky canyon between childhood and teenage years. A year from now, I would be smoking weed for the first time. I’d develop my first crush on a girl and tell my parents I was sleeping at a friend’s house when, in reality, I would be attending a party with a crowd far older than me. But for now, I was at the Nickelodeon Hotel with a group of seven other girls from my eighth-grade class. And I was about to meet Daniel.
Daniel: also celebrating his 13th birthday, but with the company of his parents and little sister rather than his friends and lenient mother. Daniel, from Jupiter, Florida, a town I’d never heard of. They had to drive over an hour to get there. Daniel, with skinny arms and a sweet, shy demeanor, whom I decided I liked right away. Another girl at my birthday party also liked Daniel—she was new to the school, I didn't know her very well and had invited her as a rare act of generosity. I can’t remember whether Daniel chose me naturally or if I’d had a hand in it, but it became clear over karaoke in the kid’s lounge that evening that Daniel would be mine.
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Have you ever thought of how strange the act of kissing is, subjectively? You see someone, your body or your mind says you like them, maybe both. You like the way they smell even when they’re a little sweaty. You like their long, elegant fingers and the circumference of their forearms, the way their sturdy-looking veins create a treasure map just beneath the skin’s surface. You want to be near them; you find excuses to make physical contact—arms gently brushing as you walk side-by-side, a hand on the shoulder, excavating for the shape of bones and muscle beneath the t-shirt.
But these moves are just the previews, the front jacket synopsis of the story. The real tale begins once the seal has been broken; when one of you moves closer, closes your eyes, asks permission or doesn’t ask. A hand on the face, a hand in the hair. And only when your mouths finally meet does the story begin.
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It happened on a Sunday, the day of our departure. We sat on the long, shaded bench near the hotel’s parking lot, shoulder to shoulder. Somewhere in the distance, our parents loaded up the cars—an old, partly broken down hatchback for us, a shiny SUV for them. Goodbye loomed nearer. Our skin was still damp with chlorinated water, our swimsuits clinging to our bony bodies, drying with the sun. We talked about whatever it is two awkward 12-year-olds discuss.
When it came time for the big moment, my friends stood in a circle around us like a pack of witches conducting an age-old ritual. They used their towels to create a makeshift barrier between us and the rest of the world, something like a round dressing room with no ceiling.
I closed my eyes, he closed his. He moved closer, close enough so that I could smell the sweetness of his breath. He’d been chewing bubble gum not long before.
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Science tells us that, in order to create more happy memories, we should experience more firsts. First times stand out more vividly in our minds, for they are moments laden with emotion, reminding us what it felt like to be young when everything was new. Your first day of school, your first time traveling overseas, your first time falling in love. Your first kiss.
As for kissing, science has mixed messages. Is kissing on the lips instinctive, or learned? The jury’s still up, but many theories suggest kissing serves as some sort of physical seizing up of a potential partner. Being so close to another person’s face allows us to get a good whiff of them and to discern all the things smell can reveal, in theory—diet, health, disease, mood. Kissing also influences the neurotransmitters in our brains, triggering the release of the loveliest hormones. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin.
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It was a gentle kiss, exploratory and soft, and my entire body came alive with it. I felt as though I’d been submerged in a vat of still-warm, melted chocolate. Everything was sweet and hazy. His tongue made its way into my mouth. My chest burned, blooming tell-tale pink splotches. Breaking the spell of the moment: his parents calling him from somewhere beyond. He had to go.
My friends giggled, dropped the towel barrier. We jotted down his home phone number on my wrist and we said a quick, kiss-less goodbye. I watched him jog away, his flip-flops clacking.
On the car ride home, I closed my eyes and thought only of him.
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This goes without saying but it is a useful reminder; you only get to have one first kiss with a person. There are many types of first kisses, and the type you share is largely situationally dictated. There are first-date first kisses—sometimes forced and a bit awkward, sometimes sloppy and an hour long, sometimes dry and bird-like. These can take place while you’re each precariously balanced on a barstool, or with your back to the brick wall of an old apartment building, or in the middle of a street on a crosswalk.
Then there are stop-over first kisses, which might happen on your first date or your first non-date meeting or in the hallway of a cruise ship, randomly and unplanned. These kisses are urgent by nature and immediately handsy. Hands on ass, hands on hips, hands encircling wrists, hands moving beneath clothing, working to unfasten and unzip and undo. These types of first kisses might be two-sided or they might be one-sided; one party having a different idea of the end destination than the other. One pushing, the other retreating. Or one pushing, the other accepting, tentatively. These are my least favorite types of first kisses, even in situations where me and my kissing partner have similar ideas of our final destination. Kissing can be romantic or it can be utterly sensual; either way, there’s no need to rush. When kissing for the first time, why not opt for the scenic route? There is nothing hotter, nothing sweeter, than a deliberate first kiss.
Then there are my favorite type of first kisses; the long-awaited first kiss. It doesn’t happen on your first meeting or your second, but maybe on your third. You might suspect it’s coming—maybe you’ve been on a few dates and things have gone well—or maybe you aren’t sure whether it’ll ever come but you’ve imagined it, hoping the other person feels about you the way you feel about them. Or, at the very least, hoping they like you enough to kiss you.
In any case, the tension has been built. The kiss becomes an imaginary third thing, lingering in the air between you like a ghost. In slow moments of opportunity—say, while standing near the water, arms perched on a metal railing—you wonder whether the third will finally reveal itself. Are they going to kiss me now? In a time when we have to exercise the virtue of patience for so little, the long-awaited first kiss holds a certain sanctity.
The slow build of anticipation makes it so that even if the kiss isn’t exactly what you wanted, it is still assuaging. A long-awaited understanding of what the person tastes like, feels like, of how your bodies might work together. In the best of cases, it is exactly the sort of kiss you imagined. It might take a moment for your mouths to fully sync but once they do, you’re running the marathon, drifting off to some other place. The world around you melts away until there is nothing but a blank white canvas, two bodies locked together by the mouth. Hours might pass like this—two hours, several passersby, a few snide comments, a delivery truck giving a suggestive honk. Your neck might cramp up from being cranked at a certain angle, your dress might ride up a little too high from the exploratory hands. Your calves might seize up from being on your tippy toes.
None of this will matter. In fact, you’ll hardly notice.
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That entire week after my first kiss, I floated through a daydream. In ballet class, I’d forget the simple combination at barre. In geography, I’d doodle Daniel’s name on the margins of my notebook, vaguely unsure of his last name. I looked forward to going to bed at the end of each day because it meant a handful of uninterrupted minutes before sleep where I could think of him, of our kiss.
At some point during the week, I realized I should call him, but I was too nervous. Instead, my best friend came over—one of the loyal towel-holders—and did it for me. I listened to his voice over the speakerphone and piped in here and there, but mostly, I was content to listen to their conversation. The proof that he existed, that I’d had my first kiss, was all I was really looking for.
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Once I discovered the joy of kissing, I couldn’t get enough. That year, I would pen a list of the boys I’d kissed and what I thought of each one. There weren’t many—my eight grade boyfriend who always wore red shoes and had big, pillowy lips, but who was too afraid to stick his tongue in my mouth. The high schooler I met while babysitting for my neighbors on vacation in Tennessee, who laid out a blanket on the hotel’s scratchy patch of grass and played me Brown Eyed Girl on his iPod shuffle. A boy much too old for me, and the first kiss I’d had that felt like a stopover to some other destination, though I didn’t know what that next place was at the time.
Though I reveled in every kiss, no experience was as visceral as that first kiss with Daniel. If I close my eyes I can still smell the chlorine and bubble gum, can still feel the heat of the Florida sun warming my arms.
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Cheers, my dears, and as always thanks for reading! Have a lovely weekend—I’ll be flying back to New York from Atlanta after spending a week with my sister and her family. If you can, go dancing this weekend. Or get yourself kissed! Or make a big, elaborate breakfast! All equally wonderful options.