Sally Neumann: A Kisstory

Adhering as strictly as possible to this no boyfriend rule of mine, I've started to go through one of my least favorite aspects of single-hood (second only to increased chocolate appetite and new affinity for romantic comedies): kissing withdrawal. There's nothing I would love more right now than to feel the smooth, gentle, raspberry marshmallow brush of someone's lips. I want velvet cushions to whisper warm dew drops on the tingling nerves on my neck. I want to feel rough, pine needle bristles dig their nails into my cheeks. I want my eyelashes to lock fingers with his, and I want my skin to spark upon touch. I want to feel where hard meets soft and rough meets smooth. I want electricity and lightning.

Sally's very first kiss:
The first time I ever kissed a boy, I was six or seven or nine. I think. I know I was playing in the sandbox with a boy whose fingernails were always dirty and whose jean jacket and horn-rimmed glasses couldn't even distract from his rat tail that hung down past his shoulderblades. One afternoon, his mother beckoned for him to leave, and I couldn't resist giving him a spontaneous parting gift: I smashed my fleeting hummingbird lips against his and our pudgy faces bounced backward as soon as they had met. Of course, the teacher saw me and I was suspended. I would get suspended from Kindergarten.
My last recollection of that day was a view of my toes drawing figure eights on our black and white tiled bathroom floor as my mother shared with me the dangers of kissing. It gets you pregnant, you know.

Sally attempts open-mouthed kissing-- hilarity ensues
When I lived in Frankfurt, I lived in an apartment in a compound within a compound. I had a room within a room and a window that stretched far across my wall. One of the stranger rumors that leaked itself around the preteen community was that a guy named Preston liked to watch me undress in the evenings. I was twelve, so the creep factor was pretty high (though he was twelve too), but honestly, I really had nothing exciting under my sports-themed t-shirts. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the age where my mom (yes, in front of company) would call my pre-boobs "cheerios." Anyway, I somehow got it in my head that I needed to figure out if this was true. It was. And it was easy to discern for one reason: Preston wore glow-in-the-dark glasses. That's right. I really know how to pick 'em. It was creepy, but I really wasn't all that threatened. It was more hilarious than a big deal, especially because he saw me see him and almost peed himself (his pee, presumably, also glowed in the dark). Anyway the point of this story is that Preston somehow ended up being my first real-live honest to God kiss. After getting over his skeeziness, I became good friends with Preston. On a particularly love-inspiring Tuesday, we finished a rollerblading race and sat a picnic table with our pinkies barely touching. He pushed his ever-present ridiculous glasses up his nose, now glistening with sweat, and uttered what is possibly the least necessary question in the world: "Can I kiss you?" Choosing to nod instead of deride him (give him a break, he's twelve), I felt him lean in. He hadn't quite mastered the whole "lips closed first, tongue later" scenario, and his open mouth came at me like an especially vacuuous black hole. Except wetter. When his tongue batted against mine, it fell each time like a plastic bag of soup dropped off of the third story of a building. And it tasted like a Big Mac. I pushed away as soon as I could and before I could catch myself, said "ew!" Luckily, he didn't seem offended. In fact, he apologized. "Sorry, I ate onions like ten minutes ago."

Sally's first best kiss
I hate to call this my absolute best kiss. I've had a lot of amazing kisses since this one, but since it was my first, it stands out as the most prominent. When I was fourteen, my best friends and I went to Disneyland Paris for one of their birthdays. It was pretty much the best thing ever. And to top it all off, when I returned home, I experienced the budding teenager's dream: a parent-less house. As long as you promise not to partake in retro-active grounding, mom, read on :) My sister was out with her boyfriend at the time, so I decided to invite my potential boyfriend over. He accepted, thrilled, and promised to bring over his favorite movie at the time: Underworld. I put on something that I knew would make him smile, which meant a gray, over-sized Blink 182 t-shirt. I ran to meet him at the train station and we danced home, tripping over our intentionally ruined Converse as we went. I sat on the couch, too far to one side so that if he sat down right next to me, I would know he liked me. He did. We started to watch the movie and then our hands grabbed each other's so quickly that I felt my breath fall out of me when I turned to him. We moved toward one another at the same time and as his blue-tinted glasses clicked against mine, I felt perfect euphoria. His hands settled gently around my back like freckled snowflakes. Mine grabbed his shoulders so clumsily that I pushed him off of the couch. A minor inconvenience. I sat beside him and blinked my right eye, then the next as I said, "camera 1, camera 2." Because Wayne's World is God. He giggled, and before I could make another mood-breaking joke (as is my custom), we fell into each other again. After an endless amount of flawless kissing, I finally walked him back to the train station, where we shared a parting peck that still ressonantes in my memory as the perfect end to a perfect evening.

I've had some wonderful kisses. I've had some horrible, lip-vaccuuming, face-drooling, teeth-cracking kisses. But the ones that melt my knees and force my lips to smile make it all worth it. And I can't wait to do it again. You know... in time.