"Kiss and Tell" is a piece I began working on over four years ago. Hopefully, these ten vignettes will someday become the anthology I dream them to be. My original objective was to explore the way people define moments in their lives; I wanted to focus on the human use of metaphor and language as tools of interpretation. In many ways, these pieces acted as a writing exercise; it provided a venue for me to focus on capturing human reaction and human emotion. Its also my first attempt at interview work. The concept of the indefinable and its indeterminate interaction with our word based culture fascinates me. Each “Kiss and Tell” moment focuses on the same thing: a kiss; yet, each story is significantly different and not just because the players change. Sadly, I have yet to formally workshop the piece. This version is a significantly edited one, according to Word, it is officially known as “Kiss and Tell 5.0.” With no further ado:
I.
I can still hear the faint rhythm of his skateboard rolling hard against the pavement. Skittles and cherry coke. He’d ride home from the convenient store and I’d feel my stomach jump into my throat. In the Marco Polo fashion of memories, when I say, “first kiss,” I think, “maraschino.” I think sweet. I think sugary. I think sticky like summer. His father lived in Arizona: September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May. But his mother, his mother lived in California and every year for three months, he lived across the street from me.
Five feet tall and irresistible.
Five feet tall and irreplaceable.
Five feet tall and unbelievably, unmistakably, and unregrettably irrevocable.
This is the boy that taught me the secret about a boy’s bottom lip. He taught me to be wary of who I kiss and more importantly of who I don’t. Aaron taught me the best lesson I ever learned. In the summer of 1999, he taught me how to kiss. And although some people may consider first kisses inconsequential; I think to myself, you mustn’t have kissed Aaron Jeffrey by your parent’s poolside, because that kiss, that kiss was miles away from being inconsequential. This kiss, this first kiss, stuck to me like resin to the sides of a water pipe; it left a scent that could be tasted, that could be recognized, seen from miles around. It clung to me in difficult places- like the creases of my elbows, like the nape of my neck and the insides of my cheeks. It stayed there, lingering, clinging, grabbing on tightly to every edge of my fragile blown glass memory of childhood kisses. And I argue, to this day, that every sexual experience I’ve had since then, has simply been a re-creation of those events. When I lean across the table to kiss you on the cheek, it is a replayed vision of leaning across the couch toward a blonde haired, brown skinned boy child and bridging the gap between being a girl and becoming a young woman. And when we fall into your sheets in that pillow-biting, let the phone ring, let the dog bark, I didn’t like that shirt anyway kind of way it is a carbon copy of how my entire body was once set on fire by a simple boy laying his lips upon mine. Two thin lips parted in such a way that a match was struck and heat was spread, chasing up my legs, traveling from his tongue, down the arch of my spine wrapping around towards my belly button and finally residing in my curled toes. And with that, with clinched fists and a deep exhaled breath, I close with one simple request. To every man who has appreciated the taste of my mouth, please raise your glasses in honor of the day that should live on in infamy. A day, that as I recall, was absurdly warm. But now- you should tell me: When was your first dirty kiss?
II.
Patrick’s first kiss was on a bus. And as Pat remembers, everyone cheered. And as I remember, I had never seen Patrick look sweeter, or younger, than when he blushed in my back seat, at the ripe age of 22, and told me how awkward it had been.
III.
When I kissed you that first time, it felt like watching home videos that hadn’t been recorded yet. It was that big of a deal. And I remember driving you home afterward, and trying to deny it. You turned the radio off, looked me straight in the eyes and asked with a type of sexy, presumption that you wore like your father’s oversized blazer, “Erica, be my girlfriend.” And I closed my mouth and tried to shake you, tried to shake the memory of our mouths combining. Tried to pretend that I hadn’t seen what I saw, felt what I felt. You kissed me and the tape started rolling, the clock started ticking. I had wanted so many things, but you kissed me and everything changed. I threw out my old map, and I said, “Sure, let’s call today our anniversary.” Your mouth, your silly, funny, quirky, mouth breathed life into me that day and I suddenly wanted completely different things, I wanted you, to please you, to be everything you wanted me to be, everything you were asking me to be. When we kissed that night, with my legs folded in your lap, I think it surprised us both. Suddenly, we were moving very quickly. Falling even faster, so much faster than I had expected or wanted. Your tongue pushed me, and I tumbled. Tripped like Alice, head first into the abyss of my future, dragging you right behind me- into a rabbit hole you and I both weren’t ready for. But with closed eyes and a happy mouth, I kissed you back. There was no escaping the grasp your mouth had upon mine. My life. Your life. Our life. Tangled like virgin teenagers hopped up on broken curfews and cold pizza. When we kissed there were two lips that were mine and two more that were yours, but somehow, while you and I sat embroidered together at the mouth, we grew into a we.
And I look back now with girlfriends, with best friends, and I say, “perhaps it wasn’t the best kiss I ever had.” Perhaps it wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t all that wet, it didn’t even last that long, but it was life changing. Because within an instant, I loved you. I loved your mouth and I loved your soul. I loved all that you represented. I loved the idea of you. I loved you. And as that kiss continued, I realized that it was different, so much different than any other kiss. We were telling secrets. Sharing something underground, mouthing passwords indiscreet, with tongues tied, we hushed our closeted lists of expectations, our long lists of fears and anxieties. And to think, that that night, a night with all our emotions and excitement hidden cloak and dagger, draped behind blushing cheeks and sweaty palms, to think that that kiss would lead to so much more, is now just rather funny. First loves, first heartbreaks, first times. My first. My last. My everything. And when we started to get excited and our bodies quickened and we accidentally bumped our teeth into one another, I giggled, because I wanted to misstep with you, be confused and slip up with you. I wanted to learn from my mistakes with you. Build a life around you, swap your burdens for mine, sign Christmas cards with a shared last name. I wanted Sundays with you. And Monday through Saturday too. And since then, since that night five years ago, a night our mouths made promises our hearts were excited to keep, I have never, not once, stopped you from kissing me, not once. Not ever. And trust me, I don’t expect to start.
IV.
Sometimes we slip in and out of the loopholes that exist in drunken memories, shaded recollections of dorm rooms covered in empty beer bottles. We’ve never kissed. Never. Not even once. And I smile when I think of all the times we’ve dared, double dared and then backed down. Spun the bottle just to drink it instead. Sometimes, when we find ourselves sneaking up against the openings between time and space, we resort to the ways of the past, where we would, and sometimes still, look at each other a little too long-- tell old stories just a little too loud. But, no, we’ve never kissed. We are, as we have always been, at quite the impasse. Which is odd, two writers, two readers, two romantics, with matching mindsets on non verbal communication, on physicality, on mistakes, and yet, no, not once. You have, on the other hand, filled my ear with verse after verse of poetry, proclamations I have always had trouble believing, and although words, the beauty that both you and I have dedicated our art to, hold enormous significance for me, I still wonder. Wonder what it would be like to share with you that which should go untainted by grammar or pencil lead. At times, when you’re speaking, about this, or that, I have actually lost place in your words, distracted by the thought of your mouth and wondering whether or not it would appear more beautiful if used in a manner other than prose or poetry. Alas, you and I shall remain forever untangled. Separated like sentences, indented like paragraphs and drawn apart by dreaded parentheticals. One time, a long time ago, you said, that I was the type of a girl you could fall in love with. Well, maybe you should have let yourself. It would have been pretty to see. Maybe you should have reached out a little further, taken it one step farther, and convinced me that I was worth the struggle. How much would you have paid to feel my lips? To become my novel? My mouth’s magnum opus? To actually write the epic poem we deserve? Rather than the short story you and I have both wrote and rewrote several times each. However, in hindsight, I guess I must admit that I am pleased that you were never actually driven to cement our affections with your saliva.
Friends, right? But, just so you know. I would have made your soul come.
IV. (Companion)
The sun also rises in cramped San Francisco dorm rooms and I said something that still holds true—you’re the kind of girl I could fall in love with. And yet, we never kissed. I nearly let myself fall, easily and hard. I was away from home, our friendship was in its infancy and off to a start on the blurriest imaginable platonic line, promising but confusing. Many times over the years my lips would brush your cheek in a drunken flight of fancy, but there was never enough liquid courage on either of our parts to seal those lips together in a painfully, innocently, guilty forbidden act; one that would certainly be chronicled as the event that sent our friendship down a path dark as night. A night where the sun would not rise again. In that friendship’s unique beginning I would sometimes wonder if your tongue is as sweet as the words you speak and write, those strange combinations of significations called sentences that we thrive on in the pursuit of truth in fiction. The thought is nothing but fiction now, a hope of being your Garp recorded on Post-It notes archived away but not forgotten. Most of me is glad for it, but a part of me answers your question as such: I would have paid anything, on an uncertain timeline, to have just once held the burden of your heavy lips, to have them speak in silent, moist unison with mine. I could never bring myself to destroy something so beautiful, no matter how much I’ve had to drink.
V.
You were like a taller version of me. So much taller than me. Tallest boy I ever kissed. The second I met you, I felt like holding you, terrified that you would walk out of my life just as quickly as you had walked in. Quickly, is the perfect adverb to describe you and I. We fell quickly. We met quickly, suddenly and unexpectedly, spending every moment together in a world we created and drowned in. I still don’t understand how I survived that world’s end, with so much of love’s imbalanced remainder piled onto my thin shoulders. I spent months and months, after you decided, quickly, that you were no longer interested, I spent those months able to love you, looking to forgive you, dying to have you back. But, these few sentences, these sentences written today, are meant to chronicle the beginning, the good part, like the first three seconds of a gobstobber, before it turns blue and traipses over to the dark side. You did love me, for a little while, but your boredom snuck in. And I couldn’t fight it and then you left. You left me with only one kiss, a broken heart, an empty shell of a human being, one kiss, seventeen bands I can no longer listen to, an entire photo album that remains unopened and just one kiss. That one kiss, spread through me like a virus, like the flu, it worked quickly through my blood stream, searched each crevice of my body before finding an open cavity, where it could curl up and store itself. Like a Christmas sweater your grandmother gently crafts and knits for you, your lips were wrapped in colorful tissue paper and their memory then stored and kept ‘til Christmas. You resided within me for far too long. Sweetly curled up and hiding from me, until I finally grew strong enough to search through me, find you and throw you away.
VI.
When she said she kissed you, all I could see were the tattoos. All that ink. Perhaps that’s why you’re broken, jarred, unloving, and unable to be loved. All that ink. It must have sunk into your skin. Like poison. All that ink. Sleeves and sleeves of weightless words you laid out in front of her. I watched your penmanship; your artwork. Art she hook, lined, and sinkered. You were something she wanted to frame above a fireplace of the pipe dreams you had helped her inhale, she thought you special, unique, invaliuable. I saw you as a fraud. She would have been your easel; your Da Vinci, your paintbrush; whatever you needed. You would have been her David. The Sistine chapel for her mouth, strokes of genius by lips that didn’t know any better. Kisses that were colored and shaded, outlined by all that you promised. Pictures of images that now in this particular afterglow appear as omens. You sketched chemicals into your skin; mosaics of atoms you don’t understand. You were just a cataclysmic, catalyst searching for a base. Sometimes she calls me and cries. Says it still hurts when she thinks of you. You’ve left acid in her mouth and you don’t care. You were unbalanced, combustible, destructive. Highly flammable. We couldn’t see it beneath the make-up you permanently hide yourself beneath. Your shell of pretentiousness, impenetrable barriers of self obsession and dangerous jealousy. That ink is the lover’s clothing you wrap yourself within. If I had been the man that branded you; the man that drew for you all you wanted us to see. If I was the man who costumed you in ink, I would’ve engraved the words “CAUTION” across your forehead. So that no woman would ever love you again. But I didn’t get there in time. She didn’t know; she hadn’t read the warning label. Just like a picture book, she fell in love with every angle, each line, each dot, and page by page, she fell in love with all the inches of your body. You kissed her. Then you kissed others. You shared the pictures of your life, pictures you had said you’d framed only for her. Pictures that have now all come crashing down around you.
VII.
When it’s hypothetical, it always happens on an island. That’s where we met. A hypothetical, theoretical, imaginary island grounded with the many “should haves,” “would haves,” “wished it could have been that ways,” you’ve breathed down my neck. We took the hypothetical to the physical; to the physical again. And again. Which quickly grew so far past the metaphysical, we were stranded in a world of metaphor. An island where each grain of sand had been wished there. We were not accidental cast-aways. We were desperate fugitives. Hungry for the brazen rationalizations, inarticulate excuses, and blatant lies we became so good at creating with slips and twists of the tongue. And there we lied. For far too long. Tucked in between the sheets of nonexistent grays; a middle ground at in-between times: sudden moral relativists. On a beach of broken bottles, broken bonds, uncomfortable, confused, forgetful, broken hearts, it was shamelessly wrong. So we christened our boat in the honor of sin and set upon the sea of gin and tonics. And upon the capsizing tidal wave of unrestrained, uninhibited, unforgivable desire, that threw me up against you, I heard you whisper through clenched teeth that you loved me. “I love you.” You were drunk. We were drunk. And when I awoke in the morning thirsty, unsure if this story had happened at all, I recognized your taste in my mouth. A twist of lime. You were one hell of a four hour tour, friend. You were a ship that I unexpectedly lost control of. I had no intention of docking here, in a place where you think you love me. Where you run after me trying to savor the experience of corruption one more time and I can’t keep the fuck away from you. So I’ll blame it on the wind that blows me to your door step. But the problem is, that flavor that wakes me with a headache of guilt is something I don’t mind. A taste I like. Something I miss when you’re gone. And if you asked me to do it again, I would. I would swim through the waves of alcoholism and the rip currents of regret, across the depths of black outs and dizziness to find you and revive you. Mouth to mouth, body to body. Drink me, baby, just drink me in.
IIX.
Her car was pulled half way into the driveway. The end hung out. She was hesitant; unsure, scared, rather scared to commit. Unable to trust. And with two hands firmly glued onto the cold, relentless, unforgiving, black leather of the steering wheel, she struggled not to hold you. Restraining herself with herself. A seatbelt that she both hated and needed. I hope you let her know when the light changes colors, let her know when she’s your friend and when she’s more. She can’t figure it out by herself, can’t figure it out until you let her know, so she just sits there, two hands glued to the wheel. Sitting there, going nowhere. With a body torn down the center, a grand canyon of a fissure dividing what cannot stand by itself, she sits there, thinking of you with her hands at ten and two. With only a stick shift separating them, with the enemy lines drawn by separate seats, she surrendered that day. She decided to lose the battle- to bow out- to stop fighting for someone else’s boyfriend. She was the driver, and you suddenly became the passenger. And although most of her, a majority plus one, wanted to crawl into your lap and unfold herself, undress herself, claim herself and her love upon rooftops of hope and unreliable, heartbreaking love, she fought to stay silent. She fought and kept her hands glued. That was the night. The night her mouth opened and rather than being met with yours, with the brash, forward, blatant kiss you shamelessly handout like Jesus-Obsessed, pamphlet toting morons who deem themselves the providers of grace, those lips that deserve far more than you, were only met with her own warm tears.
And that was the evening she learned she could kiss herself. And she did it better anyway.
IX.
Such a writer, such a reader, I got lost in our first lines, last lines, and every letter of dialogue in between. But we didn’t have much of a novel. A short story? A single vignette? One single, magnificent sentence? One speechless moment, a single, floating paragraph, and then pages and pages of he said, she said. But even with a bookcase full of language to dissect, I can’t help but dwell on the muted moments-- moments that deserve to be shot in wide angle, slow motion-- moments that should be spread across pages and pages of Bronte-like prose, edited and re-edited with an Ezra-like eye, pampered and polished with an Eliot finish. I focus, especially now, on those moments. Moments I am too afraid to write down. Knowing I’ll ruin their perfection with the falsities of ink. I will slave over the placement of your commas, the exact right location of a period or semi colon, and I will, most certainly debate, for hours between chestnut and walnut as an appropriate adjective for the shade I recall your hair to be. And in case I hadn't told you, time and time again, I really enjoyed your hair. So don’t mind me, if I continue, for just a little while longer, to read and reread our chapters, especially those which haven’t been written yet, and even those that have. And forgive me if I still manage get lost in those moments, those, that if ever to be penned down, would be the ones talked about over coffee, in book clubs, and literary circles. Where girls would blush, turn to their friends and ask, “Did you read the part where they’re in the parking lot?” If you wanted to know, if you want my opinion on the matter, straight from the author’s mouth, “It was awfully sexy to know you. In the least awful way.” That moment, that one moment, was one for the records, even if all I can remember now, at least what I now remember the most distinctly, is the pattern of our breathing and how bright the stars were. Brightest stars I ever saw. And besides those stars, its just me, a closed book and a single memory of a single night, shared far too many nights ago. A night that deserves to be redone, done differently, done with more attention paid to the finer details, more attention paid to one another, more attention paid to expanding the fragments of time so one night could encompass a week. But really, that’s that. Just one night and the book comes to a close. The sweet chapters in the middle have been read. And, to be frank, I took pleasure in them. Probably too much pleasure-- took my time to read them, to pour over every edge of every page. Highlighted the high points, even reveled in the lows, but now the novel, like all novels I have ever read, comes to a close. And I sit, surprised, taken back, as the book heads quietly toward the shelf. Even with all its unread pages, chapters and chapters of unread this and that, the book quickly and quietly resigns itself to shelf life. As if it’s known, since the beginning. And somehow I did not. I am the one left surprised, the only one holding tight to the binding spine of leather. Surprised as I look around and realize it’s time for a chapter end. Holding fast to any and everything that could stand in the way of a last line. “In the spirit of nostalgia, I really enjoyed you.” And the last flap of bound leather flips closed and the book gets placed between this boy and that. And although this is not my first novel, this is far from easy for me. Especially not with you- not with a boy with such wonderful insight into horror films and under the table fiction, a boy with really quite beautiful hands- fast moving hands. Hands that sneak up on you in the exact, perfect way. This boy- you, boy, are a boy who makes me laugh. You are a boy, who I, for a lack of better words, really enjoyed.
X.
Last night I thought of you. Thought of college ruled notebooks. Thought of my derailed liner note imagination. Thought those old late night thoughts. Thought of rolling papers, stale tobacco, and colored lighters. Thought of breaking rules, curfews, and speed limits, thought of feeling reckless and careless, feeling really young and being happy about it. Thought about really adoring you sometimes. Last night I thought about all those bobby pins and rubber bands I’d had left in your car, all over your bedroom. We had built spots for one another. Built up the kind of friendship you can rely on, where you assume you’ll be together on Saturdays and Fridays, on federal holidays. Built up nicknames and stories, habits, and traditions. Built a hole for you in my life and kept it empty for a long time. Last night I said out loud that you were a hard boy to forget and I meant it. You made me warm like August at the beach, hot like dinner in the oven. You made my skin warm. You were my friend I’d kiss sometimes. Really quick kisses. Little kisses that can’t even be classified as kisses. We’d kiss with mouths closed and not talk about it. Last night I told a story about you. I realize I tell them a lot. Last night I remembered your face for the first time in a long time and realized it felt nice. Nice like driving by the ocean, like rolling all the windows down and melting into the upholstery. Last night I heard you died. And it hurt. Hurt worse than I think it maybe should. You passed over a year ago. Over a year and three days ago to be exact. And I hadn’t heard and I’m sorry. I should have known, should have heard about it some way. Somehow. But I hadn’t. Hadn’t thought to ask. Had imagined you being somewhere with some cute blonde, imagined hearing about you getting married soon, imagined feeling inappropriately jealous, but I hadn’t heard anything. Hadn’t heard you were no longer. You’re gone, they say. And I’ve asked everyone I can think of. Have begged them to say it’s not true. Last night I heard that you’re not coming back like you said you would. “If it’s meant to be, Erica, it’ll work out.” You hugged me goodbye. I’ll run into you one day at the grocery store, you said, maybe one day we’ll get into a fender bender. I kissed you goodbye. Another one of those rushed kisses. Those hushed kisses. Last night, I drove by your old house just to rub it in, to pour salt in the open wound of bad news heard late. Last night, I thought of the one time you kissed me and it mattered. Thought about that constant smell of ash in your hair, mixed with the scent of shampoo and face wash. Thought about the jackets you let me wear, they smelt like mother folded laundry. I thought of how you kissed me harder than I had ever been kissed before. You kissed me in an obvious way. That one was real and you wanted me to know it. You kissed me and I felt it all over. And in the midst of me kissing you back, you stopped.
I said, “Come On.”
I said, “What’s Wrong?”
I said, “It’s alright.”
Said I was enjoying it. Said I wanted to continue. Lied and said it was alright by me. One day we would meet again, in the produce aisle and all would turn out alright. In the parking lot one day, we’d smile and exchange licenses. But you drove me home that night. And we didn’t kiss again. Not that way you kissed me that night. And last night, last night I heard you died. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry to hear that. But I want you to know, just for the record, that you mattered. You mattered to me.
