Three Kisses

Kiss # 1 1/2



This is another half. I'm beginning to think that things that never really happened are the only things I remember.

Whoa Nelly, how kissing a friend can be the best or worst thing in the world. I had a friend. A really great friend. I don't know if he ever knew how highly I regarded him. He was modest, and shy, he was funny and would blush when you said his name. He was tall with green eyes. He hung back a little bit but was always with a louder, more obnoxious friend, which, sometimes, was me.

We were at a friend's house and we started wrestling, on her bed. He pinned me down and tilted his head in the I'm-going-to-kiss-you sort of way. It was like that creepy moment in the Lion King when you know it's supposed to be kind of Oh, hehe, we're friends wrestling but also, so so much more and it makes you want to clean your ears or call Nala a whore. That was actually the first time it had occurred to me hey, moron, wrestling boys on beds might give them the wrong impression.

He leaned in and I thought about how stupid I had been to let my beauty and charm disarm him this way, so I made a plan, I'll make out with him for a while, be his girlfriend, wait until he dumps me, and then maybe I'll get my friend back. Such were my problem solving abilities at the time.

He looked at me lovingly....

You only have yourself to blame

brushed my hair back...

he was just a deer in the headlights, helpless in my glow

leaned in...

Oh no

and then he bit me on the nose.

Awesome.

Kiss #2

I was on my roof at night, he was really nice to me, like boys that age are never nice. The kind of nice where they walk you home, and they hold your hand, and they don't try to lean in somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes in to the first date. Maybe he just didn't really like me but it was like a revelation. Boys can be nice, and respectful, and still want to hold your hand. I don't think it had ever occurred to me before. So three dates in, on a rooftop at night my whole perspective changed.

Kiss #3

I was so silly, I hadn't learned anything. I went on a trip to Mexico with six guys I had never met on a days notice. One of them was Dave. He put up with my puppish school girl behavior for about three days. Now he tells me that at that point he was seriously concerned about ending up in the friend zone. So after a lovely meal at a fine restaurant (Hooters) we went for a walk past a fountain and a little band. I have this compulsion, if there is music playing I'm dancing and if there is water running I'm in it, so I'm dancing around this fountain, when Dave grabs my hand, and walks over to a bench, and sits me down on his lap, and showed me how it was going to be for the rest of my life.

And it was so good that that's just how it is.

I was a Brown girl

You know 'em, you've seen them cantering through hallways at school or at church, throwing cascades of thick hair and letting loose a confident whinny, all legs under denim cut off shorts. Girls who were born in a kind of harem, bunches at a time, looking like a clan of liberated nesting dolls. Sunshine, summer girls who's bright disposition would leave you completely unprepared for the thunder and lightning that made them.

Shelly was first, actually, no, Mom was first, I would watch her get tickets, write deposit slips at the bank. The way her eyes looked up from beneath her manufactured lashes. The curl of her fingers as she moved her hand across a check. Her polyester nighties that felt just like the real silk kind and were the color of mermaid fins, I would steal them and pretend I was a turtle hiding in my shell, I think that being the imagery of choice says something but I can't say for sure. The times my friends would meet her and whisper your mom is pretty your mom is pretty your mom is pretty. How I wanted to dreamily sigh I know and curl my lip back and snarl at the same time. How I would forever alternate rolling my eyes at her and emulating her.

We all fell in line behind, each cute or beautiful or luscious or sparkling in our own sphere. Never are you really dressed unless your wearing a girdle and heels. Always improving on the lashes God gave you. The haughty Vogue mugging in the mirror. The Hey-that's-mine-did-he-ask-you-out?-If-you-get-it-dirty-I'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you-don't-be-such-a-little-jerk-you've-got-a-zit-right there din always playing in the background.

Shelly was the next. Darker, more like the gypsies we all really were, at least in my magical mind. She was charming and talented. She was also angrier, deeper, and stronger. More passionate, in her grudges and in her charges. Tresa had the words. The way. A luster that I still can't understand fully because my resentment clouds my view like a damn swarm of misquitoes most of the time. Then me, scrappy, sunny, a silly thing, a foolish thing. Then Dee who is a chameleon and a mystery still, maybe because she is the most like me and maybe because she is the most like everybody.

We were talented, and long limbed, and lovely and no one stood a chance, I forget any of our failures, they must not be worth remembering.

Time has gone by though, and I have faded, I am too smart by now to speak for everyone else. I am still a sunny, silly, foolish thing, and I have not had to take inventory of my scrap for some time now. But now I am a Mrs. D McKay and girdles seem to hide less than they used to, although high heels are still fabulous. But as I see a beautiful girl, forever seeming to be frozen in carefree laugh, I think to myself you know, I used to be a Brown girl