I read An Abundance of Katherine’s by John Green today. While there are many things I could say about it, I will only say that it was very good, and I recommend to people who like to read things with plot that are not predominantly about disrobing.
Anyway, after I read the book, I was click-click-clicking around the internet, watching some Brotherhood 2.0 videos, then checking out the NerdFighters forums, and the list of recent forum activity had at its top a post “Your First Kiss.” There are 45 pages and 535 replies in this thread!
I read some of them and was planning on going to bed, but then I was thinking about that myself. My first kiss. And many of the kisses that followed it.
My first kiss was not too different from many other peoples’ first kisses, I imagine, save, perhaps, that I was older. I was seventeen, had just graduated high school, and had just started dating a girl I had done theatre with. We were on a date, I took her home. Outside of her door, she stood two steps up (she was rather shorter than I was), and we kissed. I later wrote the poem below about that experience, but, aside from being my first kiss, and therefore one of the most memorable romantic experiences in a person’s life, there isn’t much to be said.
Between then, and my last first kiss I don’t remember many of the kisses at all. My last first kiss was very early in the morning after having been out all night with the girl I later married. I was dropping her off at the house she was house-sitting and we were in my car and it was really, really great (though, with her, they were all really, really great). Then, after she got out of the car and went inside, Faith Hill’s “This Kiss” came on the radio. Serendipitous, I thought.
I wonder if it’s strange that I don’t remember the first kisses in between. I think the answer is no: The first one was important because it was the first one. The last first one was important because… I wouldn’t have known it at the time but it was the woman I loved more than anything who I later married, so it was very special. The rest, now, are just kind of there. From the perspective of those relationships, did I feel the same? I can’t remember, those were all quite some time ago.
I also wonder if it’s strange I don’t remember my last kiss. I also suppose no. After all, I didn’t really expect it to be the last kiss while I was involved in the kissing, thus it wouldn’t have been remarkable as an occasion to be remembered….
Goodnight
We stand outside your door
try to say goodnight
while we wonder if anyone is watching
The wind speaks softly
in return your hair dances
pirouettes on air’s imaginary currents
You step close
We meet
I am shattered into the moment
like glass being broken
Shards of me fall
leaving only my lips pressed to yours
Eternity comes and goes
Goodnight
And that is a peak inside my head at midnight on a Sunday.
EDIT: I just want to add a quick two things: (1) the first kiss was actually before I graduated high school, not after, oops; (2) and that was spring of 1998 and the poem was written in February 1999–it’s not a recent work.