The French Kiss

I was seventeen years old before I started dating, and the first boy that I dated was the first boy that I French kissed. I had held off kissing as long as I could because the idea of someone’s tongue in my mouth worried me. Reading about kissing was fascinating and seemed thrilling, but what if I was a horrible kisser? Could someone tell that you had no experience by kissing you just once?

In theory, the idea of French kissing was erotic and sexy. But theory isn’t practice. I had quizzed my more experienced friends about the mechanics of French kissing, but they couldn’t offer much advice. It was something that had to be figured out on one’s own.

David probably thought I was just being coy, but I was terrified. I would always cut our kisses just short of David sticking his tongue in my mouth. It didn’t feel right. I wasn’t ready for that much intimacy, especially with someone who didn’t make my pulse race. Why should I waste my first kiss on him?

One night as we were about to say goodbye, I knew that I couldn’t escape from the inevitable French kiss any longer. We had been dating for over a month, and I could tell that David was starting to lose patience. We held hands, we embraced, we chicken pecked, but that was where the affection ended. We had agreed early on that we wanted to maintain our virginity, but I knew that once the real kissing started, things could change in that department. My more experienced friends had proved that to be true. It all starts with kissing.

Sitting on the hood of my car, I could feel David closing in on me as he stood before me. His hands were holding my upper legs as he closed the space between us. My pulse began to race, but not from passion. It was do or die time, and I was about to be tested and possibly judged by how well my tongue could collide with his. I decided to focus on an object in the distance in order to steady my nerves. The object was a dog walking across the street. I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes as my lips parted to allow David’s tongue entrance into my virgin mouth. I continued to watch the dog as we commenced with what was supposed to be kissing. The texture of David’s tongue was what I imagined a cat’s to feel like. It was rough, cold, and tasted of the spearmint gum that he habitually chewed. The dog had disappeared and I was starting to feel claustrophobic. The kiss went on and on, and I was just riding out the storm. It finally ended, and I got in my car. I noticed a triumph grin on David’s face as we said our goodbyes.

A few seconds up the road, I fake gagged, and then laughed in spite of the awfulness of the experience. I’m sure I asked myself, “Is that it? Is that what all the fuss is about?” That night I decided that David wasn’t “the one,” and my mother told me that I shouldn’t lead him on if I didn’t like him as much as he liked me. The kiss had been an omen, and I would not ignore it. David could sense the change in me, and a few weeks later, we decided that we’d “just be friends,” and I started chewing cinnamon gum.