My First Kiss

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know how.”

That was the conversation that proceeded my first kiss.

Smooth, I know.

I was a junior in high school. I’ve always been a later bloomer.

But, my first kiss was with my high school’s homecoming queen, so I wasn’t timely, but I aimed high.

I’m gonna tell you the whole story but my high school homecoming queen may not be as excited by the association as I am, so I will change her name.

Let’s call her..Paris. I feel that’s a name, in our particular time in history, that conjures images of sophistication and class, right?

Through a strange confluence of circumstances, I was giving Paris a ride home from a church event because that’s just how I rolled.

I guess we really hit it off because, for some reason, on that ride home, she asked if I would be her prom date.

I gave her the obvious answer: “I have to ask my parents.”

And I did. I asked them and they, of course, said it was fine, happy, I assume, for the confirmation that I might not go on to a life as a shut-in.

Prom was the big leagues. I decided before I took this girl to prom I needed to take her on an actual, non-church related date. I asked her if I could and she said yes. For whatever reason, she didn’t feel the need to bring her parents into it.

I didn’t know what to do on a date, though, so I took her out to do what I would have done with any of my friends at that time: wash my car and then go back to my place and watch Monty Python’s Holy Grail. I realize some may see this as a precursor to the idea of Netflix and Chill, but it was more of a Rental and Try Not To Fart for me.

Say what you will about my tactics because later that night, outside her house, I got my first kiss.

And, not my last, I might say…