First Kiss, 1995, by Rebecca

From MemoryArchive

Who: Rebecca
What: First Kiss
When: 
Where:

I believe that everyone has a mental scrapbook of “rites of passage.” Their contents vary from person to person, but mostly they document first slow dances, first kisses, first loves, perfect sunny days spent with friends, college acceptances, proms, graduations, first major paychecks, weddings, and births of children. All of these memories retain their places in the scrapbook because they are perfect, or as close to perfect as anything will ever be.

At the age of nearly seventeen, I felt like my mental scrapbook was significantly deficient. I was frustrated with being a “late bloomer,” and the future was looking bleaker still. It was winter, February, when the buzz of Christmas and New Year’s had passed, and all that was left to do was to count the days until spring. But there was something different about this February.

Out of the gloom of sleety February, I made a new friend. Andy and I became inseparable. When we weren’t together, we were either in class or trying to find each other. We talked endlessly about seemingly meaningless things, but every conversation we had brought us closer together, finding countless similarities from childhood phobias to a voracious hunger for learning and exploring new things. I had never been in a friendship that was so easy and comfortable. I loved his giggle and his laugh, two very separate entities, and how fantastic I felt when I was around him. Most of all, I loved the way his face lit up when he saw me coming towards him, because for the first time in a long time, someone wanted me.

We decided on one unusually clear-skied Friday evening to go out to dinner and watch a movie. I took him to my favorite little Thai restaurant, where they immediately seat couples at the table in the secluded corner. While this wasn’t explicitly defined as a “date,” I started to feel a small bud starting to bloom inside of me.

We went back to his house to watch my favorite French movie, L’auberge Espagnole. There’s something about foreign movies that touches another aspect of my emotions, somewhere that American movies simply can’t reach or choose not to for fear of not being understood by the majority of the public. I felt the flower poking out of the blossoming bud inside of me.

About halfway through the movie, at the least romantic part imaginable, Andy turned and kissed me. At that instant, that very second, the timid flower jolted out of its bud and exclaimed that it was finally out and happy to be liberated. Everything was a blur of ecstasy, scents and soft clothing on my skin that was covered in goosebumps. I could not have imagined anything more perfect for my first kiss, and I could feel my mind creating the scrapbook page as he kissed me. I could see my mind pasting together pictures of his smile, the frantic breaths, and the feeling of his fingers running through my hair.

Suddenly, the page started coming unglued; everything started to slip apart. He held my hand and gently told me that he was in love with someone else, he wanted to be with her, and he couldn’t give up the idea of being with her to be with me. He hoarsely whispered thousands of apologies, and he put his hand on the side of his face and suddenly looked so…weak. He was no longer strong and fantastic, as I had known him before. He was susceptible to temptation; he couldn’t hold out for someone without entertaining himself in the meantime. He wanted me, but clearly I was not good enough to be worth committing to. I was just the “Other Woman.”

As his apologies and explanations attempted to alleviate what he had done, my mind was whizzing and hardly knew how to process his words. I could almost see my beautiful, long-awaited scrapbook page being torn up and this beautiful memory being forced into the trashcan of moments I’d rather forget, like huge fights, forgetting to study for a major test, and inappropriately breaking down in tears.

I suppose I could be resentful about what happened, about him taking something that he couldn’t give back to me, but after serious reflection, I came to a realization. Not everything that is typically a “special” or “life-changing” event is always “special” or “life-changing.” The fact that this event, that was supposed to take its rightful place between my first slow dance and my first love, has been referred to as a mistake made me realize that it was okay if my first kiss wasn’t perfect in all respects. There were thousands more to come, each of which would be more special than this first one. Everything that tells us anything about growing up emphasizes how “special” your first kiss should be, and I realized that there is no “should” in real life, and I would rather save my “special” event for something truly, genuinely, actually special.

To pass the time until then, I’ve been reorganizing my mental scrapbook. I left the space next to my first slow dance open for someone who truly deserves to fill it. Then I made another scrapbook of the trashcan of memories, to make myself remember that those moments of struggle are equally as important as those of happiness.