All of this and Passionate Kisses

Maybe it's the heat that's making me nostalgic or the good music pouring out of my speakers. But I was thinking of my first kiss. It was very nice. I was in seventh grade playing Truth or Dare at the party of a girl I don't remember much about except that she seemed always on the verge of being very pissed off at someone. This big lunky boy named Kenny was sitting next to me and he was dared to kiss me. And so he did, leaned right over and softly kissed me right on the mouth. After a little bit, he reached over and took my hand. I had never talked to him before and I didn't talk to him after that. My first real kiss--like the French do it--was my sophomore year of high school. I kissed a boy at church! Brilliant, really, because the whole church-going thing was what was preventing me from being kissed in the first place and kissing boys at church solved that little dilemma. I liked it as well, even though he wasn't very good at it. We spent much of the evening making out and then he said, "whatever else you want to do, you're going to have to take the lead." Whatever else I want to do? Until that moment, I wasn't even really sure people kissed each other like that and now he wants me to take the lead? To where? I surely had no idea. Well, I had some idea of where to go. I just didn't know how to even start to get there. My first foray into the menage a trois happened that same year. No sex, just two awkward girls sitting on either side of a Presbyterian minister's son wearing nothing but his tighty-whiteys, giving us each sweet kisses until my dad knocked on the door, opened it, looked confused, shook his head, said the minister's son's mom was here to get him, and shut the door back again. Ten years later, I kissed a girl for the first time. It was also very nice. I was dressed like a cat, but she was wearing my ears. My favorite kiss was in Chicago after dinner with an old, old friend, who bought me dinner and smiled shyly and then, as I turned to go back to my hotel room, grabbed my arm and turned me around and kissed me for a long time. I begged him to come up to my hotel room and he begged me to take the train out to his place and, when both of us realized we were more concerned about the morning commute than getting it on, we kissed again, much differently, and he went home alone.