Feels Like The First Time
2006-12-16 | Filed Under Participatory Books |
What is your first romantic memory? Was it a first kiss? A first pitter patter of your heart? Is there a story of your first love? Who was it? How old were you? What do you remember?Tell me the story and I’ll illustrate it …
6 Responses to “Feels Like The First Time”
I don’t really remember a first love. The first person I made out with in highschool was a nice enough guy. His name was George. We were at a cast party following our production of The Pajama Game and someone shut the lights out because the police were called. But, really I didn’t like him very much and found the whole thing not particularly pleasant. And, I later regretted the incident completely because I had forgotten it was daylight savings and the clocks sprang forward and I called my mother over an hour later than I should have and she was furious and sort of screamed like a crazy lady on the phone and I got into a lot of trouble. So, making out just didn’t seem worth it.
My first celebrity crushes included Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison, Dick Van Dyke as Caractacus Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Barney Rubble.
I guess I’ll have to go with stories of the earliest flirtations I can remember, and those were in second and third grade. In second grade I sat across from a boy named Sequoia Walker. He would say “Hey Marianne!” and as I would look up he would rip off a piece of his nametag (that was made of manila paper and taped to the front of his desk) and pop it in his mouth. I think he ate his whole name tag in a week.
In third grade I sat next to Bruce Federico, and he would do things like say “Hey Marianne!” and then thrust a lead pencil into the palm of his hand to impress me. I think it did.
I don’t know why I remember this so well. It’s not like it was my first kiss, and it wasn’t even a “real” kiss, but this is what I remember about it.
I was in the tenth grade, and we had an exchange student from Ecuador living with us, which entirely changed my social life. Instead of hanging out with kids from my neighborhood behind the 7-Eleven, every Friday and Saturday, two guys from Columbia (they also went to my high school, but not as exchange students; they were cousins whose families had recently moved to Levittown), Hernando and Edgar, would come by in Edgar’s car to pick up me and Fabian, and then we’d drive to one of the exchange student parties that went on almost every weekend somewhere on Long Island.
I lived on the working class South Shore, and I saw the nicer houses and wealthier towns on the North Shore for the first time. I also started drinking beer at these parties. There was one guy, a tall blond surfer type, who’d show up at most of the parties with the trunk of his car packed tight with beer of various brands, and you could always buy a six-pack from him.
Hernando, Edgar and Fabian had a very South American approach to women (girls, really, of course, but they all seemed very mature and knowledgeable to me). In retrospect I think they were somewhere between The Continental and Two Wild and Crazy Guys. This was the early seventies, so it was a real contrast with the trickle-down hippie culture I’d been growing into before they came along. But it was also the disco era, and the tight-pantsed, open-shirted mode they favored didn’t seem that alien. It was all over the tv and in movies, and Queens was only a twenty minute drive on the Long Island Expressway.
The parties we went to could hardly have been more innocent. A few beers, a little pot. The kids in the exchange student groups all tended to be A students who were going to use their involvement to help them get into good schools, and the exchange students themselves came from upper class families, and looked to the rest of us as if they’d all been to finishing school. Nobody else on Long Island was that polite.
And despite my friends’ Lothario style, they came from a much more traditional culture, where the virgin/whore thing wasn’t a hangup, it was more like the law, and they hadn’t really absorbed any of the “sexual revolution” that was apparently going on at the time, and all the girls at the party fell into the category of “nice girls.” So, after a really successful night, maybe there’d be some kissing in the dark corner of a back yard, or in the back seat of a car parked right out in front of the party, completely visible in the porch light.
Anyway, I was just following their lead, and one night I ended up rolling around on the wet lawn in the back yard, kissing a girl from Sea Cliff I’d just met that night. We were both a bit drunk and I’m almost certain no tongues were involved. I can recall the fact of it, but not the experience of it, like it was a story somebody had told me about somebody else.
So, that’s not the thing I remember. What I remember is this. At right around the same time, probably within a week or two of that party, I was introduced to a dark, pretty, graceful girl from Guatemala. When I took her hand to shake it, she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek; she couldn’t have surprised me more if she had levitated. I had never been “socially” kissed by somebody my own age; it’s possible that I didn’t even know people did that.
I assume I managed to say something appropriate, but I was completely stunned.
For days after that, I could feel her lips pressed against my cheek. My mind kept going back to it.
I can feel how soft they were now.
My first kiss was in the balcony of this old theater where they showed the Rocky Horror picture show. It was summer and I went with my best friend Katy, her boyfriend Dave who was two years older than us and her boyfriend’s brother Andrew, who was in our class. Andrew was cute, but really obnoxious. The kind of guy who snorted jello at the lunch table or snapped your bra or basically was always calling attention to himself in some way. I had never thought about him romantically at all. However, several gulps of gin later, he lead me to the balcony where we started kissing. He was actually quite sweet and romantic and later we walked home to his house through Boston at 3 am in the morning and kissed on several park benches. I still can’t believe we didn’t get mugged!
My first love was in the first grade. For the record, I was also in the first grade. Her name was Zia Waters. Thinking back on it now, as a gay man, her name makes me think more of a weird love child of Jonathan Waters and Zsa Zsa Gabor than the Danish, tall, cute, long haired girl she was.
Zia and I were in the same class in Kindergarten and by the end of the year, we slept on mats next to each other during nap time. Since there was only one of each class in our small school, we were destined to meet again in the first.
In September, I had a really horrific accident. My pet rabbit had bitten the tip off my left index finger and I was out of school for about a week. They never did recover the missing digit tip and so I was a scared child. When I came back to school the teacher — Miss Prucik — made me move my desk to the back of the room because she felt squeemish looking at my hand. She was a very mean teacher. Anyway, Zia was the sweetest medicine for me. She and I began holding hands [my right one, of course] and we were inseperable for the next two years.
Zia was my first love. But like most boys, I had fleeting attention. Early in the third grade [Sister Raymond Ann's class -- she was awesome! She would play dodgeball and basketball with us in her habit], Charleene Norris was becoming the apple of my eye. More than the apple of my eye really… she would hit me on the play ground and pull my hair. For some reason, while I loved holding Zia’s hand all the time, I really liked this rough play.
I usually went home for lunch, because I lived right across the street from the school and because I had to have the same thing for lunch everyday or I wouldn’t eat [peanut butter toast]. We would all line up to go down to the cafeteria and on the way down the steps I would go out the door to the side of the school and head for my house.
Well this one day, I was nearly at the door when Charleene grabbed me and planted a big kiss right on my lips. I was petrified…
In retrospect, it was about this time that Michael Delmanaco started looking like the cutest boy in my class and Zia and I stopped holding hands.
I was recently reading through my baby album. There are some funny bits in there. My mother wrote about one time when I was six…
One day you were in the bathroom a long time. Finally you came out with deodorant on and said, “Mom, you haven’t given me a bath since Jesus was born.” You had your hair slicked back to the side with water - a comb in your inside jacket pocket. You had me check your breath. You said, “I have to be ready for Lisa.”
Lisa Copping was my first serious crush. We took the same bus to and from school. She invited me to her birthday party at McDonald’s. I invited her to my birthday at Showbiz Pizza. I think in my mind that meant we were married. The next year Lisa and her family moved to another state and I never saw her again.
its the first romantic story in my life.I never ever met before.Seem like I fall in love the shadow of one man.I met him on MSN.We done every thing on internet.At the first date..I lost control,shame on…but i look at his lips..i..feel..like i want to kiss him but i am not brave to say.
another night.We have first dinner after that we leave.he drove his car and i drove my car also,I called him to stop and come to sit with me.While I drive he hold my hand I feel it so warm,He asked for me to stop only 2 mintue.After that I give hime a big kiss.I know he got a bit shock.It become to the real world with the first kiss.All the time we just do it in the dream on internet.
I would like to tell him.He make me very in a dream .I don’t want to come to the real world.It’s mean that is first kiss and last kiss as the same time.