Peter had an unusual assignment last night. He had a journal entry to do based on answers that one of his parents gave to the following topics or questions (I think I am recalling these correctly): Describe your first love, including any interesting anecdotes. Do you believe in love at first sight, and why or why not?
He really didn’t want to have anything to do with this topic, nor with my answers. He handed me the paper and asked me to fill it out, returning it to me when I was finished. I was sensitive to his discomfort, and wrote something sanitary, yet interesting. I briefly wrote about Steve, and mentioned that he had written a song for me, which is kind of Partridge-Familyish; bearable for a fifteen year old boy.
But how do you squeak open the lid on memories to sneak just one out? I remember sitting next to him in Chemistry class; we were constantly passing notes. He drew a stick figure of himself and passed it; I drew myself holding his hand and passed it back. We passed the note back and forth filling it up with stick people. When we couldn’t fit any more in, he wrote on the back, “I guess we’ll have to be alone in a crowd.”
Death by love. I think I was fifteen or sixteen before I was kissed for the first time- every kiss should be a first kiss. Your lips meet; each tastes the salty-sweet of the other for the brief instant before there is that beautiful melding, when you understand the true purpose of biology, which is really to prove an impossibility of cohesion, and you tremble fiercely and can’t help it, and your heart is beating, beating in some mad rhythm against his heart.
If your heart is pure, every kiss is a first kiss.
