Currently

Chris is an ongoing torment.  We have a great time when we are together; we never stop laughing.  He texts me everyday but most of those texts go no where and I only see him about once a week. I know, I know, He’s just not that into you.  But it is a college relationship, so it doesn’t follow “real word” rules. I know I deserve better but the bad things he does are so miniscule it is easy to make excuses for them.  It’s been three months and he will probably never want to get serious. Little does he know I have been serious since week two.  Of course you can’t push pressure on boys like that, they will be gone in a second.  They are scared little puppies that have to be spoon fed until they can stomach something more solid.  Even when I accidentally slip and say that we are “dating” I can see his eyes widen and teeth clench.  You would think I asked him for a ring or something.  

He is one of those boys I wish I had met later in life.  Like a train I wish I had gotten on at a later destination; by that point he will have seen more places, met more people.  In short, I just wish he would grow up.

William

My high school boyfriend and I had no idea what we were doing.  I want to think that we were just as clueless as anybody else but in actuality we were worse.  I had a very limited experience with dating and he had even less.  Where I excelled was research; I had been watching relationships on TV for years.  I believed I knew just about everything there was to know about being in a relationship.  So I was surprised when my boyfriend knew absolutely nothing - and I mean nothing - about dating.  Even little things that you would assume one would pick up simply by observing others interact seemed to whiz right over his head.  One of my biggest regrets is that I did not teach him more in our two years together.  

Our first kiss was in a park, on a January night and it was bad — really bad. 

In fact, I will go on record, for the first time, and say that it is and was my worst kiss.  If he wasn’t so damn cute I would have ended it right there.  I was a fledgling kisser myself so I wasn’t really confident enough to take control of the situation, but it was completely out of my hands anyways. We both leaned in for it and haphazardly closed our eyes and opened our mouths, trusting they would find each other.  I think we both sort of believed that that was all it took; that somehow our tongues would switch to autopilot and figure out the rest on their own.  Instead our lips met and remained static while our tongues just swirled around one another for about five minutes.  It was sloppy and noisy. If that sounds at all like the proper way to kiss, then I am not explaining it well enough.  Half way through I opened my eyes and just stared at his closed ones to remind myself that a beautiful boy was letting me kiss him and to take what I could get. When it was over I looked at my watch to see if it actually lasted as long as it felt it did.  It was my longest makeout to date.

The strange thing is though, as bad as it was, I got so high off it.  When I got home I saw myself in the mirror and noticed this glow I had.  No one had ever told me that your lips swell up and your cheeks flush.  I had this goofy grin on my face that now I can spot on pretty much anyone.   I could smell his spit on me (I said it was sloppy) and I didn’t want it to go away.  I knew I had to keep kissing and see how long this high lasts. I still really haven’t found any end to it.

Prologue

I had my first kiss when I was 14.  Correction, my first kiss was stolen from me when I was 14.  I was in a storage closet with my friends Beth and John at our friends birthday party.  The two of them had been making out all night and I had been third wheeling.  In retrospect it’s a bit weird that I was in the actual closet with the two of them; you think I would have given them some privacy.  Anyways, at one point John turned to me and said, “Hey Natalie, want to make out?”  Before I could answer his tongue was in my mouth.  I had always wondered what kissing felt like and whether I was any good at it.  Part of me wanted to explore further but the other part said, “he was just making out with Beth!”  So I used my tongue to force his tongue out of my mouth and that was that.  He resumed kissing Beth and I finally gave them their privacy.  The kiss lasted about five seconds and meant absolutely nothing except that I no longer had my kissing virginity.  I felt gypped.  For years I had been reading magazine articles on how to kiss and imagining all the perfect and cliche ways my first one would be.  Instead, I would later describe it to my girlfriends as “fighting his tongue with mine.”    

I would not have my second make-out until two long years later.