After a long absence, today is a double blog day. Feel free to read the earlier entry for prior thoughts.


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My first kiss with a girl was a debacle. Really, it was such a disaster that the story isn’t worth retelling. But sometimes, a little humility is good for the soul.

Her name was Carrie and she was a very pretty girl with an ear-to-ear smile and curly blonde hair that bounced as vivaciously as her personality. She was a freshman in band class where I met most of the girls at a time in my life when I was still too shy to venture beyond the boundaries of my cloistered world. I was a gangly mess of a nerd, unable to detach my outward identity from my Oriental brethren, the likes of Long Duk Dong (). It didn’t help that I wore oversized glasses starting in the sixth grade, sported the occasional bowl cut, read D&D manuals for fun, and really was a good student. You earned your stripes as a nerd in those days before Internet playboys, Xboxes, and anything resembling geek chic hit the pop culture circuit.

Despite my nerdiness, I knew how to turn on the charm when the situation called for it. Not only could I hold my own as a flirt but I also learned that some girls just have a predilection for Asian blood, a little Yellow Fever (Just LOOK at that cute little Chinaman!). So, shortly after meeting Carrie, I was already making plans for my first honest-to-God date. Since I wasn’t old enough to drive, I had no choice but to make it a double with my best friend, Ron. His primer-and-green 1971 Buick Skylark wasn’t the prettiest set of wheels but it would get the job done.

While I didn’t know much about girls, I knew that a horror movie would be the ticket. After all, first dates are breeding grounds for cheap thrills, both on-screen and off. Eerie violins crescendo to bloody climax as an arm glides around a shoulder. A boogeyman leaps from the darkness as you try to cop a feel. Hands clasp, fingers interlock, and nerves finally...

After a long absence, today is a double blog day. Feel free to read the earlier entry for prior thoughts.


++++++++++++

My first kiss with a girl was a debacle. Really, it was such a disaster that the story isn’t worth retelling. But sometimes, a little humility is good for the soul.

Her name was Carrie and she was a very pretty girl with an ear-to-ear smile and curly blonde hair that bounced as vivaciously as her personality. She was a freshman in band class where I met most of the girls at a time in my life when I was still too shy to venture beyond the boundaries of my cloistered world. I was a gangly mess of a nerd, unable to detach my outward identity from my Oriental brethren, the likes of Long Duk Dong (). It didn’t help that I wore oversized glasses starting in the sixth grade, sported the occasional bowl cut, read D&D manuals for fun, and really was a good student. You earned your stripes as a nerd in those days before Internet playboys, Xboxes, and anything resembling geek chic hit the pop culture circuit.

Despite my nerdiness, I knew how to turn on the charm when the situation called for it. Not only could I hold my own as a flirt but I also learned that some girls just have a predilection for Asian blood, a little Yellow Fever (Just LOOK at that cute little Chinaman!). So, shortly after meeting Carrie, I was already making plans for my first honest-to-God date. Since I wasn’t old enough to drive, I had no choice but to make it a double with my best friend, Ron. His primer-and-green 1971 Buick Skylark wasn’t the prettiest set of wheels but it would get the job done.

While I didn’t know much about girls, I knew that a horror movie would be the ticket. After all, first dates are breeding grounds for cheap thrills, both on-screen and off. Eerie violins crescendo to bloody climax as an arm glides around a shoulder. A boogeyman leaps from the darkness as you try to cop a feel. Hands clasp, fingers interlock, and nerves finally relax as our hero stands in triumph… or does he?

And so Ron and I decided on the big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “Misery.” I remember very little of the date itself except for vague recollections that me, Carrie, Ron, and his girlfriend Amy had a fantasticly teenagerly time. The highlight of the film came at the moment of climax when, just as Cathy Bates crushed the legs of an incapacitated James Caan, I blurted out, “She shoots, she scores!” Tension was broken and laughter ensued.

Driving home, Ron dropped off Amy first. As I continued flirting with Carrie inside the car, I couldn’t help but watch the couple on the porch, cooing and kissing each other. I looked back at Carrie, still too scared to have made any moves, wondering how I’d pull this off without completely embarrassing myself. I was pretty sure she liked me, but you never can tell with these things until the actual Moment of Truth.

A short drive later, I was walking Carrie to the front door of her house, my heart palpitating, palms sweating, and my legs begging to run far, far away from here. I wanted very badly to kiss this girl. I wanted to sweep her up in a Clark Gable-like way and kiss her. I just had no idea what to do or how to do it. I was petrified.

We stood on the porch awhile as she laughed at my bad jokes and I laughed back nervously. My knees threatened to buckle at any moment with tension mounting as the minutes ticked by and nothing at all happened. I was painfully conscious of what had to be Carrie’s growing impatience and also of Ron, sitting in the car and muttering obscenities about growing balls and needing to get home. Time dragged on as I grasped for one zinger after another, desperately searching for my opening, that elusive Perfect Moment to reach forward and plant one on her lips. My head swirled as the words formed by her lips were drown out by the sound of my thundering heart. Ron’s beat-up Skylark idled in the driveway, a rumbling reminder that something, , needed to happen.

So I just went for it. Halfway through her plans for homecoming I reached forward, grabbed her, closed my eyes and planted my lips onto hers. We both shuddered, caught off-guard by this unexpected moment of ecstasy. Euphoria and courage charged like electricity through my entire body. I had reached up and seized the brass ring and now it was mine.

And then I panicked. Freaked out with no clue or plan for whatever was supposed to happen next, I instinctively reached into my bag of jokes and pulled out the first thing I could find. I blew a raspberry. Ppppppbbbbbbbbbllllllllltttttttt!! I. Blew. A. Fucking. Raspberry.

Carrie recoiled in horror. The muscles in her face contorted in agony, struggling to maintain her big Stepford smile, as if Miss America herself had lost her bikini top in the middle of the swimsuit competition. Dumbfounded, I mustered a sheepish and shit-eating grin. I would have performed pratfalls down the front porch if it proved my blunder was a deliberate, and actually funny, joke. I prayed for the ground to swallow me whole.

“You know Alex,” she forced through her smile, barely using her lips to speak, “I should go inside.”

“Uh…” I stammered. “Ok. I guess I’ll see you later.”

I tried talking to her several times over the next few days but my ship had clearly sailed. Shortly thereafter she quit band entirely. Adding further insult to injury, two weeks later she was dating the quarterback of the football team. Somehow, though, that last fact made me feel a little better. No question, I still had much to learn about girls. But, nerd though I was, I realized I was playing ball in the same league as the Big Man on Campus.