Not until watching Baz Lurman’s Romeo and Juliette, did I imagine using my lips for anything more divine than eating ice-cream on a cone. (I always look like I’m trying to french my ice-cream cones… don’t you?) I’d built up kissing in my head the same way I would build up loosing my virginity. I just knew it was going to be mind-blowinglly amazing!!
Being a superstitious teen, I tried to believe my first kiss was never going to happen. That way, if it did, I would be surprised – and if it didn’t, then I would be right! But this pessimistic thinking became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and at “sweet sixteen”, I had still never been kissed. (Which made it more like sour sixteen if you ask me.)
School dances at Downlands College came and went, and no one asked me to dance. I figured it was because I was such an awesome dancer, and they were intimidated by my moves! (I really am an awesome dancer.) Over the years, I toned down my dancing to a mere two-step shuffle in the hopes of attracting the kind of boys that went to my school.
The Downlands College School Social dance floor was made up of three concentric circles of people. The outer perimeter contained mainly boys, stalking around, refusing to dance, but eager to look macho as they too, pined for a chance at a pash. The middle layer consisted of girls dancing in groups, mercilessly comparing them selves to one another - as it was rare to see each other out of uniform. And the inner core was made up of couples being watched like hawks by teachers, and sent outside the minute they stood too close, or went in for a pash.
Twice a year I would beg my Dad to let me go to an “All-Schools” Dance-social, where there was no 30cm rule, and french kissing was ramped!
“Absolutely not!” would be his answer. “That is completely out of the question.” This was coming from a dad who would throw a pen on the ground and make me pick it up if he thought my skirt looked too short. To say he was over protective was an understatement. He was convinced that all boys were out to get my virginity, which I wanted to believe, yet I knew was not the case. Otherwise they would have at least payed me some attention at school, surely!! Even still, he managed to instil in me, a fear of trusting men, that has lasted to this day.
At sixteen and a half, I told Dad that it was VITAL I get to attend at least one all-schools dance before I die from being a loser. I must have caught him at a good time, because he said yes! On the proviso of a curfew, and making sure I had a buddy (like when you go skuba diving) to look out for you.
The budy-diver system on a dance floor is actually not such a bad idea. What better situation to use your hand signals “I’m OK” or “go back to the boat, I’m going to use someone’s face as a breathing apparatus!”
The evening arrived, and I was getting ready with my two best friends, Suze and Connie. Suze was gangly tall, with braces and crazy bangs. She was a constant ray of energy and the sole reason I could bare high school. Connie was more stocky and from Dalas, Texis in the USA. This made her an instant celebrity to me. I would constantly ask her to tell me a stories, just so I could hear her accent.
We were interested in one thing only. Toowoomba Gramma Boys. They were rumoured to be much more gentlemanly that the oxygen deprived foot-ball jerks that plagued Downlands. I kept thinking “Oh My God. What if it happens tonight!” then I would quickly force myself to think the opposite to un-jinx it. Suze and Connie tried to ease my anxiety, but what would they know about anxiety! They had already had the pleasure of feeling someone else’s tongue in their mouths. I was still waiting for my chace!
We arrived and went straight to the dance floor. I cracked open my subdued two-step shuffle to woe the boys. It wasn’t long before a bunch of cute Toowoomba Grammer guys joined our circle with their versions of the two-step shuffle. I had my eye on a short, cute, dark haired, energetic guy with braces. But he never made eye contact with me.
…Then suddenly a tall, ruggedly handsome looking guy, with dreamy dimples walked right up to me and said “Would you like to dance with me?”
I stared at him in utter shock and disbelief. I even stopped my left-right shuffle. Then I realised what was happening. He was asking the girl behind me to dance, and I was interrupting his eye line. How embarrassing! But when I turned to see who the lucky girl was, there was no one there. Still unable to comprehend this, I pointed to myself and said “Me?”, then “You (pointing to him), want to dance with me? (pointing back at me).”
I rolled my eyes to let him know I was in on the joke, and I knew he’d been dared to ask me. But he just stood there and nodded. Then he took my shaky, pathetic, disbelieving hands and led me to the smooching section of the dance floor.
Immediately my diving buddies started giving me the hand signals for ‘good one!’ and ‘pash him!’ We danced for a couple of seconds, knocking knees awkwardly, then he pulled me closer, and suddenly we were breaking the 30 cm rule, by 30cms.
We were dirty dancing. I was Baby, and he was Patrick Swayze. My inner monologue was screaming “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! I don’t know how to do this!” I had watched Baily kiss Jennifer Love Hewitt on Party of Five that week, and figured we’d have to start staring into each others eyes before we entered into a perfect camera-ready kiss.
But before I could get a look at him, he moved in, putting his mouth over mine, and proceeded to rape the back of my throat with his tongue.
My inner monologue went from “OMG! I’m going to have my first kiss!!” to “WTF.!? Is this kissing? Is this what kissing is?... Wow… it’s kind of over rated… it looked so much better on tv... it must just look good, but feel like this. Well there you go! I’m sure sex will be as good as it looks in the movies, surely they wouldn’t lie about that.”
Having resigned to the fact that this was indeed, kissing, I decided to rape his throat, back.
Our tongues were ferocious anacondas, twisting in saliva, attacking tonsils and darting up sinus cavities by mistake. This continued for three hours. The whole time, I was thinking “So this is kissing. Well. I hope I’m doing a good job of it.”
Sometime during the last hour, he made his way over my raw pash-rash, and down my neck, where he proceeded to behave like a vampire, sucking for a good ten minutes. It felt good, so I let him do it.
The last song played, and ended. We both came up for breath and said “See ya.” I went back to my friends, who gave me the female equivalent of a high five... which is grabbing each other’s arms and saying stuff like “you did it girl!” and “He was sooo cute!” and “How was your first kiss!”
I floated out of there with Suze and Connie on cloud 9! I was a legend! And I’d finally done it! Even if kissing was totally gross. I could now officially cross if off the list and move onto trying Escargot. Surely that was less disgusting.
As the three of us strolled out arm in arm, sharing details of the dance, The burn of my pash rash became apparent. My face had been sandpapered within an inch of it’s life, and I was vaguely aware of a pulsing pain growing on the side of my neck.
TBC…….
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