24 September 2004

Ten years ago tomorrow, I had my first kiss.

He had brown hair and he was kind of short. He wasn't handsome exactly, except for his eyes. He had beautiful blue-green eyes. He was Italian, and never let anybody forget it. He was also nearly seven and a half years my senior, but was still a dweeby kid most of the time. Sometimes, he pretended to be Darth Vader. Sometimes, he put on a jackassed accent and accused strangers of killing his father. Sometimes, he sang David Bowie songs very softly to himself and offered to give all the girls back massages.

My best friend Jayden thought that he was a completely disgusting creep. Jayden was mostly right. He was a creep. And he could be fairly disgusting. But he did have pretty eyes. Jayden also called him "Gramps," because he was seven years older than me, and I'd had my first kiss from him.

It wasn't a particularly great kiss. I didn't really notice it until after the fact, and I didn't really feel anything until I realized I'd just had my first kiss, on a warm September night at a party in some girl's backyard. Then, I was pretty excited about the whole thing.

But the whole thing ended up being kind of pointless. The guy left town that night -- he lived in Ithaca, 45 miles away -- and we only saw each other a couple of times after that. Anyway, I found out that he'd had a girlfriend since long before I met him, and that infuriated me. I called him up, long-distance, and bitched him out on his answering machine, and never heard from him again. At least not for several years. The next time I saw him, he was dancing around Peter, jabbing at him with an umbrella, and singing some duet from Les Misérables. But we didn't really talk. There wasn't really much to say.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I still remember finding out that the guy who'd bestowed my first kiss upon me had had a girlfriend. No, not just a girlfriend, but a LIVE-IN girlfriend. What a fucking asshole.

Yeah, call me a naive fourteen-year-old, call me innocent, whatever... I still say it's shitty to go around giving people their first kisses just before driving off into the sunset to sleep with your real girlfriend.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I was cleaning out my notebook yesterday and found a page with heavy imprints of a picture I'd drawn on another page.

The drawing was a picture of myself that I'd scribbled in my notebook this past April or so. It was recognizably me, but it was still kind of stick-figure quality. So I'd written captions all over the page with arrows pointing to myself. The captions were words like, "bitch," "crazy," "ugly," and "stupid." I'd drawn it just after a fight with Jake. I don't remember which one. Probably had something to do with what a whore I was for having feelings for somebody else. Or something to do with how I couldn't be trusted to tell the truth about the paternity of the baby I'd just found out I was carrying. Just generally what an awful person I was. What a liar. What a betrayer. What a wicked, manipulative, bad person.

I don't know what happened to the picture. I only have the page that had been right after it in my notebook.

At the time, I think I honestly believed those captions. I really thought I was a stupid, ugly, crazy bitch. And I was honestly thinking of staying with the man who had told me I was those things. No... he didn't say I was ugly. He said most of the other things. I guess I inferred the ugly part on my own.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I have made many, many concessions for love. Or for what I thought was love. Or for what I thought might become love.

I suppose it all started with my very first kiss, from a boy who already had a girlfriend.

But for some reason, then, I had the guts to tell that boy off.

For some reason, my nerve sort of shrank away after awhile. I didn't really tell people off anymore, even if they hurt me.

I was a "secret girlfriend" a couple of times. I stayed silent so as not to get anybody in trouble. I kissed boys who had girlfriends. I kissed boys who'd been kissing other girls mere moments before. I hung my head and said it was okay if my boyfriend slept with other girls. I hung my head and agreed that I was a bitch, and a slut, and a generally bad person. I assumed the blame. I assumed the blame. I assumed more blame. And then I wondered, if I was really so awful who the hell else COULD ever care about me?

And I didn't believe it when people DID care about me. I treated them badly. I was a crazy, ugly, stupid bitch to them.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I decided, about three months ago, that I would never, ever lose my dignity in the name of love -- not ever again. If that meant I had to walk away from the great love of my life, then so be it, I'd do that. It would be better than drawing pictures of my awful self. It would be better than kissing somebody who was privately kissing somebody else. I thought: if it were going to be that way with Neil, I would leave him. It would break my heart into tiny little irreparable shreds. It would be like losing a limb, only worse. There is no prosthesis available for something like the great love of one's life. But, I thought: better to leave and be broken all at once, than to stay and to have pieces broken off one at a time until there was nothing left.

But it wasn't that way with Neil. And it isn't that way with Neil. And even though I've been given a hundred million reasons to doubt that human beings are capable of genuinely loving each other, I'm becoming used to the idea. And I cannot imagine ever leaving.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Once, I went to Seattle for a reading and a book-signing by Tom Robbins. After the reading, he took some questions from the audience. This one lady stood up and asked him: "I've been trying to figure this out for eleven years now... How do you make love stay?"

Mr. Robbins was wearing sunglasses for most of the time, but I could kind of see the withering look on his face. One doesn't MAKE love stay, he told the woman. It stays, or it doesn't. It can be welcomed, but it cannot be forced to stay. Anyway, he'd already said pretty much exactly that IN one of his books. If she'd bothered to read it, she would have gotten that far, at least.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I know how to make love stay, though.

It isn't a matter of making it stay, really.

It's a matter of finding it, mostly. That's the hard part. I recommend Classmates.com for really tough instances.

I think, once it's found, it ends up staying.

That's what it feels like, anyway.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Love is a weird thing.

It suits me, though. I'm kind of weird myself.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I have to go now. I need to go kiss Neil.

It's funny... Even that first kiss I had didn't really do much. It was interesting, but it wasn't anything special aside from being the first one. But every time I kiss Neil, it feels like I'm wrapped in something very warm. Something that's warm and full of static electricity, like a blanket that got run through the laundry without a dryer sheet.

Yeah, I'm gonna go kiss him now. I waste too much time not kissing Neil.

~Helena*