I couldn’t really tell you when or with whom I experienced my first kiss. It’s not that I don’t remember. I just don’t know which kiss is the one that counts. Technically, the first person I kissed who wasn’t a family member was Lucas Murdoch. Hey, I was in first grade and girls were still icky. Plus, somebody probably dared us. Fortunately for my parents, this was not a sign of things to come. The first girl I kissed was Kim Fogg in the third grade. We were "going together" at the time, which basically meant that we held hands on the playground and hung out with the other third grade couple, Bruce and Karen. Bruce and Karen did everything. They even frenched once! To me, kissing was still gross. I mean, you had to touch lips, and the other person’s spit might get on you! Finally after much pressure and daring from Bruce and Karen, Kim and I kissed. We instantly pulled away and wiped our mouths. It wasn’t until junior high that I first kissed a girl on the lips because I wanted to. As far as my first make-out kiss, that didn’t happen until I was a junior in highschool, and I feel lame saying that I never had my first real kiss until 17. So which kiss do I count?

(Incidentally, while I don’t technically know who my first kiss was with, I can still list every single girl that I have kissed.)

Some people (okay everybody) said that I fell in love too fast and too hard. What can I say, I was passionate about everything that I did and figured that anything really worth investing myself in was worth all of my investment. I ended up scaring a lot of girls off that way. It was a weeding-out process. I never wanted to screw around. In fact, beginning with my first make-out partner, pretty much every girl I’ve spent a significant amount of time kissing or fooling around with, I have also wondered whether or not it might lead to something serious. (marriage?) For the sake of protecting the innocent (and the guilty) I won’t use real names.

I was truly in love with Kirstin from the first day we met in seventh grade. There was a mutual something between us, which, to this day doesn’t make sense to me. I was very much a late bloomer and Kirstin could have had her pick of any guy. Yet, tall, thin and beautiful, she saw something in me that nobody else did. We decided that we would "go out," whatever that meant in junior high. Nothing came of it. We had different friends and thus, had to decide which table we would sit at during lunch each day. As soon as we started "going out," our chemistry died. We just stopped talking while we were together. We broke up a couple weeks later.

Throughout freshman year, Kirstin and I were on again, off again. We never kissed each other. Sophomore year, she got together with Matt. They looked good together and she fell in love early enough and hard enough that once Matt started treating her badly it was impossible for her to get out of the relationship. I was always there as the shoulder and the sympathetic ear. I thought I was being a good friend, but others saw right through it. I was waiting for her to leave Matt for me. For over a year, I was the chump. Finally my friend Mandy woke me up, saying simply, "Brian, you are so fucked up."

A week later, I started dating Heather. She was my first make-out kiss. We were sitting in the back row of Interview With the Vampire. I can still remember the thought that went through my head the instant I first felt our tongues touching: "Whoa, I’m french kissing!" I couldn’t believe how well we kissed. I fell hard. In retrospect, I was a very bad, wide-open-mouth kisser back then. I had a lot to learn and Heather didn’t want to teach me. She had her friend call and break up with me two weeks later. I spent the rest of the year getting over her. As part of this process I went out on a date with Amy. We ended up making out in the car outside her parents’ house. It seemed like it was going to go somewhere, but before it could, Kirstin and Matt broke up. Chalk it up to bad timing, but Amy was pushed out of my mind as Kirstin and I started hanging out.

I had built Kirstin up as an absolute ideal. Her looks, her personality, her everything were exactly what I wanted to be with. Others would say that it was just an infatuation. She was a pretty girl who had showed an interest in an average-looking guy. Whatever the reason, I had Kirstin up on such a high pedestal, that there was no way our first kiss could have lived up to the fantasy. Kirstin was physically, much more experienced than I was. She had been having sex for almost two years. I had made out exactly 3 times in my life. As I leaned in to kiss Kirstin for the first time, I thought for sure she was going to stop me or turn her head. But, just before our lips touched, my brain screamed, "Oh my God, this is it!" And for that first instant, it was magical. It was short-lived euphoria. Laying on the couch, we just could not find a comfortable position. Her hair kept getting in the way, and I couldn’t figure out how to work around it. It was more frustrating than anything. Two weeks later, Kirstin was back with Matt and even though our first kiss hadn’t caused angel choirs to break into song, my love for her still grew.

The summer before I left for college, Amy and I started going out again. Amy was the first girl who ever really made me feel attractive. I had always been the guy who got the girls I got more because I was the nice guy and had worn them down. But making out with Amy one night in June, she said, "You make me so horny." I WHAT??? Amy was my first lots-of-things. The first girl I saw naked. The first girl I was naked with. She was the first girlfriend to tell me she loved me, and the first girlfriend I said it back to. For the rest of the summer, it was something we said, along with the things we did. I convinced myself that it was true. She was the first person I thought I might marry. Half-way through my first semester of college, she visited me at school and took my virginity. One hour later, we broke up. It was a distance thing.

PART II - "LETTING GO"