January is Makeout Month at Autostraddle.com
You’ve never been kissed? my friend messaged me.
I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. No, I typed.
Well, we’re going to have to fix that.
My lack of kissing was a sensitive subject for me. It wasn’t for lack of trying. There had been boys I wanted to kiss, but they never wanted to kiss me back. Over the years, those close to me — my friends, even my mom — had told me that it would happen one day. But I was beginning to think they were lying to me. I was 17, nearing the end of my junior year of high school, and one of the last in my immediate friend group to have her first kiss. It was absolute loser behavior, and I was sick of it.
What do you mean? I wondered. Surely she wasn’t offering.
Have you ever seen Cruel Intentions? she asked.
Yeah, why?
When I come over, we’re going to do the scene where Sarah Michelle Gellar teaches Selma Blair how to kiss, okay?
We’re going to act it out?
Yup! I’ll send you the scene
I sat and looked at my computer in complete disbelief. We had only been friends for a few weeks, but here she was, offering to help me with my problem. Not only that, but she was doing it in a way that made sense for a couple of theater kids.
As promised, she sent me the scene so I could learn my lines. I don’t remember if she sent them from a website or if she typed them from memory. Once I got the lines, I immediately began rehearsing. I was a drama major; learning lines was easy. But as a 17-year-old who knew she was going to have her first kiss soon, it was nerve-racking. In my mind, first kisses were supposed to be spontaneous. They always were in movies. It felt weird to know when mine was going to happen. And not just know about it but actively prepare for it.
Even though it felt weird to know when it was coming, I also felt a sense of comfort. Learning lines and saying words that someone else wrote took the fear out of it. I didn’t need to be nervous that I was going to say or do the wrong thing and totally ruin the moment. Someone else had done the hard part for me. And when it came to commitment, I was a consummate professional — I would never drop a line. Not when the stakes were so high.
It was the first time she was coming over to my house, so I wanted everything to be perfect. I nervously straightened up my room, making sure nothing was out of place. I knew the kissing wasn’t going to happen right away, but there was a heightened sense of anticipation in the air. We sat around my room for about an hour, going through my CDs and magazines and listening to the radio. Then she turned to face me.
“Are you ready?” she asked. I nodded.
My door didn’t have a lock, so I got up and slid a milk crate full of magazines in front of it. Neither of my parents were home, but my mom had a habit of just walking into my room without knocking, especially since my room was immediately next to the front door. The last thing I wanted was for my mom to interrupt my first kiss. Quickly, I scurried back to my bed, sitting dutifully and waiting to be told what to do.
She had brought a cheat sheet with the lines in case we needed them, but I assured her I was off book. These were the most important lines I was ever going to say, I was sure of it.
“Now close your eyes and wet your lips,” she said, using her command of the situation as character motivation.
She had the cool and in charge energy of Kathryn, and I definitely had the same nervous excitement of Cecile. When I said “it was nothing,” though, I knew it was definitely something. That simple kiss made my brain fuzzy. But the best was still yet to come.
“Let’s try it again, only this time I’m going to stick my tongue in your mouth,” she said. I knew that was the line, but sweat pricked at my armpits in anticipation of what was coming next. “When I do that I want you to massage my tongue with yours. That’s what first base is.”
I don’t think she had to say the line about closing my eyes; they were probably closed already. Her lips met mine for a second time before her mouth opened. I followed suit, allowing her tongue to touch mine. The fuzziness in my brain had been erased by a million tiny explosions as our tongues continued their dance. I can guarantee that our making out lasted much longer than the scene in the movie did. Now that I was finally kissing someone, I wasn’t too interested in stopping.
Eventually, we did come up for air so that we could finish the scene. But after that, our lips found each other again. Despite my fear that our makeout session was a one-time thing, her eagerness made me think that it wouldn’t be.
And it wasn’t.
That one afternoon in my bedroom led to four months of making out. Sometimes, it was stealing kisses when we were hanging out with the friend who introduced us. Other times, it was sliding the milk crate against my door so we could kiss and hastily paw at each other under our shirts. Or locking her bedroom door and kissing until our hands slid down each other’s pants. There was one night that we made out behind a stranger’s car while our friends ran around us playing hide-and-seek. That same night, after everyone fell asleep, we found each other again and snuck off to a quiet corner to kiss some more. We didn’t need a script anymore.
Our hookups didn’t last past the summer, but I went back to school that fall standing up a little straighter. I never spoke to that girl again — I have tried to find her over the years to no avail. I hope she knows how much that summer meant to me, how I would return to it when I needed to remember parts of myself. And while it has become a humorous anecdote in my queerness journey, it will always live in the softest part of my heart.
Oh my gosh this is everything, thank you for writing this!! My first queer kiss was literally for a musical my senior year of college so that perspective of being a theatre person comforted with being given lines especially resonated with me lol
yess theatre kids!