some advice for the first kissers: GO WITH THE FLOW, LET HIM TAKE THE LEAD AND FOLLOW, it is great (:

I think your replies on “Anonymous this time” are great – most replies I get are only the ‘there is nothing wrong with you’ comment put in a way that makes you feel awkward anyway

JD – Of course my mom KNEW I got my period because the family was on the road and all up in each other’s business (sharing motel rooms and whatnot; ugh). And that just got me thinking – Hey, Harpy Sea Hags: How about a post on the first time our monthly “friend” stopped by for a visit?

First real kiss: The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. I was hanging out drinking with a friend, her boyfriend, and his friend P.K. I believe it was a set up. After awhile, P.K. asked me to go for a walk with him, so we walked. He held my hand. I was drunk. When I am drunk, I sometimes grin like a fool and can’t stop. So when P.K. stopped walking, wrapped his arms around me and softly kissed me, I couldn’t move my lips to kiss him back. I found this very funny so I started to giggle. He thought it was funny, too, and started to laugh. We stood there for a really long time, outside of a generic apartment complex located in Nowhere Special, Suburbia, U.S.A., arms wrapped around each other on a warm summer evening, laughing and kissing. It was nice.

La Chica Lucy yours sounds like a special dude; I can’t believe he could tell you got your period! Even my own mother couldn’t tell. Pretty intuitive for a young boy.

Me too! It Eventually Happened when I was fifteen, and at the time I felt like a late-bloomer because most of my friends had already been kissed, but looking back I really don’t think I was.

Anyway – it was with a boy we’ll call M., who I’d developed a crush on over the summer. He was my friend’s brother and so I got to see a lot of him without too much scheming. He was four years older than me, tall, with long brown hair and he played guitar in a band – and at the time, that was enough to get me swooning (we were not AT ALL compatible). We’d all go to the same pub on Saturdays and for weeks, there was a lot of will-we-or-won’t-we. I eventually hatched a cunning plan – or so I thought, it’s kind of been done a thousand times – for the final Saturday night of the summer holidays and asked him to come outside to check out my bike, which I’d repainted. We went for a bit of a walk and then sat down on the ground in a deserted street and talked about – well, about how we liked each other but he was concerned about the age difference, I think? Anyway, I eventually said that I was just going to put my arm around him and I counted to three and when I did, he kissed me. It was actually a really good kiss – I knew from years of reading all about first kisses that it was very likely to suck, but it was soft and sweet and it made me all tingly. We ended up going out for four months, but broke up (repeatedly, I might add) because of the age difference (yep!) and because we weren’t really crazy in love either.

Also, to add to the absurdity of the whole situation, the song “Hey Ya” by Outkast was playing at the time. Yep… that’s my first kiss song.

*names have not been changed to protect the innocent. Meh.

It’s mid-June, 1984, less than a month after my 13th birthday. I am at my friend’s house, at a sort-of going away party, for me. In a few days, I will leave with my parents on a six-week vacation, driving cross-country from NYS to CA and back. I am an only child and at an age that I really don’t want to be away from my friends and alone in a car with my lame-o folks.

The main source of my pain (I had helped plan the trip and it was, of course, awesome) was that just two days prior to this party, I had finally convinced – over the phone and through my best friend – to get a guy I’d been asking out for nearly a year to say “yes” he would go out with me. (PhDork, “going out” meant exactly what you described).

So it was a pool party, with only three girls and three guys and we all “couples.” And it was hot and we spent the whole day in the pool, horsing around, until some of us were positively freezing. I remember warming up in the sun, and then announcing that I would be going into the camper next to the pool to brush my hair.

My new boyfriend followed me in. We both smelt like chlorine and were goose-bumpy. He asked me if I knew what French kissing was. I gulped and nodded. I really just wanted a closed lip smack-a-roo, at least to start!

“Wanna try it?”

I nodded again and we kissed. Open mouthed. It was nice. After a nervous moment, we went back out and joined our friends.

I’m not sure why, but I “broke up” with him upon returning from my trip (having sent him postcards the whole time). He guessed, correctly, that I had gotten my first period while I was away. He said he could tell I had changed somehow.

He remains one of my dearest friends to this day.