My First Kiss

20-Something Bloggers does a blog carnival every month, encouraging bloggers to write on an experience or topic that month. This month's is telling everyone to share the memory of their first kiss, so here goes...

My first kiss in and of itself was unremarkable, but the night it happened became totally infamous among everyone I went to school with growing up.

The year was 1998 and it was the last day of seventh grade. An awkward year, being in the middle of middle school, I think we were all glad to see it go. At school that day, word of a party spread around. A girl we were all friends with, but didn't know that well, had given everyone an open invitation to come over that night.

Everyone who was anyone in the seventh grade (technically eighth grade, suckers!) was at this party. The actual details of the beginning of the party, while it was still light outside, are a little unclear now, 11 years later. Once the sun went down... now that was a different story.

The girl's family lived a little bit outside of town, and their house had a considerable amount of land around and behind it, and we were not close enough for neighboring houses to be disturbed by our shenanigans.

It got dark out, and the party moved into the backyard, which was basically a forest. The suggestion was made to play Truth or Dare, which was unamusing until someone dared one person to kiss another.

Our party host's brother, who had just finished his sophomore year of high school and was supposed to be keeping an eye on us or something, finally figured out what we were doing and asked why we weren't just playing Spin the Bottle. It was a scandalous suggestion and we all knew it. Since everyone was too sheepish to speak up, but too curious to say no, he took it upon himself to go inside, grab a random empty Coke bottle and explain the rules.

No one was comfortable enough to kiss in front of everyone, so when the bottle landed on you, you and the other person would go a little ways off behind a tree to kiss. The time came when the bottle spun and landed on me. I froze. he came over, grabbed my hand and we walked off. The next person was already spinning when we left. I probably looked terrified, but I knew he had kissed girls before so I was thankful he initiated it. He leaned in for a soft peck, and I recall keeping my eyes open, having no clue as to what to do with my hands and thinking "does this have to count as my first kiss? I don't even like him!" In hindsight I realize it could have been worse, as many of friends have horror stories of kissing teeth or knocking foreheads... etc.

I ended up kissing more than one boy that night, which is fittingly enough, the only time I have ever kissed more than one guy in an evening. It was a total frenzy after a while, once everyone got used to the idea.

Once we all got to high school, we found out that all of the 9th graders who were joining us from another middle school had found out about our infamous make-out party. It was the only one of its kind. They were so jealous.

It was the only make-out party we ever had, through middle OR high school. It may have never been replicated, but I can assure you that no one in attendance forgot about it either.

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature, to stop speech when words become superfluous."
-Ingrid Bergman