The First Kiss
My first kiss was truly magical.
We were both quite obviously terrified.
His name was John Kelly. We were in the same form at high school. He was tall, ginger-haired, covered in freckles and a bit of a class clown.
For reasons I still don’t entirely understand, I had a thing for ginger-haired boys when I was younger. There were quite a few of them.
John and I briefly went out with each other, although calling it going out probably gives us far too much credit.
We had nothing in common. Neither of us was remotely equipped for proper communication or relationships. I don’t remember us sitting together having meaningful conversations. I’m not even sure we spoke all that much.
But we did share one rather significant thing.
Neither of us had ever kissed anyone before.
And one afternoon after school, we decided that was about to change.
Behind the Year 7 building was where people went to snog. I don’t know who decided this or why the Year 7 building had been appointed the romantic centre of the school, but that was the place.
So there we were.
Pacing.
The awkwardness was palpable.
Another boy, Joseph Hilton, was there with a girl. He seemed genuinely shocked to see me. I can’t remember exactly what he said, only that whatever it was made me feel as though I was not the sort of girl anyone expected to find behind the Year 7 building about to kiss a boy.
I also had a bus to catch.
This mattered.
Missing it meant walking to the Metrolink and then negotiating some miserable combination of tram, bus and another long walk home.
So alongside the enormous psychological pressure of my first ever kiss was the considerably less romantic thought:
I really need to get on with this.
There have only been a handful of kisses in my life that have stayed with me.
The kind where two people’s lips seem to fit in a way you didn’t know lips could.
Like a key finding the lock.
There’s a moment of recognition in a kiss like that. Something somewhere inside you goes:
Oh.
So this is how you want to kiss me.
And perhaps even:
So this is how you feel about me.
John and I had absolutely no reason to know what we were doing.
We were two complete novices.
And then our lips touched.
Perfection.
Somehow, within seconds, two people who had never kissed anyone in their lives became experts.
His lips brushed mine and my whole face lit up.
I remember the extraordinary awareness of it. Every millisecond. Every tiny movement. Exploring this entirely new thing with my freshly licked lips, because obviously I had prepared.
And then we pulled apart.
Both beaming.
Both looking slightly stunned by what we’d just managed to do.
I think we practically congratulated each other.
We’d done it.
Our first kiss.
And it had been incredible.
Joseph Hilton could hear every word.
I couldn’t have cared less.
Then John went in for the second kiss.
And suddenly he wasn’t nervous anymore.
He brushed my face with such affection, cradled my chin in one hand and placed the other against the wall behind me.
We kissed again.
Longer this time.
My whole body alert.
When we eventually walked away, I think we both felt as though something fundamental had changed.
The enormous trepidation surrounding the first kiss was already behind us.
We’d aced it.
Together we had discovered — and very quickly confirmed — that we were extremely good kissers.
Many years later, somewhere in our late twenties, John and I ended up chatting on Facebook.
And inevitably, the kiss came up.
He remembered it too.
We confirmed, once again, that it had been a very good kiss.
John asked me if I’d like to meet for a drink.
I said yes.
Just as friends.
And so, years after that magical afternoon behind the Year 7 building, I sat at a bar waiting for him.
One wine.
Then two.
Eventually, I had to accept that John Kelly wasn’t coming.
He’d stood me up.
You’d think an ending like that might have sullied the memory.
It didn’t.
The kiss was that good.
Apparently some moments are allowed to remain perfect even when the people in them turn out not to be.
And some boys, it turns out, remain boys.
