I’m going to more weightily examine romantic love and the quest to love and be loved in return. But first, there was this. A pointless little dating story from a different time in my life, with a very profound moral attached to it. The year: I have no idea. Probably 2014.
It was a first kiss from the movies, I tell you. And I’m referring more to the National Lampoon’s variety; not some Nicholas Sparks film.
She was a cute little thang. Picture, if you will, a cross between Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus. Weird cross, I know, but that’s what she was. Of course, my only comparison is that Moore and Cyrus are both women, one of whom terrifies me, and one of whom doesn’t terrify me quite as much. Other than that, I suppose there was very little to compare. In fact, she probably looked nothing like either one of them.
Anyway.
We were on a second date. I invited her over for dinner at my place, which you single people know is code for, I invited her over to get it on like Donkey Kong.
Nope. Scratch that… I invited her over to my place for dinner. Period. There was absolutely nothing else on my mind that night. I am as innocent as can be here.
Dinner went as well as it could have gone. I whipped up some amazing shrimp scampi and served it with huckleberry wine and thawed éclairs for dessert. We dined. We laughed. We got along fantastically. We cleaned up the meal mess. We moved to the couch to… you know… talk…
And then it happened.
But before I tell you of our epic “first kiss,” let me tell you what I saw sitting in front of me both before and after.
Before: I saw an incredibly beautiful woman. I saw soft skin and beautiful curves. I saw a mind that was so engaging and fascinating to get lost in. I saw eyes that could easily draw you into their eternally satisfying gaze. I saw lips that I wanted to feel pressed against mine. I saw hair that I wanted to run my fingers through to feel its silky magnificence. I saw a person whom I had become so enthralled with, and knew that I would most likely want to see again, and again, and again.
After: I saw Beelzebub, himself; the devil. Mixed with a feral cat. Splashed with the deep and unmistakable desire to run away as fast as my fear could make my legs go.
So, yes. Where were we? We moved to the couch to… talk.
We inched slightly closer to one another as we both pretended we didn’t know what was about to go down (pun unintended).
And then, closer.
Soon our legs were touching.
And our hands.
We kept stealing glances at each other’s mouths. That’s the sign, you know. The sign that you’re both done talking. I had been here many times before with many different people. It’s definitely one of my favorite moments in the game of… dinner.
I went in for the kiss because society says that’s the man’s job. The fear I always felt in my youth had long since evaporated. I had learned through trial and error that kissing a girl really isn’t very difficult at all. And so I went for it.
Before I got there…
And this is true, my dear readers.
She reached out and grabbed my face fiercely and violently with both hands. The speed with which she did this was chilling at best.
Then she whipped and cranked my head to one side as if she was giving me a chiropractic adjustment.
At this point, I was just confused. It was all happening so fast. I had no idea how to even begin to process this. And I wouldn’t need to because what came next would take all the mental processing power I had.
She stuck her tongue out as far as she could push it, which was freakishly far.
And she began aggressively licking the side of my face.
What’s happening right now?! What’s happening right now?! I was paralyzed. I didn’t know what was going on enough to figure out how to get out of it. I only knew it was icky and unpleasant.
She wasn’t just licking pocket-sized licks, either. She was straight-up beginning at the bottom of my beard, and taking long sweeping swipes up toward my eye.
What?! Huh?! I…. What the… Someone help…
And would you believe me if I told you that her sudden ferocity, or her act of licking, or the shock of it all wasn’t the worst part?
The worst part was her tongue itself.
There was no saliva on that thing. It was as dry as a cat’s tongue, and twice as rough. It was as if she had attached a piece of fine-grit sandpaper to it, and was attempting to grate her way through to my cheek bones.
It was traumatic for me at best.
I didn’t even kiss her. I was an all-taker no-giver that night, and only ever received that wild felineish kiss up the side of my face.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I finally pushed her off playfully and tried to not immediately start wiping her dry-mouthed weirdness away.
“I just wanna take it slow,” I told her, calm as a cucumber in a mid-summer heat wave.
I never saw her again after that night.
Profoundly important moral of the story: I’ll let you know when I’m done shaking out these chills. Or you can come to your own conclusion. It shouldn’t be difficult.
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