A Very 'First Kiss' Article

For someone who spoke of free love and sex without sin, it took me ages to kiss.

My first kiss… I would have liked that to be something like that’s written about in every novel… Made into sensuous frames in every movie. Both of them timid, nervous and excited but with a thousand apprehensions in each other’s hammering heart. A hesitant pause when at nose’s distance and then a kiss that is executed with the greatest of dexterity and finesse…

Well, mine was… a disaster!

First, I never liked the guy.
Second, I really didn’t know how to.
Third, I wasn’t really prepared.

Caught in a moment never anticipated, I was torn between being the puritan that I never could be and slapping him, to wondering if I’d really been kissed.

And the slapping moment was long gone before I realized. Sigh. It wasn’t fair that it was so lame.

I mentally made a note to let my heroine in the book that I would perhaps never write have a terrible first-kiss too. I wanted to share the misery.

It was perhaps a thousand kisses later, that I was truly kissed. Makes me think of making chocolate. After tasting batches of bad ones, sour ones and even burnt ones, you are presented with something mouthwatering…



There was anticipation, there was hesitance and then a kiss. For the first time I closed my eyes not because I didn’t know what to do with it and not because I didn’t want to see the silly expression on the other person’s face. But because it closed on its own...

I for once I didn’t count decent seconds, which I usually did, before pulling away...

I remember sitting there feeling vaguely woozy in the head. I remember opening my eyes to see him smile at me.

A few kisses later, he-who-was-a-great-kisser told me, “That’s not how you kiss.”

That’s when she-who’d-kissed-a-thousand-times should have died of mortification.

One thing even teachers who detested me would agree -I was a fast learner.

There wasn’t much time to practice...
But when he closed his eyes and opened them a few seconds later than I, I guess that’s the moment when I’d have had to throw my graduation cap in victory.