I got to thinking about my first kiss. When I was a teenager a mutual attraction between me and a girl at worked transformed into an intense infatuation. At the time, and even now, I am a boy when it comes to initiating physical contact with a woman. Fortunately, she was a bit more experienced and initiated the kiss.
I had no car so she would happily give me a ride home after work and when got to my house we would walk to a nearby playground and talk. We had been doing this for several months getting progressively closer to each other and then on some random weekday, as we stood holding each other over a bridge, she extended her neck opened her mouth and began to kiss me. Timidly I met her halfway.
Wow. Amazing. One of, if not, the greatest sensual feeling of my life. Profound. Magical.
That next day I saw one of my friends and he instantly knew that we had kissed for the first time. He said it was obvious because of how much I was glowing. It was impossible for me to contain my smile.
The thing is, once you kiss someone you are deeply infatuated with, you become addicted to kissing. You want to kiss them all the time. The Saturday after we kissed for the first time me and her both worked the morning shift and were off by mid-afternoon. We headed to her car with the pretext of giving me a ride home, but in truth, the car didn’t go anywhere.
I can say without hesitation this was the greatest make out session of my life. We started kissing at about three and when we finished several minutes later the streets lights were on and it was well past six o’clock. We spent three hours kissing, but it’s no exaggeration to say that it felt like a couple of minutes. I will always remember how astonished I was at how fast time passed by. Time has never passed by quicker.
Connecting
The intensity and pleasure of kissing this girl had everything to do with feeling like I connected with her on an emotional and confidence level. I say confidence because one of my most important values is the ability to size people up quickly and efficiently upon meeting them. To be able to easily judge without the crippling fear of offending requires confidence, but also indicates a willingness to think about those other than yourself. This capacity leads to what I call the look. When somebody says or does something that has a more meaningful, if not harsher, implicit secondary meaning a confident person will look for others in the room that perceive this secondary meaning. Only confident people will see this secondary meaning because it requires a critical revaluation of what this person says which if verbalized will upset the person. Upsetting others is the work of the confident person.
This girl had the look. We perceived the same secondary meanings in what others said, and we had the same level of confidence to see and call others on those meanings. Using the look to communicate our shared reality is the most profound way one person can communicate with another. I have kissed and been more physical with other girls, but the connection with this girl made the intimate moments with her the most pleasurable experience of my life.
There have only been two girls I have shared this look with. The look was lost with one of them but remains with the other. You know who you are.
