Inspired by TarnishedPenny's First Kiss writing assignment. Apologies for flagrantly blowing past the 300 word target.
What follows is a true and accurate account of my very first actual, real kiss (with some accommodation made to the fragility of memory).
☾
I'd never been good around girls.
Awkward, shy, unpopular, unfashionable, poor. Did I mention awkward? By the time I was 19, I'd still never really had any experience. Not even kissing.
That changed when Cindy came into my life. She pretty clearly regarded me as a project, often saying how 'straight-laced' I was and how she was going to break me out of my shell.
She was a force of nature. 23 going on 30. A mad cackle of a laugh. Drank and swore like a sailor. Stacked and full-bodied. To this day, I still don't know why she gave me a second thought.
When we met she'd asked if I'd practiced my bedroom voice. I didn't know what a 'bedroom voice' was, or what it would have meant to have practiced it. She was obviously expecting a reply, so I guessed and said 'yes', which was, of course, the wrong answer. But it didn't seem to matter much. After I worked out what a bedroom voice was, I was thrilled she thought I had one at all, practiced or not.
She introduced me to the impossibly exotic dish of shrimp fried rice. We didn't have anything like that in the tiny town where I grew up. This town, her town, wasn't all that much bigger, but there was a college there. Not a big college. The sort of place kids go to get an affordable start on the path to a middling, safe career. And where there are college kids there are bars and dancing, and, apparently, shrimp fried rice.
She pulled me into her circle of friends, who quickly grew to mostly tolerate me. I was a kid, they weren't. I got it. Still, we went out and drank and danced and did plenty of silly, stupid shit together.
Not long after her whirlwind crashed into me, she decided that we should go skinny dipping together. At night. At her favorite spot on the river.
I'd been around her and her crew just long enough to know that 'skinny dipping' actually meant swimming in your underwear. Or at least it had to that point. Still, the thought of just the two of us swimming together made my heart jump. Besides, maybe I'd just go ahead and take mine off anyway. If I could work up the courage.
That night I drove over to her place, absolutely floating, flying over the back roads between our towns.
We hopped into her battered car and set off. I don't recall the model, but it was a stick. She loved driving and loved cars.
The trip took us up the river road, with trees and white bluffs to our right and the open river to the left. It was a beautiful summer night. We had the windows down, the radio up, and were cruising down the road. Never much of a talker, I did my best to keep some kind of conversation going. But she was easy to talk to and hardly ever stopped talking anyway, so I didn't need to work at it much. There weren't many awkward pauses to cover.
It was a bit of a drive to get out there, which I didn't mind at all. Just taking the drive with her was wonderful.
Eventually we reached the ferry. Little river ferries are dotted all around this area, shuttling cars back and forth. This one could carry maybe 20 cars and chug across in five to ten minutes or so.
Five to ten minutes once you were safely on the deck and leaving the bank, that is. If the ferry had already left, there was little choice but to sit and wait. But we were lucky, and rolled right on.
The summer night breeze on the river was warm and felt wonderful. We got out of the car to enjoy it for a few minutes, before jumping back in. You don't want to be the one holding up the line.
The ferry arrived on the opposite bank, with its familiar metallic clunk. She drove off the deck and up the steep hill to the main road.
Up to now, I was pretty familiar with the area. Our family came out this way fairly regularly when I was growing up. But Cindy turned off, down a little side road I'd never taken. Before long, it opened up to a little sandbar on the river. Or more likely, a tiny little tributary.
