Went a little like that...

Have you heard that ridiculous song by the even more ridiculously named group 3oh!3 called "My First Kiss"? Well, since it features Ke$ha, it's pretty terrible. (Yes, I know that I have mentioned before that I actually like her songs; I can like them without thinking they're good. I understand this is confusing. ) The chorus goes something like:

My first kiss went a little like this
And twist
And twist

These lyrics are dumb, of course, but seem to imply that first kisses go like "this"--aka, wow--and I think the "twist" part means, well. I don't know. But the entirety of the song seems to indicate that this first kiss will be spectacular and she won't be able to resist him as a result.

Really? Because I think for most of us, our first kiss went a little like that. And by that, I mean....it sucked. Mine was in 6th grade during recess surrounded by an audience of my peers. It was sloppy and gross--I felt like I was getting slobbered on by a dog who was trying to consume my face. I am sure that he felt the same way. This boy was my "boyfriend" for many months in middle school--almost a year, I think--and I don't think it got better. I mean, who knows how to kiss when you're 12? And you can't communicate about it when you're 12, either. So you endure sucky kissing. Eventually, I figured out how I like to kiss and be kissed. (Practice makes better, I suppose.) And I would like to think that, at nearly 32, I could communicate this, either by "showing" or "telling," to the person whose tongue had just been in my mouth. (I don't mean to sound cynical or unromantic, but isn't it just a little weird that one of our mating rituals involves swirling your tongue around with someone else's tongue? Don't get me wrong--I like it; it's just a little bizarre if you try to intellectualize it.)

I am sure we all have some horrendous first kiss stories, but I'm also sure we all have some wonderful first kiss stories, too. I was a bit of an, ahem, make out whore in my day, so I had a lot of first kisses that were also only-time kisses. Some were great; others were, well, eh. Or worse, icky. Some I have no recollection of, naturally; some were just bland, and then some others...

What is more important, I think, is the first kiss you have with someone with whom you are considering a potential partnership. My first college boyfriend and I drunkenly made out after a frat party during freshman orientation weekend and went on to date for almost two years. The next college boyfriend was the exact opposite: at the end of our first date, he leaned in gently to kiss me on the cheek in the doorway of my dorm room. The third installment of the college boyfriend trilogy...nope. No recollection, though I do remember some of the one-and-onlies in between. My main young adulthood boyfriend and I dated for nearly two years, and I don't know what our first kiss was like, either, though I vaguely recall it happening at my apartment after we put together some Ikea furniture. My soon-to-be ex-husband kissed me to make me stop talking; I guess he was trying to be smoother than that, but I kept blathering on and on...

Some first kisses are sweet and nice and nervous, and you have to sort of grow into it together. Others are passionate and urgent--often fueled by alcohol, though not always. Yet others start as one and build into the other. Sometimes, it's totally obvious from initial contact that you are just not going to be compatible, and other times....well. I think we all know you can tell a lot from "just" a kiss. And the subtle nuances of the mechanics of the act itself can be stressful: which way to tilt your head, where to put your arms/hands, did I eat something weird, how long to hold on., what if we bump teeth, etc. these are the little details that angsty teenage diaries are filled with.

There is a lot at stake for the person who "goes in" first--what if you've completely misread the situation and kissing is not on the table? Ouch. (In the movie Hitch, the title character says to only go in 90% and let the other person take care of the remaining 10%.) But that's not always possible--one of the best, if not the best, first kiss I ever had was a total risk on my part, and I had to be stealthy about it. He was/is much taller than I am, and I wanted it to be a surprise, so I had to wait until I didn't have to do that awkward I'm-much-shorter-than-you-but-am-trying-to-kiss-you upward neck strain; we were in a bookstore arguing about Vonnegut (me: anti, him: pro), and when he sat down in a chair I sprang it on him, certainly breaking Hitch's 90-10 rule. Later that same day, we had a scene-from-a-movie nearly perfect kissing session in the rain that he initiated. These are moments that deserve far better than an awful pop song featuring singers with punctuation marks in their names.

There is a Dentyne commercial that claims the average person has 28 first kisses. I guess all we can hope for is that more of them go like this than like that.