What I would love to consider my first kiss happened in first grade. When I was in preschool, there were two Jeffs in my class. I had a crush on blond Jeff. I don't really remember not-blond Jeff. I was four. Blond Jeff's mom was our teacher, and halfway through the school year, they moved away to Hawaii. I believe it was because his dad was in the Navy. Regardless, blond Jeff became Pineapple Jeff in my mind. Well into my first grade school year, Pineapple Jeff moved back to Arizona. I still remember which house was his on Pepper street. While he was away in Hawaii, Jeff had managed to skip a grade, and was a second grader. I remember he came over to me one day on the uneven bars, and waited for me to finish my turns. He asked if I wanted to go to the swings. At my school, that meant a boy liked you. Especially since he asked me while I was on the bars. The swings were on the other side of the playground, so we walked all the way across the field together. The next day, we met up at lunch recess and played together again. This continued for a week or two, and soon all of our classmates were teasing us. We argued that we weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, but playground politics dictated that we were. One day, while I was playing on the slide, he came over to me with a very determined look on his face. He grabbed me by the wrist and we ran across the football field. He dragged me behind one of the second grade portables, placed his hands firmly on my shoulders, and pressed me against the wall. He kissed me quickly the first time. When I didn't run away, he puckered up his lips again, and put them against mine. I didn't know what to do, but I had seen plenty of movies. So I just held my lips there against his, my eyes clenched and lips pursed, and didn't move. When he pulled away, he looked surprised. He stood there for a moment, then sprinted away. He didn't talk to me for the rest of the week. When he finally did play with me again after lunch on Monday, he told me he was moving away again. I don't know where Pineapple Jeff is now, but I sometimes remember my first cinematic moment, and wonder if he's still as pretty as he was in elementary school. Probably not. If I could remember his last name, I'd track him down, and give him an earful. He would be a lot easier to find on facebook if his name was actually Pineapple Jeff. He helped create my social retardation, making me expect everything to be whimsical and perfect, like my first kiss there against the wall. Damn that little second grade Casanova.

The kiss that was my first real kiss, as it was post-pubescent and intentional, happened when I was seventeen. I had graduated High School a year before, I had been in college since January, and I had a tattoo. All of this, and I had never been kissed. I hated myself for it. I was finally beginning to feel the pangs of my social retardation. I was 'courting' a guy from my college classes. We hung out two or three nights every weekend, flirted constantly and teased each other with our words, our body language, and sometimes even our bodies. I was seventeen. He was twenty-seven. We had a party at our timeshare, since my parents had to use the time at the hotel or lose it. I had invited quite a few friends, and we all hung out. That night, however, the old man was running cold. It pissed me off. (On a side note, he was one year older than my boyfriend is right now, and I was sevenfreakingteen. Gross. What was I thinking?) A few people outside of my core group of friends had come over for the party as well. Including my best friend's older sister and younger brother. You remember him. The little boy in the rain. He was now the sometimes drummer for the band I was in, and he was notorious for his man-sluttiness. He had tried to get my cousin (and bass player) to make out with him only a few weeks ago. The older sister, my gay best friend (this was pre-gay-outing for him), me, and Drummerboy all stayed the night at the hotel. It wasn't planned that way, it just happened. As I was sandwiched between a friend I thought was straight (but wasn't) and a friend I thought would never want to do anything with me (he did), trying to fall asleep, I felt a hand on my hip. I opened my eyes to see that Drummerboy was uncomfortably close. Then he did the douchiest, lamest thing possible for a 15 year old boy to do. He made a kissy face, puckering his lips, pecking the air between us a few times and closing his eyes lazily. I'm sure he thought he was being suave. I thought he was acting like an idiot. But he was a boy, and he was willing to kiss me. I thought, "What the hell? Might as well get it over with." and I kissed him. About five seconds in I realized that it was a terrible mistake. Not because I didn't have any feelings for him and was using him, not because it might make my best friend angry at me, not because it might make band practice weird, but because he was a terrible kisser. About five seconds after that, his spit was on my forehead. I don't know what kind of crazy, magically teleporting saliva Drummerboy has in his mouth, but it weirded me out. Though I knew I was late to the game, I was pretty sure I was awesome at it, and that Drummerboy was definitely not. Years later, one of my boyfriends would tell me I was a good enough kisser to compete in the Kissing Olympics, win gold, and go on to have a professional career with lucrative product endorsements. A week after the terrible forehead spit kiss, I somehow wound up playing the longest, kinkiest, dirtiest game of Spin the Bottle. I ended up kissing my gay (still pre-gay) best friend, two good girlfriends, and the aforementioned old man. The gay friend was the only good kisser. Even with all that chemistry the old man and I had, our kisses were just regular old kisses. Borderline boring, even.

Like this, but with a hot gay man instead of a monkey.

Boyfriend and I laughed nervously, but kept watching Kill Bill. We were snuggling under a blanket together, but after the GBF's threat of party house eviction, we had both remained motionless. I kept watching the clock nervously. I knew I had to leave soon and get my parents' car back to them, but I didn't want to leave Boyfriend's side. I finally had my perfect opportunity to finally kiss him. It was June. We'd met in September. It had been nine torment filled months of sexual tension and amazing chemistry, with a couple of near kisses in November and December. Earlier in the night we had joked about having our hair pulled, and I had broadcast to the sausage fest that was my social life that I like having my hair pulled, being bitten, etc. and TMI. When the movie ended, and I knew I was going to have to drive far above the legal speed limit to make it home in time, I turned to Boyfriend. With a torso full of fluttery insects, I jokingly put my hand in his long hair and asked, "So do you like having your hair pulled?" But as I turned my face towards him, he leaned in towards me, sliding his hand into my hair, his thumb stroking my cheek. He kissed me eagerly, enthusiastically. He kissed me like I was Disneyland, and he was nine years old, and had been waiting through the entire school year for his summertime visit. The early morning sunlight made the living room look like a movie set. Everything was golden. I heard violins. When we finally parted, we rested our foreheads against each other for a moment. I don't know about him, but I was dizzy. My head was spinning. I felt light headed and out of breath and validated. I took a slow breath to steady myself while he moved his thumb gently across my cheek and kissed me again. It was probably one of the most amazing moments of my life.

The other top kiss of his, came the night (two years later) that he finally admitted he loved me. We spent the whole night talking and trying to strategize getting officially together (he had a girlfriend at the time, but that's another story... one so long that I'm devoting an entire novel and its sequel to it), and most of it was spent just sitting and being stunned that we had finally said in plain words what was so painfully obvious. The sky was lightening, and we knew we had to eventually part. Even though the word love had been thrown about, we hadn't touched any more beyond the occasional knee bump, or arm graze. We were sitting in a car, and our arms were on the center arm rest, millimeters away from touching. During a quiet moment in the conversation, I extended my little finger and put it over his. He grabbed my hand with both of his and interlaced our fingers, squeezing tightly. After a few more minutes of talking, we fell silent again, and he said, "I'm trying to figure out if we should kiss."

I looked up and met his eyes, only to find them pleading. It was surreal. It was like a scene out of a movie. Again. I couldn't believe it. "I... hold hands with my platonic friends... at scary movies..."

"What about the shoulders? The leaning...?" he asked.

"It's a pretty fine line..." I said, and squeezed his hand. I was running out of excuses and we both knew it. It was ridiculous to postpone it anyway. We both wanted to kiss, we needed to, we should. He told me he was in love with me and always had been. Why the hell hadn't we kissed in almost two years!? "Your hat's in the way," I said, and pushed it up off his forehead. He sighed heavily and leaned in and kissed me. He did that face cradling thing again. After about thirty seconds of the most emotionally packed kissing I've ever experienced, he pulled away, and put his forehead on my shoulder.

"I'm dizzy," he said breathlessly. Even though kissing is (almost!) a daily occurrence for us now, every once and a while, there's one that makes my breath catch and my head sway. Gold Star, Darling!

Lori + Stu = Awesome. It's MATH.