CN: Sexual exploitation of a minor.
I recently had an epiphany about my first kiss.
The “official” story of my first kiss, the one I’ve told for my entire adult life, goes like this:
I was 14. I was with a friend at the Last Exit Cafe in Seattle—a place where I spent a solid chunk of my free time in my high school years. It was late evening, and we were sitting out on the back patio, when two men in their 20s approached us. My friend started flirting with one of them (or he with her; I can’t remember, but the flirtation was quickly mutual), and soon they were kissing on the bench across from me.
The other man took that as his cue to start kissing me. I was not into this guy at all. He smelled and tasted like cigarettes, and…that’s about all I remember of him. That and the fact that he was kissing me before I’d figured out what I wanted. And oh yeah, then his tongue was in my mouth, which was not in the least enjoyable. I went with it, though, because I didn’t want to distract my friend, who seemed to be having a great time, and because I felt like I was the only girl I knew my age who hadn’t been kissed. So, there I was.
My friend, to her credit, asked me multiple times if I was okay—she probably sensed that I wasn’t, really. But I lied and said I was.
On the bus ride home, I chewed gum to get his taste out of my mouth.
Today, I could list off all the red flags in this situation, from the age gap to the nonconsent. Then, it was just…a thing. A kind of yucky thing that I just wanted to move on from.
So that’s the story of my first kiss. Only it’s not.
My first kiss happened when I was 11 years old. I was at the home of a childhood friend, and she had another friend over whom I hadn’t met before. Somehow we decided to play Truth or Dare, and we got very quickly into the dares. We dared each other to kiss each other, and I think to feel each other up? I don’t actually remember. But I do remember kissing.
Except I didn’t remember it until very recently. I had never considered those to be “real” kisses. Maybe it was because we were playing Truth or Dare—but that doesn’t make them not real. Maybe it was because they were girls, or they were my friends—but that doesn’t make them not real, either.
I think, though, it was because they were girls. I think my mind at the time, steeped in heteronormativity, couldn’t categorize kisses with girls as a “first kiss.” So I filed it away somewhere deep in my memory, where it wouldn’t resurface again for nearly three decades.
Honestly, though? I like my real first-kiss story a lot better than the old one.
