Captive Ape

Nonfiction

The Kiss:
Or Maintaining a Good Seal

By Jens

The gravel crunched under the tires of the Nelson's sedan as it slowed to a stop in front of their country house. I pushed the door open and stepped out of the back seat. Standing to the side, I let her get out of the car. Her parents and little sister, slammed their doors and trudged to the house, tired after a long day of shopping at the mall. They were all worn out and grumpy. Not me. My body was pulsing with certainty. This was it. The signs were unmistakable.

The signs of what was to come, came to me at the theater. We were watching some movie with her parents sitting two rows ahead of us, to ensure our privacy, and to give us the illusion of being alone on a date. During the first part of the movie we ate popcorn and shared a large coke. "This is a good thing." I thought. "No pressure here. I've got it covered." Having eaten and drunk nearly my entire life I managed to do so then without bungling it. My appetites temporarily sated I settled back in my seat to watch the feature. I was enjoying the movie, when I noticed her hand, slowly and steadily reaching for my groin. Waves of alternating ecstasy and nausea flowed through my adolescent body as she slowly wrapped her hand around the large Coke cup and brought it to her mouth to drink the last of it's contents. The straw made a loud slurping sound as she fished around at the bottom for the last few drops, and inside my head, I sighed my relief and screamed my frustration. The other moviegoers watched on, unawares.

Several minutes later, I decided it would be a good idea to put my arm around her. I thought about using the yawn and stretch move, but declined that as it seemed too boyish. Eventually, I just started fidgeting around like I couldn't get comfortable, and when she leaned forward to look over at what I was doing I just shot my arm around her.

Pleasantly surprised that my scheme had worked, I was even happier when she leaned into my embrace, rested her head where my shoulder meets my chest, and held the hand that I casually draped over her shoulder. What could be better? A guy and his girl, snuggling at the movies. I was in heaven.

Then she dropped my hand and rested her arm on the armrest between us. I thought nothing of it until I noticed that my hand was resting on a shape that, while unfamiliar, was by no means unpleasant. Adrenaline once more rushed through my body as I tried to come to grips with the fact that my hand, my very own hand, was touching her breast. What should, no, What could I do. Parts of my brain exploded as I realized that I knew nothing about proper breast etiquette. Should I move my hand? Keep it there? Squeeze it, rub it? Pretend that I found a popcorn crumb and politely brush it away? What? Confused, demoralized and positive that I'd be on the next train to hell, my salvation came in the form of poor blood circulation. The position I was in caused my arm to get no blood, and after only a few minutes, it went numb. Thanking every angel involved, I continued to watch the movie, ignoring as best I could what my hand wasn't feeling. Then the pain started.

As everyone knows, limbs fall asleep according to a certain chain of events. First the limb gets a bit colder, and then becomes numb. This usually goes by without anyone noticing It isn't until the pain part starts that you really realize that your limb is, in fact, asleep. Then usually people just move the limb to a more comfortable position and it's all over. Sometime after the pain started, I looked down at her, all snuggled in to me, and I knew that I couldn't move my arm from around her. What if she thought that I was somehow rejecting her. No, I decided to bare the pain. Then, sometime after gangrene set in, the large Coke worked it's way down to my bladder.

Eventually, pain won. I excused myself, walked to the bathroom and punched my arm until I began to feel the blows. Satisfied that my arm was not entirely dead, I urinated, washed my hands, and went back to my seat. It took me a while to find it because while I was gone, she decided that she too had to go to the bathroom. We watched the rest of the movie, and she held my hand, which seemed a much better arrangement.

The ride home was relatively uneventful, but I knew, because of all that had happened at the movie, I was going to kiss her. And as her family trudged into the house and her hand found mine, my resolve was strengthened. We walked slowly into the porch. Her dog bouncing around us, wanting desperately to play, but we had something more important to do. We stood facing each other on the porch for several minutes, until the thought of not saying anything became scarier than just saying something.

"That was a really good movie."

"Yeah, that movie was . . . really good."

"Yeah."

I had enough of this verbal banter. I looked into her eyes, pulled her to me, and raised my head slightly so that our lips would meet. As she was coming in, she closed her eyes, and opened her mouth like she was going to say "Maw." I realized that this was going to be a French kiss, and panicked. I didn't know how to do one of those. There wasn't time to think though, so I just mirrored her mouth. We met, a pressurized seal was formed by our lips and, I guessed, we were kissing.

I remembered a page of the book The Goonies, where one of the kids is kissed by the cute girlfriend of the older kid, because she mistakes him for her boyfriend in the dark of a cave. The book said they felt around each others mouths with their tongues, licking each others teeth and everything. The girl in the book declared it was a good kiss even when she found out that she had kissed the wrong boy. I thought that seemed reasonable, so I stuck out my tongue.

I stuck out my tongue and licked her teeth. I assumed her tongue would reciprocate, but it didn't. Her tongue just lay in her mouth, kind of cold and like an oyster. All of her attention seemed to be on maintaining constant air pressure with the seal between our mouths. I didn't question it. I wasn't qualified.

Satisfied that we each had our own jobs, me with exploration, her with seal maintenance duty, we continued until someone dropped something in the kitchen, which startled her, and broke the seal, ending the kiss.

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3.15.2002