somebody brought up first kisses. they were older and played the game of "back in my day didn't have peer support like the internet or gay/straight alliances, so we often had straight first kisses!" i had a straight first kiss, even though i started a gay/straight alliance. i was in heavy denial in middle school and fooled around too much with boys. so my first kiss was with one of them, although i ended up not so much kissing them as other things.

just as much as there are many virginities, there are many first kisses. there are first gender kisses, first relationship kisses, first kisses that mean anything. . .

by the time i met her, the only kisses i'd been involved in had been those ones with boys that i discounted earlier. still, my first girlfriend read something as me having lots of kissing experience - i was an insane flirt - and so, as to not disappoint her, my first real kiss was actually pretending that i knew what i was doing and "teaching her" as i taught myself. to jackson five, no less.

not long after i made out with the school's dykeslut. we were the only out out lesbians, so everyone thought we were together. as such, we couldn't help but make out every so often. besides, she was hot. had a lot of problems with boundaries though, many of which i'm still trying to get over.

i followed her with the first boy i kissed, who was incidentally the first boy i slept with. we made out a lot for his boyfriend. he was a good kisser, i certainly didn't mind.

the first kiss that mattered, my first kiss with my husband, was amazing. i lived on campus with roomates that i hated, and he had come up to see kate bornstein speak at my school. he had been invited to stay over because i my school is three hours from where he lives. i had a cold at the time, and at one point before the show, on the way there, i mentioned wanting to kiss him (this was the second time we'd met in person; i met him through reading his zine). i couldn't, however, because of my cold. made admitting it easier.

as we were waiting for the show to start, i had some sobe and offered a sip to cubbie (the other person in this story, yes). he accepted, and one of us mentioned saucily that he had my germs, so. . .

so after the show we waited in a long line to meet kate (ze blessed us, so happy to see two genderqueer totlets so obviously smitten). afterward, in my attempts to stay away from my roomates we wandered around campus. there are amazing sights there, lights that shift color all through the rainbow and set up so that you can see them, a camera obscura.

i took cubbie into the camera obscura to see the lights - camera obscura means "dark room" and the concept is that you can see things from outside through a very small hole, light projects into the dark upside down on the opposite wall. you can read more about them here. i was being completely innocent in these maneuvers, which is funny because i had wandered around campus with a previous crush pointing out all these places to make out and never getting up the nerve. . .

the camera obscura is essentially a dark closet. closets, although bad for some reasons, are great places for kisses. so we kissed, awkwardly as we realized that we could, and it all fit in to place. i was breathless, and not just because i couldn't breathe out of my nose.

this was about ten thirty, eleven. we continued around campus, kissing all the while, until we stumbled home around four. i still was nervous enough to offer cubbie the couch cushions to sleep on, on the floor. that was silly of me.