my first kiss

MY FIRST: KISS

Most of us remember our first kiss with a fond nostalgia of days gone by when everything was possible and the world was there to be discovered. A minority of people remember that fateful day with a shudder and a grimace, as something mildly repugnant to be forgotten, if only it was possible… I fall into the latter category.
It happened at a youth hostel in Kerry, one week to the day after my first time getting drunk. In hindsight it was quite an eventful week.
Preparation for the weekend away consisted of finding the biggest holdall in the house, putting in a pair of boxer shorts and a can of lynx then stuffing it to the brim with an adventurous, eclectic mix of the cheapest beers and ciders the local off licence had to offer.
We both got fairly paralytic on the train down, sarcastic and drowsy in front of a table full of half drunk cans we couldn’t face finishing, having not yet found the drink that would carry us through to adulthood.
By the time we eventually got organised and orientated enough to find the hostel, we had sobered up enough to drop off our bags and go for a walk.
The hostel rested on the foot of a scenic mountain range that boasted a panoramic view of the lake and surrounding country side, beautiful and unspoilt in all its natural splendour. Feeling relaxed and for some strange reason mildly patriotic, my mate thought it would be the perfect moment to crack open the Nagan of Jameson and light up the 14p cigars we bought, a touch of class for a classy moment.
Before we started being sophisticated, he went for a piss behind a nearby tree and for a laugh, and to show him exactly the level of sophistication he was dealing with, I decided to down the thing in one go before he got back. I distinctly remember the bemused look on his face when he got back before everything went black.
Things get Dali-esque when I try to remember what happened next, all I remember is being chased, falling, shouting at passers by and thinking I was some sort of comic genius, a naked run, some afternoon nic-nacs, finding a melted, stolen Twix in my sock and it being the tastiest thing I ever ate, a police siren then everything went calm.
I woke up fully clothed in the dorm bed. As things slowly came into focus, I saw my mate standing over me and laughing. I felt uneasy. I pre-empted his recital of the day’s events and had already picked out the window I was going to jump from in shame, but to my surprise I noticed he was standing beside two giggling girls he’d somehow manage to talk into coming to see me. What a guy!
Still comatose but slightly more lucid, I decided that my mate had done well to get this far but now it was time for me to take centre stage, with my Wildean wit and kick things up a notch. I notice in passing that my mates hooked up with the cute one and I got the laugher. She seemed alright through squinted eyes, maybe a little, I don’t know…full on! If we were picking teams for a football match, she’d be the one with the club foot and eye patch. Ah sure, just the drink talking I tell myself, don’t listen to it, I get up and we all go for a walk around the grounds.
Its half eleven now and its dark, I get pulled behind a tree by my girl, having not notice my mate doing the same thing 5 minutes before. Before I get my bearings she has her tongue down my throat, swirling over my teeth like a toothbrush. It’s wet and smells a little bit like meat and I suppress the urge to vomit by giving as good as I get. After a few angry seconds it finally dawns on me what’s happening, I’m kissing a girl and as far as I can tell, she likes it. Who gives a shit if it’s awkward and slightly repulsive, I’ve been waiting for 16 years, I decide to really go for it. I felt my first boob during the proceedings, the left one, took a while to get there though. Once I was there I had no idea what to do so I just squeezed it gently like they do in movies. I remember thinking for some random reason that it felt like a bag of water.
As quickly as it started it was over and I was being led back to the hostel in time for curfew. I said goodnight with the girls and went back to the dorm with my mate feeling very pleased with myself.
We must have been quite loud coming back because the other 5 or 6 in the dorm woke up. We got the giggles and the more they told us to ‘ssssshhhhh’ the more we kept giggling. I felt like saying ‘Jesus, lighten up will ya, don’t you know who we are? We’re the guys that go around kissing girls, we’re girlkissers, that’s what we do now, it’s our job. We smoke cigars, drink our whiskey neat, kiss girls and feel boobs, get over it.’
As for the next morning, fuck, now theres a morning I want to forget. We where woken up to the sound of rustling plastic bags and disgruntled Germans muttering and frowning in German. I thought to myself ‘I could tell them to ‘ssssshhhhh’ now and they probably wouldn’t even think that was funny’, but the idea was dropped and I resolved to sit up and meet head on, the hangover that was looming over the pillow like a raincloud. I wasn’t wrong. It felt like I was chewing the contents of an ashtray with a swarm of angry wasps in my head. A curse on extra strength cider and its seductive packaging.
My mate in the bunk above was obviously in the same boat as me, I could tell by the whimpering, but armed with the dubious perils of wisdom about beating a hangover, he jumped down and said ‘more drink! That’s what we need, best cure for a hangover!’
Whilst trying to digest the apparently obvious logic to his idea, I noticed we had the room to ourselves and decided to go with the flow. In our mini laboratory we poured bits of cans we didn’t like into an empty 2 litre coke bottle, christened it Bul-kronen-stag-berg gold and lived forever to regret the huge gulps we both took.
The girls from last night interrupted this grotesque masochism by knocking on the door saying ‘are you up yet?’ My mate leapt up and opened the door letting them both in and…oh my sweet Jesus up in heaven!

My “girl” turned out to be some extra potent strand of ugly. A theoretical ugly that’s hypothesised in science books but not yet proven to exist, until today that is, when her image nearly burnt out my retinas. How could this be? How drunk was I? Was Rohypnol involved somehow? The alcohol had lots to say last night; it was staying conspicuously fucking quiet this morning.
Feeling nauseas and a little bit frightened, I discreetly took a step back and to the left, behind my mate, fully willing to use him as a human shield if she starts spitting poison. Memories of our kiss the night before came swimming back into my head as I tried to remember if her tongue was forked or not. Or if what I had thought was her watery boob had in fact been some sort of pouch containing the eggs she needs to lay on dry land before she swims off for the winter.
Sensing that I had lost some of the boob squeezing enthusiasm of last night, she asks ‘how come you’re so quiet today?’. Mentally picturing an empty cage, two frantic circus trainers and a line of bear traps strewn discreetly around the vicinity, I shrugged and said ‘hung-over’ secretly wondering if there was a reward for her capture.
The girls left after a few minutes of one-sided conversation. My mate gave his girl his phone number and to be polite I did the same, being careful not to make any sudden movements.
They left and as I watched them leave, my heart slowing with every step that took them further away from me, I thought to myself, there it is Kevo, your first kiss, a freak of nature, it takes balls to have a face like that, her neck was quivering with the responsibility of it…..


…..she never called.