At dinner, in the dimly lit restaurant, Cathy ordered a large steak complete with onion rings and a baked potato with sour cream and chives. As if the idea of her having thrown up wasn't enough of a libido killer, watching her pound down this costly combination of bad breath-inducing foods was enough to send me to a monastery. As we ate, I could do little but look at her mouth, knowing that I was going to be expected to kiss it good night in a very short time. I smiled and nodded and laughed along with them pretending to be enjoying myself. But all I could think of was getting back to the safety of my house and my much more familiar geek life. It was only after Cathy had ordered a piece of ricotta cheesecake that I was able to herd them out of the place.
As we left the restaurant, I made quite a show of taking some of the breath-freshening mints out of the bowl next to the register, the same type of mints that news programs have since shown to be covered with urine from customers going to the bathroom, not washing their hands, and the using their piss-soaked fingers to grope around in the mint bowl. Fortunately, I did not know this fun fact back then and saw these mints as the only line of defense between me and Cathy's barf-steak-onion-ring-and-cheesecake-tainted mouth.
"Anybody want a mint?" I asked casually.
"No thanks," said Cathy. "I don't eat candy."
No, just everything else, I thought.
As we drove along in Walter's car, Sandy turned to Cathy and me in the back seat and said, "Hey, you guys, let's go park out at the beach." Panic flashed though my brain as I realized this evening was supposed to continue and that its continuation would consist of nothing but going face to face with Cathy. It was officially Make-Out Time.
"Oh, man, I've gotta get home," I said, abandoning any attempts to try to sound remotely cool.
"Really? It's only 11:25," said Cathy, looking at her watch. "I don't have to be home until midnight."
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, trying to sound disappointed, "but my dad said I have to be home by 11:30. He's weird about stuff like that."
I saw Walter and Sandy exchange a look in the front seat that indicated whatever nerdy things they had been thinking about me throughout the evening had now been confirmed. And at this point, I didn't care. I just wanted out of that car.
Walter drove me back to my house and pulled up in our driveway. My stomach was in knots the whole way home, since Cathy kept throwing me looks that said she wanted me to kiss her. I had been able to hold her off, even as Sandy was kissing Walter while he drove. The whole time Cathy was staring at the side of my face, trying to get me to turn toward her and dive in. I was a mess by the time we reached my house.
"Well, thanks for the ride, Walter," I said jovially, as if he were my Little League coach dropping me off after a game. I turned to Cathy and she gave me a smile that said, "Now it's time for you to kiss me."
D-Day had arrived. Up in the front seat, Walter and Sandy started making out. How people could just start making out in front of other people perplexed me. When I had seen Cathy and Dan doing it for the first time, it looked cool to me. I guess I hadn't ever considered all that went in to making out the exchange of spit, the physiology of pressing your face against that of another living human being, the consequences of your partner's food intake, the matter of germs and contagion. Not to mention that kissing and making out were supposed to be highly personal activities, performed out of love and affection for your partner and not to be used as a status symbol to lord over those less fortunate or more discreet than you. I turned and looked at Cathy, who had shifted herself closer to me but had leaned back against the seat so that she was braced for me to lean in and kiss her heavily. A montage of the evening ran through my brain the beer, the vomit, the stinky dinner and the mocking laughter between Cathy and her dancing friend as I prepared myself for what I had to do. It felt like a gateway moment to me, the door through which I would pass to leave my childhood forever. Once you'd kissed a girl really kissed a girl you left your innocence behind, I thought. You'd no longer be able to enjoy simply holding hands, you'd no longer feel a hot flush at getting kissed on the cheek, you'd no longer feel your heart pound uncontrollably as you danced the box step with a girl at a wedding. Only physical acts beyond open-mouthed kissing would provide you any thrill. No, I was standing on a cliff looking down into the darkness of adult pleasures, and peer pressure was forcing me to jump off. I wasn't sure if I could do it.
But I knew that if I didn't, I'd always be judged for it.
And I knew that if I blew this opportunity, I might always feel that I'd made a big mistake.
And just like that, it was decided. I was going in whether I really wanted to or not.
I took a deep breath, tried to put my visions of the inside of Cathy's mouth out of my mind, and slowly leaned forward to kiss her. That is, in my mind I was slowly leaning forward. In reality I lunged forward very rapidly. I immediately made contact with Cathy's lower lip and the better part of her chin. I tasted what I knew had to be makeup and quickly dragged my lips upward. In doing so, I got an even bigger blast of pancake base. With my mouth now directly on top of hers, I felt her tongue start to move in toward mine. In a panic, I quickly thrust my tongue at hers and firmly pushed it back in to her mouth like a Hong Kong subway worker shoving riders in to a packed rush-hour train. Finding my tongue was now inside her oral cavity, I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do in there. I had heard one of my teachers use the phrase "tongue wrestling" once when he yelled at two burnouts to stop necking. And I recently overheard a jock say that he was going to stick his tongue down his girlfriend's throat. So I did some quick math and figured that I'd better move my tongue around and try to engage something. My tongue snapped upward and immediately hit her teeth. Feeling the sharpness of them pressing down on my tastebuds, I pulled my tongue back so that the tip of it was now pressed against her front incisors. Not knowing what else to do, I proceeded to run my tongue sideways across her upper teeth, then down and back the opposite way across all her lower teeth, then back up and across again until I had completely licked the front of every tooth in her mouth, turning my first French kiss in to a full-fledged dental-cleaning session.
I quickly pulled away and looked at Cathy. She had a look of surprise on her face that I could only interpret one of two ways either it was the best kiss she'd ever had or the absolute worst. Her eyes had a look of shock that was impossible to read. The only thing I knew for certain was that, for me, the kiss had been the most disturbing moment of my life up until that point. I fumbled out a "good night" halfheartedly, thanked Walter again for driving, and quickly made my way into the house. In the living room, my dad was laughing at the fast-motion antics of Benny Hill as he was chased around by several girls in bikinis.
"How was your date?" he asked.
"I quickly moved past him and headed down the hallway. "Fine," I called back, and ran into the bathroom. I closed the door, grabbed my toothbrush, and proceeded to brush my teeth and tongue vigorously for the next fifteen minutes.
I went out in to the living room and sat on the couch. Benny Hill was just ending, and I felt a wave of sadness wash over me, realizing that I had missed what had been a fun evening watching TV with my father for a misguided desire to make out with a girl, an activity I was now sure I was not cut out for. My dad looked at me with a concerned expression.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. I could tell he knew that something had gone wrong. I looked at the TV and grew more depressed. The final producer's credit flashed on the screen as Benny and the bikini girl disappeared, and the picture faded to black. The evening was over. I had blown it.
"I was gonna go to bed," my dad said, shifting in his seat. "But I was looking through the TV Guide and it says they're going to show some Laurel and Hardy shorts next. You mind if I stay up and watch them?
I looked at my dad, who gave me a fatherly smile. At the moment the thought of watching Laurel and Hardy shorts with him was the only thing in the world I wanted to do.
"Yeah," I said, "that'd be cool."
And as we sat there watching Stan and Ollie trying to move a piano up a very long flight of stairs, we laughed our heads off, and I remember feeling extremely happy that I was only fifteen years old and wouldn't have to French-kiss anyone anytime soon if I didn't want to.
Excerpted from Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence, published by Three Rivers Press. Reprinted by permission. For more information about this book, click here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paul Feig is a movie and television writer, director and producer. He created the TV shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, is a two-time Emmy nominee and lives in Los Angeles.
complete with onion rings and a baked potato with sour cream and chives. As if the idea of her having thrown up wasn't enough of a libido killer, watching her pound down this costly combination of bad breath-inducing foods was enough to send me to a monastery. As we ate, I could do little but look at her mouth, knowing that I was going to be expected to kiss it good night in a very short time. I smiled and nodded and laughed along with them pretending to be enjoying myself. But all I could think of was getting back to the safety of my house and my much more familiar geek life. It was only after Cathy had ordered a piece of ricotta cheesecake that I was able to herd them out of the place.
