KISS ME? HARDLY

I've been thinking about that old 'first kiss' memory over the last couple of days.

I grew up in a Catholic household that was, from my father's side also Methodist influenced..
Conflicted? More like constricted.

I was educated in Catholic schools:  primary by nuns; intermediate by brothers; secondary by priests.
Now, while none of these kissed me they didn't exactly encourage it with anyone else either.
In the case of intermediate and secondary school this was a blessing as these were single sex boys ' schools. The primary school I went to up until Standard One (age about 8 or 9) was a co-ed school.

 Girls!

Well, they were a bit strange of course but I did have yearnings. My 'girlfriend's' name was Christine. I liked her. To show my feelings I used to grab her beret and throw it up on top of the roof of the school hall. This was so I could rescue it by climbing up onto the roof and be some kind of hero.
 She cried.
 She cried the second time I did this.
 She also cried the third time and I think I left the beret up there, deciding that this was a waste of time.
Plan B. Throwing stones at her.
 The problem with girls are that they just don't understand what's going on.....

Interestingly, I met up with Christine about 45 years later at a school reunion and she said that she actually liked me. Go figure.

I guess you can see that Christine didn't give me a snog. It was another classmate Helen that did this.
Now I'm not talking about one of those kisses you got from your mother, your aunts or your grandmother. You know the ones I mean. They are those sloppy ones on the cheek and usually accompany a spit on the handkerchief and rubbing away of dirt etc.

No. I mean a kiss. Eight years old, grown up, real kiss. On the lips. Smashing. It would have been even better but I found out that she also gave classmate Stephen a similar kiss. Hussy.


In our neighbourhood, Vogeltown, the families were all working class to middle class with nice secure values. There was the one household (very large) that was a bit riotous but we were told to steer clear of them. A couple of the daughters (there were about 15 kids there) were of interest (from afar) but they disappeared when they were in their mid teens!
 
Amongst the friends that I played with a couple of the kids had older sisters. I mean seriously older. I was about 10 and they were 12 or 13. As kids the games we played were usually war games in the bushes, gullies and streams that abounded before in-fill housing began. These were great and involved all the boys around. When the boys' sisters became involved the games lagged a bit because the girls got bored easily and started to change the rules. No longer were blood thirsty charges through the bushes waving wooden swords or shooting toy guns de-rigeur, no, the games had to have themes.

There were usually two settings. The first was our beloved bush and gullies. The second a big, truck-sized packing case that was dumped on a neighbours spare land and could be lifted up and entered creating an almost dark cavern. I don't remember all of the details but the inevitable outcome was of being 'captured' by one of the girls who would demand to be felt up, laid upon and kissed.  This of course was stimulating and interesting but I always felt that us boys were being 'used'. Of course I was proven right when said girls were fifteen and went off with older boys never giving us a further look. Hussies.

At the tennis club, when I was in my mid teens I had a girlfriend whom I adored. As such, given my romantic attitudes to females and family and school upbringing, I put her on a pedestal and, apart from the odd embrace or virginal kiss kept my hands (and significant other parts) off her. This went on for a couple of years until she sort of drifted away and went out with another guy. Hussy.

Interestingly this guy was a sort of doppelganger for me.

In my 6th form year, at a school dance - one of those formal affairs where our Catholic boys' school met up with a Catholic girls' school to cavort, grope and generally go mad until 11 PM or getting whacked by a ruler-wielding nun - whichever came first, I had a real good snog. Not one of those pecks on the cheek things which reminds me of the Jefferson Airplane White Rabbit song - "....and the pills that mother gives you do nothing at all...", nor the old dry kiss on the lips thing - no, I'm talking about tongues, saliva and pants-busting excitement. This was all good but unfortunately left a bit late because Girl (I forget her name) had to leave because her mother had arrived to take her home. We agreed to meet up at the next Catholic dance (there was a circuit of these) about 3 weeks later.

Which we did.

To my undoing.
I had met another 16/17 y.o., Helen at a Lower Hutt community hall dance who went to St Mary's college. The next dance was the St Mary's one. Where Girl (from a Lower Hutt college) was coming to the dance. And Helen (not the primary school one) and Tennis Girl also attended. Stupidly I did the rounds of the dance hall, dancing and chatting to all three girls and anticipated a snog-fest at the end of the evening.

Bummer. Did you know that females talk to each other? And that their friends keep them informed?
I went home kissless and a wiser man (boy really).

When I was 18, about to start my first year at university I was at a friend's party and had to leave reasonable early because I was making my first ever trip overseas. Straya. I had to be up and away early the next day. On leaving I bumped into a young woman about two years older than me who had come to the party with a friend of my brother. He was about 3 or 4 years older. This girl, when I told her I was off because I had to get up early said "not without a kiss" and snogged me. OK, hey, look at the story above. I'd snogged before and knew what it was about you know, but this kiss sent me heavenward (if there is a place). Man she could kiss. Our kissing went on for ages and she taught me a thing or two about tongues until my brother's friend politely tapped me on the shoulder. I remember my brother and other friends  looking on and laughing. This was a good memory.

Sex came later.