ADVENTURES IN KISSING GIRLS

A Chapter from The Big Electric Nighttime Previous Chapters: Stealing Circles, Televisionland

Sunrise Window / 2017 / Collage on paper / Russell C. Smith

CIGARETTE TASTING KISSING

I’m at Park Plaza one early spring night, hanging out in front of Woolworths. Waiting for Tom.

I recognize a girl from school, who looks like she’s walked out of a biker movie. We’d say “Hey” passing each other in the hallway, but not much else.

So, I’m surprised when she comes over and pushes up against me, like we know each other. I mean, really know each other.

She wears tight jeans and a velour leopard-print top. Her thick brown hair is cut in uneven bangs.

In her left hand she’s holding a cigarette, which she pulls up to her lips to take a slow drag.

“Want a cigarette?” she asks.

“No, I don’t smoke cigarettes. Just pot.”

She laughs, like I’d said something funny. Then she takes another drag, and drops her cigarette  on the sidewalk. Grinds it out with the toe of her shoe.

And old man walks by. He stops, turns to her, and says, “Are you going to pick up your cigarette butt? That’s littering.”

She stares at him and says, “Why don’t you just fuck off?”

She smokes, cusses, pushes herself up against boys she hardly knows.

What next?

Am I expecting her to pull a knife? No, I’m not.

Reaching in the front pocket of her jeans, she pulls out a pocketknife and flicks it opens.

With a curiously vacant stare in her eyes, she presses the knife against my neck.

A girl I don’t know, wearing a leopard print top pulls a knife on me and is holding it against my neck. Am I in a movie?

“What would you do if I kissed you?” she asks.

“I’d prefer being kissed to being stabbed,” I say.

She leans in and kisses me with lips tasting like cigarette smoke.

Putting the knife by her side, I watch her fold it up with three fingers, and slides it back into the front pocket of her jeans.

She looks into my eyes, with those spooky eyes of hers. “Another kiss for the road?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

She kisses me again. This this time I’m ready for it. And I kiss her back.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Donna,” she says.

“You?” she asks.

“Alex. I come here with my friend Tom to steal albums.”

“Well, aren’t you the juvenile delinquent.”

“Not really. Oh, here he is now.”

Tom walks up to us and leans over, puts his face close to Donna’s.

“Did I see you holding a knife against my friend’s neck?”

She lifts her left shoulder, in an almost shrug. “What if I did?”

Tom gets even closer to her face. Almost touching noses. “Love the leopard print, hate you might’ve been thinking of hurting Alex.”

Her eyes glance downwards, and she bites her lip while looking up at Tom, and saying, “Wasn’t going to hurt him. I was just playing.”

She turns to me and says, “Bye, Alex. Remember our kiss, if anything happens to me. I’d like to be remembered by someone like you.”

I never see her in school again.

DOWNTOWN KISSING

Marty meets a girl who lives downtown, not far from William’s Park. He’s sure she’s going to be the first girl he goes all the way with.

He asks me to hitchhike to downtown St. Pete. with him.

I decide to go along when he says, “She’s got a friend. I think her name’s Josie.”

“Sure, I’ll go with you,” I say.

Our second ride drops us next to the park, and we walk to Linda’s house. It’s a few blocks off to the side of downtown. The two times he’d been there before, no matter what time, her parents weren’t seen, heard, or even mentioned.

It’s like she lives in an imaginary world, or inside a book about secret rooms and absent parents.

Linda opens the door with Marty’s first knock. Locks eyes with Marty. Gestures for us to enter.

We step inside, and Linda smiles and hugs Marty. She nods at me and yells over her shoulder, saying, “Josie, Marty’s friend Alex came with him.”

Josie steps around the corner and offers her hand. She’s barefoot, in worn blue jeans, and has long black hair parted down the middle.

“Hi, Alex,” she says.

“Hey, Josie. Cool place.”

She leads me by the hand from the dark hallway into a side room with a couch, and halfway pulled down shades. Turns around and shuts the door. She lets go of my hand and points at the couch.

We sit on the couch. Next to each other. Josie and I talk about how we each met our friends. How long we’ve known them, and what else we like to do.

Next, she stands up and asks me if I want a Coke.

I say, “Sure, thanks.”

She touches me on the shoulder, then says, “Be right back.”

What was four minutes at the most seemed like an hour.

When she hands me a Coke with ice, I smile, take a sip, and set it on the coffee table in front of us. She goes over to a stereo system, and puts on a Cat Stevens album, the one with Peace Train.

Josie comes back and sits super close, leans over, and kisses me. I return the kiss.

She was the third girl ever to kiss me first. The first one was Gina, a neighborhood girl who I grew up with. We were sitting in the front room of my house, watching the rotating Christmas tree light making yellow, red, and blue patterns on our fake silver tree. One second we’re talking about nothing in particular, next second she leans over and kisses me. Gina points over her shoulder into the living room and winks. Letting me know she’s timed her kiss for when our parents are distracted by something on TV. We were probably 11 years old.

Josie and I are making out, releasing all kinds of pleasant humming sounds. Bright afternoon sunlight doesn’t distract us from our downtown make-out session.

My fingers stroke her long hair, and we stop every few minutes to take a breath. And then dive back into kissing in the way we learned from watching movies and TV shows, trial and error, and whispered instructions from friends.

TWO TYPES OF KISSING

Marie Manfredi is Junior High School famous for something she either did or didn’t do, in the Seventh Grade. Which is standing in front of her living room’s big picture window, topless, and wearing only underwear. Waving at boys walking down the street in the bright sunshine.

Whether she wants a certain type of boy to be interested in her, or stay away from her, the story told and retold about her works either way.

By the time we meet close to the end of the Eighth Grade, the story had turned into a rumor. I never asked her about it. I’m sitting next to Tom on the bus home from school one afternoon. It’s early May. Weeks before school’s out for the summer. I see Marie across the aisle and wave at her. She waves back and writes down her address, hands it to me.

“You guys should come over some time.”

Tom says, “How’s Friday?”

She smiles. “Yeah. Come over at 7:30.”

We go over, and she likes Tom from the start. Tom steals her a copy of Let It Bleed, and she falls deeply in like with Tom, and completely in love with The Rolling Stones. We all become friends, and hang out together during our early pot smoking years. Sometimes me and Tom will visit Marie, and other times it’s just me.

One night I’m over at Marie’s house, with her and a friend of hers. Contrasting Marie’s brown eyes and long black hair, Bethany has shoulder-length blonde hair and blue eyes.

Marie looks up at the clock, tells us her mom will be home from her date soon. None of us are ready for such a mood-shifting thing to happen.

Bethany stands up, looks at us, and says, “Come on, let’s go somewhere else. It’s only 8:30.”

We walk on the backstreets for five or six blocks, and Marie says, “I’ve got an idea. Follow me.”

Around the next corner, we walk into a park with several oak trees covered in Spanish Moss, and three picnic tables.

We sit at the picnic table in the farthest corner, next to a large hedge. Away from the closest streetlight’s glow.

There’s enough wind to push the clouds across the night sky, and feel goosebumps on our arms.

Bethany finds a joint at the bottom of her purse. Tom and I haven’t yet gotten stoned with joints we’d smoked with Marty, smuggled to him from his older sister. Nothing happened, except us coughing, and wondering why his sister supplied us with crummy pot.

Lighting up the joint, Bethany says, “This is pretty good stuff.”

Marie takes the joint and pulls a deep hit into her lungs. Then passes it to me. “Hold it in for a long time.”

We each take three hits from the joint, and finish it.

Within minutes, I’m experiencing more than a glimmer of what’s supposed to be happening. I’m feeling, so this is it. Where has it been hiding? I take a breath, and feel the sensation in a faraway corner of my mind.

Marie had something else on her mind.

Kissing.

“Let’s kiss, and see how we each do it,” she says.

Bethany smiles, says, “I’m in.”

Marie sits close to me on the picnic bench, close enough so our jeans rub against our hips. She curls her hand behind my neck, and presses her lips against mine. Her lips are soft, and her tongue tastes like smoke. I kiss her back while touching the side of her neck.

Bethany comes around behind me, and says, “Up here.” She grabs me by the hand while she sits cross-legged on top of the picnic table. I sit down across from her, our knees touching. Bethany leans forward and takes my face in both of her hands. She kisses me slowly, all over my lips and just inside my mouth.

Next, Marie gets up on the picnic table too, and sits sideways next to Bethany, and she turns her neck and pulls Bethany’s face close to hers. I watch them kissing, blending their two styles of kissing. First Marie is leading, and then Bethany takes over.

Then, we sit on the ground, and do it all over again. Several times. While sitting in a circle, with knees touching.

It’s like we’re away from the world for a while.

I smile all the way home.