2002-04-09 - 12:05 p.m.

I was fourteen years old when I got my first kiss. Finally.

That night was very special. High School was just beginning, a fresh start, and the air was clear and exciting. Electric. Just a little cold.

I was at the Carnival with my neighborhood friend, T., and we were doing some twilight kid stuff�riding the rides, eating cotton candy and so on, knowing that this was probably the last time we could get away with it and not feel stupid.

We ran into Brenda, from the neighborhood. Word had it that she had gotten expelled from Boston Latin School for giving a blowjob to some kid under his desk during a study period. It was a believable rumor�she was kinda crazy, and nobody had seen her around school towards the end of the year.

Brenda introduced us to two of her friends and then took off. One of the girls was kinda tall and skinny. She had long and thin and mousy brown hair, acne, and braces. She was very pretty. The other was a little chunky, with squiggly dark hair, which partially covered her breasts. Jeans and sweaters, both. They didn't talk like townies or trash.

Somehow (I know not how), within half an hour after meeting them, I had made out with both.

One after the other. Two first kisses. They tasted so good--I had no idea. And it only took me about 10 seconds to figure out how to kiss correctly. Came so naturally.

I had never felt so good in my entire life. Ever. It was the kind of thing for which I would have forsaken Christmas.

$20 in my pocket, and walking around with two chicks, one on each arm, and some carnie shouting Hey, Romeo! was pretty friggin sweet, I must say.

My buddy T., who was always kind of a sissy, was too shy get involved. Nature kind of stepped in, and the heavier chick was kinda delegated to T. This left me with the skinny one, and I was fine with that.

We rode the rides together, we played the games together. We got to know each other a little.

Crazy carnival noises flashing and beeping and honking all around, with people yelling, tents set up, games to be won or lost, the smell of cotton candy and popcorn and freshly hosed vomit and her sexy girl breath steaming out of her, and inches from my own lips.

We rode the Turkish Twist together, the spinning ride where gravity keeps you from flying off into space.

Brenda got on too, and rode next to me, and as I weightlessly made out with the skinny chick, she fondled the hard-on snugly nestled in my jeans.

That�s three! Three chicks in one night, where there had been none before!

Nights where I couldn�t sleep. Doing my dreaming while awake and all I wanted was a girlfriend. Anyone. It didn�t matter who.

Now I seemingly had three to pick from!

So I decided on the skinny chick. She was my new girlfriend.

Together on the revolving swings, my arm around her, she told me that she had a boyfriend. I told her that I didn�t care. She told me that she did, and she wouldn�t let me touch her for the rest of the evening.

Like a pathetic loser, I spent the rest of the night making her feel uncomfortable, trying to persuade her to see me again.

I lost.

And things shut down. The lights went off. The stuffed monkeys and Def Leppard mirrors were being put away.

It was time for everyone to go home.

So I did. I walked with T.

And spent the entire night awake, I think. Fantasizing. Loathing myself for being such a jackass.

If I just never opened my mouth. If I just never said the wrong thing. If I even knew what I had done wrong, I would be OK.

I went back the next night, alone. It was half as crowded. I spent hours walking around, thinking that maybe it all would happen again, but with different people.

No dice.

I did run into Brenda, but she was surrounded by 10 or so homeboys, and didn�t much feel like talking to me.

So I walked around some more. No rides, no games, no candy apples.

And then I walked straight home.