It was the last scene in the play. I was a High School freshman. He was two years older. I was playing the role of Miss Sympathy, the novice Social Worker, in a satire by Jules Feiffer. My crush was playing the role of “Crawling Arnold.” I thought about him all the time.
He had thick wavy hair and knew his lines perfectly. Could I convince him not to crawl or would he convince me life was better on the floor? The lights dimmed and he moved closer for our stage kiss.
So maybe it wasn’t a real kiss, but our lips were about to touch. His lips felt dry. His mouth opened and the kiss expanded. His tongue was surprisingly wet. The kiss continued long after the stage went dark.
At the Cast Party I could feel him staring at me, but we never spoke. We acted as if we were strangers.
I longed to return to our final scene. Wearing my stage glasses, I searched for the young man crawling on the floor.
In another kiss, my red lipstick smudged, I opened my mouth and let my imagination roam to find that perfect kiss, so right the molecules of our skin merged.
That second kiss, two years later, was the one I’d been waiting for. Two teenagers on a bus, traveling in Europe, after the sun went down. Two lips pressed against one another, making contact for the first time. Enchanted. This was the moment I’d been rehearsing for, the kiss of first love.
INSTANT NOODLES 