Friday, July 16, 2004

Tasting the Night

If I were to be honest about where I stood, socially, when I was graduated from high school, I’d have to admit that I was well-liked in a fraternal sort of way.  I’d not “gone out” with anyone from my school; the few girls I’d seen socially were strangers, cyphers to me, moreso after our anxious little dates than before.  Among my classmates I was recognized as smart enough to be a source of test answers in various classes, sucker enough to be in a lot of school plays, and driven enough to engage in various extracurriculars that only looked cool on my college app - morning announcements, debating club, political action society.... but as far as I knew I was not seen as someone romantically interesting.  I was a friend to a lot of girls, but not a boyfriend to any of them. 

As a result of these traits and activities I got invited to the “right” graduation parties, ones with actual invitations that some people didn’t receive.  However, I bore the shame of going to them all alone. 

To back up a little, second semester of senior year I’d had a brief period of studliness.  At one point I was juggling promising relationships with two girls from other schools and felt the confidence in myself that is, in the final analysis, the most powerful kind of aphrodesiac.  For a few brief weeks, I’d had charisma.  During that time I got over my fear of osculation.  I can’t say I learned to kiss, but I learned how not to not kiss, and that was a big step in the right direction for me. 

But I did not learn how to manage myself or my relationships with my new curious friends, and by the end of the year I’d squandered all the libidinous capital I’d so painstakingly acquired over the entire preceding lifetime.  Which really wasn’t much anyway, but lord how I missed it.... And these were the ideas that floated through my head at one particularly riotous party I attended to celebrate the turning of the era of schoolbound youth to that of unleashed young adulthood right around the time the Grant High class of ‘86 was moving out into the world.

This party had everybody: jocks and brains and socies and hotties and people whose names I knew but whose role in the scene I hadn’t quite divined, and vice versa.  One of these was a girl whose name I don’t recall, though I’m sure I knew it at the time.  She was beautiful in a cold, forbidding way.  Her body was a luscious dessert on which I’d feasted my eyes in all the several classes we’d had together.  We had different racial backgrounds, different circles of friends, different interests; we were completely different from each other.  I didn’t recall ever speaking with her one-on-one before.  She scared me and excited me.  I was pretty sure, after this party, I’d never see her again. 

I discovered her standing alone in a side yard, drinking a cup of punch.  I approached, stood before her.  “Can I have a taste of that?” She handed me her cup and I drank from it, tasting only her eyes as I stared into them, dark and limpid in the night. 

“Thanks,” I said, handing her back the bright red plastic cup full of bright red plastic beverage.  She looked down to take it from me, then back up to my face.  For some reason I suddenly just knew that I could get away with it, so I leaned forward and my mouth closed over hers.  Her head tilted toward me and my hand encircled the small of her back; our lips flattened softly and parted as we tasted each other. 

I pulled back before I overstayed my welcome, broke contact, let the cool night air brace me like aftershave.  I stood before her, breathing deeply but not hard, moderately aroused, quietly relaxed. I saw, for the first time that night or perhaps ever, the whites of her eyes as she asked me, “Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to know if I could.  I wanted to know what it was like,” I answered with a controlled low voice.  “It was nice,” I added as a polite afterthought.

“Please don’t tell anyone about it,” she requested, a familiar coldness returning to her warm moist lips.

“I won’t,” I assured her,and then added, superfluously, “Don’t you, either.” I turned and went back into the party, kissed no one else that night or the rest of the summer.  It wasn’t till I met Kel three years later that I actually had a date with a girl.  That date, for the record, is ongoing.