First Kiss

 

We called ourselves “the crowd”. It sounded more sophisticated than “the gang”. As most teens of the 1950’s, we conducted our lives in tune to pop music. Everywhere we went, music came along as our constant companion. Our core group of fifteen included popular Sally Cahill who stood tall and thin with a small cupids face surrounded by glistening brown curls. Her one imperfection of a crooked front tooth gave her speech a slight lisp. But even this flaw added to her charm. Sally’s family lived in a brownstone house on Garfield Place in Brooklyn where we had parties every Friday night. We usually started the party on the ground floor that housed the kitchen and family room. Punch and cookies fueled our dancing to the record player. Later in the evening, we gravitated to the upstairs parlor where Sally played the upright piano and we gathered around to sing all the old standards.

          I received my first kiss from Matt Brady, an older, seventeen to my fourteen, tall and good looking boy. Matt kissed me in the darkened parlor of Sally’s home during a gathering of couples similarly engaged in entwined arms and mouths. We had been sitting close together on the couch talking in hushed voices when he put his arm around me, drew me closer and brought his lips to mine. My heart did a somersault hitting my rib cage, and my underarms showered sweat into my new blouse. I had played kissing games at parties but those kisses looked furtive and reticent. Matt gave me a grown up kiss. Stampeding thoughts galloped through my brain.  Now what do I do? Do I just leave my lips neutral or do I pucker? I knew I had to close my eyes. I’ve seen that in the movies. But where do the noses go? And do I hold my breath or let my air in and out on his face? Suppose my snot ran out on his cheek? How embarrassing that would be.

          Matt went steady with my girlfriend Barbara who had gone away on vacation with her family. I knew the unwritten code of girlfriends…hands off their boyfriends.  So I had my first kiss tinged with a sense of guilt.

         

When Barbara returned from her vacation, she let me know in no uncertain terms that I had overstepped my boundaries. I wondered who snitched on me. I apologized and promised to never kiss Matt again. (Actually, I didn’t kiss him, he kissed me!))

Matt had a younger brother named Francis. Soon Fran and I became an item until I met Dick McSweeney. On the afternoon of my first date with Dick, I read in the local Brooklyn Eagle that Fran was arrested for burglary and sent to Elmira Reformatory.

Oh well. Out with the old, in with the new.