August 16th, 2008 by Kateastrophe

I’m going to attempt, once again, to write two Soap Operas this weekend.  I have to finish the Richard saga ONE of these days, so I might as well add another chapter, and I have too many hilarious kissing stories to miss out on “First Kiss” month!  My lovely Brillig is hosting for the entire month of August, so head on over to her place to check out other kissing stories.  We had SO many good ones last week, I’m chomping at the bit for this week’s stories.  If you have been living under a rock (kidding) and don’t know what Soap Opera Sunday is, check out this post right here for details.  Also, don’t forget that we have an Anonymous Soap Opera Blog for those of you who might be a bit shy. 

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The title of my post comes from a phrase I saw on a t-shirt tonight at Johnny Rockets.  I almost spit out my Diet Coke, wondering where that phrase was when I needed it back in the day.  Feelings are Boring.  Kissing is Awesome.  HAHAHAH

I may have mentioned I was a kissing slut.  I’ve kissed a lot of boys.  Like, 50 a lot.  I started young, during the summer I was 13, and I started the right way, with a real boyfriend and all of that . . . but shortly after that, things got a little, well, wonky.  I spent the better part of 10 years kissing boys mostly BEFORE we’d even had a date, and then wondering what I’d done to deserve their hatred as they never called again.  Just ask Brillig.  It’s hilarious how . . . gooey I was.  I’d go gaga over any guy who would look my way.  I was mocked endlessly for this, because, by definition, a kissing slut shouldn’t care about her kisses.  My girlfriends would tell me that I just needed to either NOT kiss boys so soon or EXPECT them to not care about me if I did.  I worked hard on this . . . sometimes.

I distinctly remember the first guy I kissed where I didn’t have gooey feelings.   It’s a long story . . . and very tied to my best girl Brillig.  See, Brillig is a few years older than me, therefore she started college when I was still in high school.  So she knew college boys.  And naturally she’d introduce them to me.   At BYU, where Brillig attended,  they have an abnormal amount of people who speak foreign languages fluently, thanks much in part to the LDS Church’s missionary program.  So, to encourage the ongoing study of the many languages, they created Language Housing, where students “auditioned” in their specific language to live in that “house” where they ONLY spoke said language.  So Brillig lived in the Italian House, and there were many other “houses.”  Arabic, German, Russian and, the most popular . . . The Spanish House.  The Spanish House was most popular for two reasons.  First, it was the largest, due to the large number of fluent Spanish speakers.  Second, it had the hottest guys.

One night she took me to a church function in the Spanish House and she pointed out the heart throb of the house, Allen, and told me she had a bit of a crush on him.  I took one look at him and immediately shared her crush, but didn’t think much of it.

Cut to several weeks later, and Thanksgiving Break.  I was out of school and had a car.  Brillig was alone at the Italian House because all her roommates had gone home and her parents were far, far away in Argentina running a mission there . . . and BYU, for the most part was like an empty tomb, but there were a few stragglers here and there.  Two particularly interesting stragglers.  Allen, the hot Spanish House guy, and the hot guy from the Russian house who’s name I CANNOT remember for the life of me, but let’s call him Dan, because I don’t use real names here anyway.

After Thanksgiving dinner, my dear buddy Hannah and I decided to head over to Brillig’s place because, let’s be honest, it was WAY more fun at her place than at home.  Brillig’s good friend Matt joined us too.  I don’t remember how on earth it happened, but SOMEHOW we all ended up watching movies in the men’s Russian house with Dan . . . and Allen. Now, it must be said that THREE very interesting Soap Opera’s occurred that night, if I’m not mistaken.  I might be wrong about one of them, but  Brillig and Dan had one of their own, as did Hannah and Matt(I think) . . . but those are not my stories to tell.  Mine is all about Allen and myself.

Did I mention Allen was hot?  He was super duper ohmagosh hot.   His parents were both Mexican but he had been raised in the US and somehow had ended up looking more Italian than Mexican, if you ask me.  Curly dark hair.  Chiseled features.  HOT body.  He was sweet and soft spoken and laughed easily.

The plan for the evening, again, if I remember right, was for BRILLIG to hook up with Allen and me to not really hook up with anyone.  Brillig had the crush . . . I was a wee not-quite-16-year old high school girl.  (Ok I just remembered I totally stole the car and drove over there illegally.  HAHAHA.)   Somehow, things got turned upside down when I ended up on the couch with Allen.  Holding hands.  At that point, I totally knew I was getting some.  And I knew, for the first time, I was having a NCMO (Non-Committal Make-Out) and wouldn’t care if I ever saw this guy again.

I remember it was snowing that night . . . the gorgeous glittery icy snow that makes the world feel magical.  We were in and out of the apartment all night, laughing and playing in the snow, but finally settled in around 3 am to watch a movie.  (Any of you who are familiar with BYU know we were all TOTALLY breaking rules here.  No members of the opposite sex in your apartment after midnight.  Yeah, oops.)  Only we didn’t really watch a movie.

Our first kiss was good.  It wasn’t magical or anything, but he obviously knew what he was doing and was very tender and sweet about it.  I remember that he had very soft lips and smelled mildly of chocolate.  Once we started, we didn’t stop kissing for several hours.  Nothing passionate or out of control, just a great, old fashioned make-out session . . . the kind that leaves you with swollen lips.  We kissed and kissed and kissed, barely taking time to notice the other FOUR PEOPLE in the room.  (I cannot tell you how many times myself or my girlfriends have kissed a guy with another one of our friends, or two, or three, or four . . . in the room.)  We kissed until the sun rose and then fell asleep in each others arms, on the very uncomfortable dorm issued couch.

We woke up around 8:00 in the morning.  I remember looking at the clock and adding up the two hours of sleep I had just  had.  I stretched and rolled over to face Allen and kissed his nose.  I’ll never ever forget the next moment as long as I live.  He squeezed me tight, sighed softly, kissed me on the lips and said

“What was your name was again?”

I left that morning laughing hysterically and never planning on seeing him again.  I asked Brillig a couple of times if he’d asked about me, but he hadn’t.  Fine by me.  Within a week or two I had a serious boyfriend anyway.  I was proud that I had successfully kissed a boy without becoming obsessed and not being sad that I’d never look at him again.

As luck would have it, less than a year later, his parents decided to move to Provo, where Brillig and I had grown up, and they moved into the boundaries of my ward (church congregation).  Don’t worry, Allen moved in with them.  Imagine my surprise when I showed up at church on Sunday to find not only Allen, but his ENTIRE FAMILY sitting in the pew in front of me.  I was a little shocked, but figured it would never be an issue, because like he was going to tell his parents about the random girl he made out with one night.

Apparently I was the more wrong.  He told his entire family.  Including his mother, who just happened to be the leader of my girl’s youth group.  And she made no bones about the fact that she didn’t like me one bit.  The situation was awkward.

It became more awkward when I was asked to speak in church . . . on the same Sunday their entire family was speaking.*  As in, I was the only other person besides Allen-family speaking that day.

I spoke on forgiving and forgetting.

*Those of you familiar with the LDS Church know that we have a one hour meeting, usually at the beginning of church where members of the congregation are asked to prepare and present a talk on an assigned gospel topic.  It’s tradition that a missionary and his/her family speak both before their mission and after they return.**

**Allen’s family went to church with mine for a very long time.  The day I spoke with them was the week before Allem  left to serve his two year mission.  Although I was in college when he returned after two years in the mission field, I happened to be in church with my family the day he and his family spoke again.  Allen gave what has gone down in  history as the strangest talk EVER.  He was allotted 15 minutes to speak and when he came to the pulpit, he just . . . stood there.  Not saying a word.  For 14 minutes.  The leaders kept coming up to ask him if everything was OK and he’d shoo them away, indicating that everything was fine.  After the most uncomfortable 14 minutes of my life, he finally spoke up and made some random point about what’s it’s like for those not baptized (which I didn’t really understand) and sat down.  THAT WAS ALL HE SAID.  To this day, I am still flabbergasted.