First Love, First Kiss, First Lesson Learned

That first kiss--De-lish! Smooth like Hagendaaz! I was in my fourteenth year, too green to see his flaws. I, the skinny Yankee teen with glasses on her face met the proverbial "preacher's son" (I doubt in God's good grace). On the brink of womanhood that summer, still a child, butter on cob of Iowa corn, I melted when he smiled. He, my best friend's cousin, was older, fun, and tall, entrancing me with teasing eyes and sexy southern drawl. Snuggling in the car's back seat, I got a secret thrill hearing on the radio, "Won't you marry me, Bill?" Adolescent daydreams wrapped in tune of "Wedding Bell Blues," the music, his accomplice, helped him with his ruse. The kisses were delightful though my memory now is dim of the moment when precisely all changed upon his whim. Unhappily, one balmy Alabama night I learned the kisses I enjoyed most with him he later spurned. Soft and playful smooching, I learned while in the South, would be replaced by lustful tongue that slithered in my mouth! (how I felt as a young girl anyway; it takes a special guy to pull off "proper" French kissing AND also the first kind I liked so much!)