First Kiss – a long time coming

Ever since my friend Emma told me how babies are really made I haven’t been able to look at boys in the same way. It was all so simple before I knew. Now being 10 feels different.

Some of my friends have started playing kiss chase. If you get caught you’re supposed to hide in the copse and kiss. The copse is out of bounds. I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want to kiss either. Why can’t we just go back to making daisy chains and playing tag.

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I’m going to my first disco at the weekend. I’m 11 now and in my first year of senior school.

I put on my pointed blue shoes with little stiletto heels. My hair is crimped and sprayed with silver glitter. I wear pink lip-stick and blue mascara. I feel excited and nervous. My reflection stares back at me, keenly aware that where once only a little girl looked back there is now something far more complicated.

At the disco a boy tells me I look like a Christmas tree. I clutch my fizzy orange pop and wait for the music to change. It’s been fast paced and fun, but we all know the end is coming and with it the slow dances.

I dread the thought of being asked to dance. I know a couple of boys want to ask me. My friends have told me. I quite like one boy, but not that much. If I danced I’d have to kiss – urgh, no, I can’t do it! I bolt for the toilets. A friend knocks on the door, ‘Come out Sarah,’ she shouts. ‘He really wants to dance with you.’

‘I just can’t!’ I plead, on the verge of tears. ‘Come and get me when it’s all over.’

I sit in class on Monday listening to the gossip. ‘Why am I so different?’ I think. I just want to run on the field and climb trees. Now all the boys play football together whilst the girls huddle in groups gossiping.

I hear the stories of who kissed who. I also hear about more than kissing. It seems to be the only thing some of my friends talk about.

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I am 16 now. How I’ve got to 16 without a proper kiss is quite a feat! I did kiss a boy a couple of years ago, but it doesn’t really count as I had to do it in a school play. I played the part of a hat check girl in a 1920’s American gangster themed play and had to be literally swept off my feet and kissed by a boy two year’s older than me. I was so nervous about it. The drama director told me to run my hands through the boy’s hair. On the night of the performance ‘Tony’ had so much hair gel in that when I came to run my hands through it I nearly cried out, ‘Yuck!’ in front of a full house. I certainly learned how to act that night!

Anyway, I’m sweet sixteen now and never been kissed. I’m starting to feel like a bit of a freak, not that I’ve been labelled as such. I haven’t been short of offers and have been asked out on a couple of dates, but so far I’ve managed to avoid kissing. I have plenty of friends who are boys and am generally quite popular, but don’t go to the ‘parties’ like some of my other friends who are in the ‘in crowd’. I’m not really ‘in’ that crowd, but a floater on the edge. It’s at those parties that everything happens.

Anyway, I’ve decided to get over my fear and find out what this kissing lark is all about. I’m moving onto Sixth Form College and A-levels. I really can’t put it off any longer.

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I’m at a party and there’s alcohol being passed around. Girls are mostly sat on one side of the room, boys on the other. I’ve never drank much more than a glass of red with a Sunday roast. The alcohol makes me feel less nervous and my good friend Paul is chatting to me. I tell him I’ve never kissed anyone, not properly, not a ‘French’ kiss. He can’t believe it. I smile and say, ‘I know this sounds silly but I’m nervous and don’t know how, can you show me?’

And the rest, dear diary, is history! I can’t believe I held out for so long. It felt wonderful. I liked it so much that I went on to kiss two more boys that same night (I know! What a floozy!).

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The idea for this post came from the writing prompt: ‘Tell the story of a first kiss’: