awkward

In the micro-verse that is early middle and late elementary school there are few girls to choose from, most of which were based out of proximity. My sister had a friend named Shelly. Even at a young age I could tell her face was broken and jagged. Strange angles gave way to muted expressions and rigid skin. In my entirety of exposure to women, school but mostly television, I knew what ugly was. Shelly was it.

In the haze of childhood I cannot remember which summer it was that I was forced into relations with Shelly but I remember it was short lived. My sister wanted to kiss my friend Johnny, a much older best-friend of mine, mostly because of that fact alone. The new couple devised that my first french kiss should involve someone who knew a thing or two about them. The train wreck, Shelly, knew a thing or two.

Her and I sat at the top of the stairs and I questioned her on the physics of it all to delay the inevitable: my tongue would have it’s first visit into a mouth besides my own, and it was into this creature’s face.

The moment was short and forced. I rammed my timid and sloppy mouth against hers, she and I sword fought with our tongues chasing each other around in there for what seemed for too long. I was over it maybe too quick and sat back looking at her timidly, wondering to myself who I would be able to use my newly christened skill with. Her twisted face broke into a smile looking for a reaction.

My sister called up from the living room down and behind us, “Did you kiss?”

This allowed me an opening to move away and not deal with the scrawled maw of my kissing concubine. I answered with an awkwardly cheerful “yeah!”

Shelly and I sat and went over the details of what I could do to improve and “what most girls like.” The bottom of the stairs and the front door where more interesting and kept the conversation going to placate the girl on my left.

Later, Johnny and I left to play video games and talk in private about how awesome kissing was. I tried to blind out the fact that he was talking about my sister and I was talking about the one girl everyone knew to be fiendishly gruesome. It was the last time I was left kissing Shelly and the last time he kissed my sister.