So I keep a list of the girls I kissed. Mostly I just every once in a while add a journal entry if I've kissed a girl or two in the last six months, and just add them to the list. So I was looking for my journal entry from this winter where I did this and couldn't find it. Dug up an old journal though from four years ago and found the entry with the list in it.
The third girl on the list I can't remember. At all. It's not that I can't remember the circumstances of the kissing. I can't remember her. Drawing a total blank. I have been kind of obsessing about this a little since I discovered this last night. Well, not a complete blank. I have a vague recollection of ... well what do you know? As I write this I am actually recalling the incident.
That's trippy. For some reason I attach a lot of importance to remembering this sort of thing. Point of pride maybe? Or just that I like to think of my kisses as important enough in my life that I remember them? Yeah, I think mostly the latter. Granted, in the grand scheme of things, and even in my life, that drunken make-out session in the lounge of Carter Hall on the UI campus probably has about as much real impact on my life as the price of sorghum in Mongolia. Seriously though, if I'm willing to let someone stick their tongue down my throat it feels like I ought to at least remember it.
Okay, so it's not really that prurient. Here's the story, which all of a sudden I can remember.
Spring of 88 I was seventeen and living in a dorm in Gault Hall with Doug a music major who was pretty much already engaged at that point. I was a freshman. A guy moved in across the hall from me, Chris Olson. He was apparently a former right-wing Republican type who came out as a homosexual and became a lefty. I vaguely recall he was left-handed as well. Really cool guy though. Anyway, I was 17 and he told me he could get me in to Murdoc's, local college bar.
He was pretty smooth actually, although in retrospect the bouncer probably knew what Chris was up to. Basically we showed up, Chris chatted up the bouncer. Asked if it was happening there that night. He said it was, but Chris said something about maybe it was cooler somewhere else. Bouncer let us in. Hung out in there drinking. Met this girl Laura, who was also, shock of shocks, underage. We talked. I don't remember how we ended up back at her dorm, but she had a roommate so Chris, Laura and I hung out in the lounge and watched bad movies.
At some point, she and I started making out. It was really cool, except that I was really really tired. I just wanted to go to sleep by that point. Chris made me leave and go back to my dorm.
In any case, it was the only time I kissed her. She was kind of chunky and plain looking, and that sort of thing mattered to me a lot more back then (I was 17!). Chris had decided that he wasn't going to let me have sex with her. (I would have beat you out by an extra year if that had happened, 
mrsloane!) He was protecting me from my beer goggles.
By the way, Chris was the first out gay person I knew. There were at least 3 gay men in my high school class, but they were all in the closet then. One it was pretty obvious he was gay. Another was known to a few, and suspected by a few more. The third, none of us had any idea at the time. Ran into him at my 10 year. Someone was asking him if he was married or had kids. His response: "Nope. Gay!" Chris though was pretty cool. I already knew that my views on homosexuality were pretty accepting, especially compared with my mother who was extremely any-gay. But Chris pretty much cemented my acceptance of homosexuality as an okay thing. I think he was the only friend from college I liked enough to ever let stay with me at my parents' when I road-tripped home.