Bad Kissing

The worst kiss I’ve had was with the most attractive boy I’ve ever kissed. He was tall with a solid build, luxurious brown hair and dark blue eyes. He looked like a young Tom Cruise but hotter and I would come to find out during our date that he lived in new York City for a few years and worked as a model. The whole package was impressive and I was excited about the prospects until his tongue lolled out of his mouth and licked my face by way of introduction.

We were driving to a restaurant for dinner and we were paused at a stop sign. He leaned over the small console dividing the truck’s bench seat in half and gazed at me with his blue eyes. At that moment, with the light from the setting sun filling the cab and framing the former model, the image of the Beast’s face after his transformation back to human form in the Disney movie popped into my head.

“Would it be okay if I kissed you?” he asked as we sat at a stop sign. “Wow,” I thought. Nobody had ever asked for my permission before.
“Sure,” I said.

After a sopping pink sponge scrubbed the inside of my mouth clean in three seconds flat, I realized that I should have said no. I thanked the Lord that we were only temporarily stopped instead of parked on Lover’s Lane. I would have been stranded then and would have had to resort to white lies or a crazy scenario that involved me climbing into another vehicle and begging the driver to take me away, far away and quickly, from the make out marauder.

I don’t remember how I got through the rest of the date without kissing him. Without the force field emanating from the intimidation factor of the “first kiss,” my mouth was vulnerable to his unwelcome advances. However, I’d like to think that I was perfectly nice to him during the rest of the evening. I smiled and laughed and pacified him by holding his hand. I didn’t lead him on. Rather, I didn’t want to ruin his day by telling him what a horrible kisser he really is. I’ll leave that chore for someone else.

“A bad kiss is bad, but a good kiss is great,” my friend Vanita said.

I couldn’t agree more. Concerning the model, I decided that the women he’s ever been in a comfortable relationship with were too struck by his physical perfection to critique his romantic mastications, and I decided after the date was over that I wasn’t going to waste my breath because there will only be just the one kiss.

But I remain optimistic. Somewhere out there, there’s a man whose kisses I’d hold up traffic for.