| Dec 15, 2008 @ 5:17 AM |
The First Kiss
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custis
Posts: 1,890
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Rarer and rarer come the times when I pause to thumb through the pages of my memory. The book is yellow and the pages cracked. But if I turn them slowly and read carefully, the light comes back. I see again the warm summer days of childhood and adolescence. With some coaxing the memories will start flowing like a warm river through my mind, leaving a sad smile on my lips and wet streaks on my face. At such times in the odd hours I can only find relief from the poignant torrent by writing it all down, sharing it with the faceless friends I have never
met. It is just one more story, out of the millions upon millions that will never be known.
As I recall, I first met my childhood friend Norman in 1972. He moved into a pink house across the street from where I lived. His divorced mother was an attractive Philipino lady, raising Norm and his two younger sisters Theresa, and Marcella, alone. His estranged father was a white American veteran of the Korean war.
Norman was small for his age and that was not good in my neighborhood, for it was full of rough kids who preyed on the smaller and younger. They had once preyed upon me until at age 14, I became bigger and muscular enough to dissaude them. Norm was not so fortunate.
I was kind of the crazy kid of the neighborhood. I spent a lot of my time climbing trees because I believed it would strengthen me and improve my athletic abilities. I also climbed them for the sheer enjoyment of getting as high up as I could and looking down upon the world. From the tops of the tallest firs in the neighborhood I could see the ocean and the distant sand dunes of the North Spit, a long penninsula separating my home town of Coos Bay from the Pacific Ocean. I had read a lot of the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and still nursed fantasies of being like Tarzan. I never learned to leap from tree to tree like my vine-swinging hero, but I did learn to race up and down them with amazing speed. I learned to drop to the ground from distances as high as twelve feet with scarcely a jar or a sound. This had the ability to unnerve some of my friends, such as my best bud Mike who would exasperatedly say "stop that, dammit! You scare the shit out of me," when I suddenly appeared from nowhere at his side as he walked under a tree.
Thus it came to pass one day that I was in the branches of a large alder when Norm came walking down the street. He was directly beneath me when he was accosted by one of the neighborhood bullies, a kid with curly red hair named Chris. I did not make out much of what was said except that Chris kept calling Norman a "Jap" and was pushing him and threatening to beat him up. At that time I did not know Norman from Adam, but I did know Chris and I did not care for his bullying up on the small guys. I dropped from the tree.
It was one of those exceedingly rare moments in time where everything worked exactly the way I wanted. I landed directly between them in a low crouch, the fingers of one hand reaching down to help my feet absorb the landing, then
straightening up to look Chris in the eye. "Leave him alone." I said it matter-of-factly without malice, a simple directive from a physically superior being. Chris looked totally flustered. He looked back at me for a moment, badly wanting to say or try something, but being well aware of the fact that I could easily wring his neck, he finally backed up and walked away, muttering loudly only when he was sure he was no longer close enough for me to grab him and kill him.
There I was, standing there with this oriental kid who was over a foot shorter than me. He flashed a white smile of gratitude as his breath whooshed out in relief and he simply said "Thanks, but now he will kill me for sure."
"No he won't," I said. "I'll make sure of that." That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with one of the finest guys I have ever known. Before long we did just about everything together and guys like Chris soon learned that Norm was off limits to their bullying.
Norman's mother Norma worked at night and it was not long before she came to know and trust me, as silly as I was. She asked me one night if I would not mind looking in on the kids now and then while she was gone. Since I was often there playing cards or Monopoly with Norm anyway, I told her I would.
We would sit up till all hours in the summer, playing games or watching the all-night monster movies on San Francisco Channel 44. We had our ups and downs. Sometimes we got tired of looking at one another and had spats. I was not always the easiest kid to get along with. Being the larger and older kid, I sometimes naturally assumed without a thought about it, that I was automatically superior and the authority. This did not always set well with Norm. He would give me a verbal shakedown and after a brief time of being angry, we would be friends again.
Time passed in its ceaseless way and our friendship grew solid and ever more permanent. I had never had a younger brother and he had never had an older brother, or any brother. Through each other we came to know those feelings.
The summer of 1973 came and for me, it was probably the single brightest summer of my youth. I turned fifteen. I was king of the world and invincible. Each day was a new adventure.
[Edited on 12/15/2008 5:24 AM]
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| Dec 15, 2008 @ 5:19 AM |
The First Kiss |
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custis
Posts: 1,890
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Part Two
I became ever more aware of girls, but in my
teenage awkwardness I had no idea how to approach them or speak to them, though I longed for a girlfriend of my own to hold in my arms and recieve the love that I so yearned to give. Some girls openly liked me, but never the right ones. For example, there was Roxanne down the street, who's hair looked like a drugged buzzard's nest. She must have weighed close to 300 lbs. There was also Sandra a
block or so farther down. Sandra was nice enough in her own way, but her teeth were the color of an overripe lemon and she looked like she had never bathed in her entire life. Meanwhile, the shapely young beauties that I ached for did not seem to notice me at all.
One bright morning my life was changed forever. I was awakened early by music coming from the living room. My mother had awoke in one of her cheerful music moods and was busily going through the rounds of her 45 rpm vinyls. I groaned loudly and buried my head under my pillow, unable to block out the awful sound of Tony Orlando and Dawn singing Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree. There was also Neil Diamond singing "Song Sung Blue, Englebert Humperdink crooning Release Me and a number of love songs by Elvis. There was nothing to do except to accept the fact that I would not be able to sleep any longer and get up.
Having showered and dressed, I stepped outside to greet the brilliant summer morning, and was frozen in my tracks. Norman, his mother and sisters, stood in their yard, talking to the most beautiful human female I had ever layed eyes upon. Since her features were oriental and her skin the same lovely shade of olive-brown as Norma's, I correctly assumed that she was a relative. She was stunning in form-fitting white pants and a loose top, her long, raven-black hair winding it's way down her back like a cascade of dark water, shimmering with blue highlights. It is difficult to recall now, but if memory serves, she stood at about five-foot two inches, every inch a study in perfection.
To my horror, Norm spotted me and instantly they were all calling for me to come over to them across what now seemed like an ocean of black asphalt. The girl turned and looked at me and even across the hundred feet or so that separated us, I was sucked into the dark depths of her sloe eyes as if my very soul had been torn out of my body by an irrisistable force. I stupidly placed one foot ahead of
the other, making my way across the street like an awkward zombie with a corn cob up his ass.
Norma eagerly introduced us. "Wendo, (that was her Phillipino way of saying my name) this is Susan." Susan held out her hand with a brilliant smile, saying "I've heard all about you," in a voice like the sound of a laughing mountain brook. I took her slender fingers and said something that sounded like "Bubooga bidifilioglop," or something like that. My tongue had instantly become three sizes too big for my mouth and my vocal chords had obviously been replaced with those of a bullfrog.
In one split instant Susan had become the total focus of my life. In the time it had taken me to stumble across the street and shake her hand, she had become my meaning for existence. But alas, even at that instant I knew nothing could ever come of it because I had no knowledge of the ways of love or how to speak of it. Like the other objects of desire that my eyes had rested upon, she would be a jewel that I could look at but dare not touch, an exotic creature with skin like honey and eyes of topaz.
I was absolutely aghast as Norm began to recount how he had first met me, when I had dropped out of a freaking tree. Oh my gawd! He is telling her I was in a tree! I suddenly hoped my dear friend would swallow his tongue and have to be rushed to a hospital. At least that way she would know nothing about me being in trees and in the ensuing chaos I could escape. Thus I met Susan.
Like Norman, Susan's father was a white American and she had been born and raised in Oklahoma. Though she looked a bit more oriental than Norm, I could still see the moderating influence of her father's genes in her lovely face and the shape of her body. I will never understand why some people speak of occidental faces as being expressionless. There were lovely depths in Susan's eyes that would have put Elizabeth Taylor to shame. The curves of her soft, full lips were a masterpiece of cupidic splendor and the lines of her hips and breasts seemed to have been designed for the sole purpose of making me insane.
Susan had come from far Oklahoma to spend a month with her aunt. A month I would never forget. We showed Susan all the sights of the neighborhood, walked down by the bay, into the woods, took her swimming in small Tarheel lake out by Barview. In all that time I was never alone with her, but my infatuation grew by leaps and bounds. Day by day the brief month passed and I soon became almost frantic in my desire to take my new love into my arms, refusing to try because I knew a lovely eighteen year old girl would never want anything to do with a gangly fifteen year old boy who had a crazy crush on her.
[Edited on 12/15/2008 5:23 AM]
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| Dec 15, 2008 @ 5:21 AM |
The First Kiss
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custis
Posts: 1,890
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Part Three
One day Norman and I stood at the top of Fulton street, looking downhill at the bay that glowed gold and copper in the late afternoon sun. I was in turmoil and Norm finally looked at me and said "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"I'm in love with her," I blurted out, instantly regretting saying it.
"Why don't you tell her?" He said impatiently. "You've been around her every day for three weeks. Are you afraid of her?" I looked at him wide-eyed and gave no answer. Suddenly I knew that whatever would happen, for better or worse, would happen that night. I had never before felt so determined in my entire young life.
The night came as it usually did, with Norma at work and Norman and I playing cards, this time Susan and his sisters Marcella and Theresa were playing with us. I have no idea how it happened. Susan and I sat next to one another and somewhere along the way her hand ended up in mine. I do not remember the words we said to one another, but I know that we were oblivious to Norman and the girls. We tried to continue playing cards but it gradually fell apart as I took to kissing her hand like some sort of retarded ape licking sugar off of a log. Norm and his
sisters sat looking this way and that, at the ceiling, at the floor, out the windows, and gradually found excuses to go do other things while I continued my moronic oral adoration of her smooth brown hand. My brain had turned off and I was totally encased in a new and magic world. From somewhere, as from a great distance, I heard Theresa gigglingly saying, "Why don't you kiss her?"
I looked up to see Theresa vanishing down the hallway and then looked at Susan in my foggy daze. She gazed back at me, magic glinting in the depths of her brown eyes, the sparks of deep fires sparkling in their shadows. Our faces slowly moved together and my lips touched her generous cupid's bow of a mouth. My soul was on fire and I took her into my arms, where she stayed until the light of morning
began to light the room. I simply could not get enough of her sweet mouth, nor apparently, could she get enough of mine. We kissed and kissed endlessly, exploring every tiny bit of sensation that could be squeezed out of the act of our lips being pressed together and our arms around one another. As if it were yesterday I can remember her faint, exotic scent, like some sort of subtle oriental spice
eminating from her body.
With the morning light we somehow managed to pull apart. I went home in a mindless trance. As I recall, it was about three days before we were able to be alone again. In the narrow space between Norma's house and her neighbor's fence we stood against the wall, holding one another and kissing for hours. Through it all I was the perfect gentleman. Embarrassed by my raging erection, I struggled to keep it from pressing against her when we embraced. In retrospect I realize that we should have taken a walk to the beach or the woods or anywhere rather than awkwardly making out against the side of a house. We stayed there till her aunt at last called her in to supper. Not wanting to impinge upon their family time, I
stayed away for the rest of the night.
The next day was the day of sadness. Susan found time and met me outside and again we shared kisses at the side of the house. That night she would be boarding the Greyhound bus to Oklahoma. After a while I let her go so that she could get her things ready and she would spend some time with me later before leaving. Sometime during the interval of time between, Norma came to me and asked if I
would go with them to the bus depot, just me, Susan and her. Norma's large dark eyes were unusually solemn and I have the feeling that she was a bit worried about this impetuous gangling teenage boy who had fallen so hard for her niece, who was after all, an eighteen-year old adult woman.
The ride to the bus depot was like an apocalypse for me. I have never tried to imagine what had been in Susan's mind from the day we met, whether it was just a summer game for her or if she really loved me in her own way, or if she felt she had created a Frankenstein by allowing me to kiss her. I do not know and it does not matter at this late date. If I had to say, I would say that she really cared, at least somewhat. When I let go of her soft brown hand, she walked backwards onto the bus looking at me. Once inside, she looked at me through each window as she walked to her seat near the back of the vehicle. Outside, I walked all the way with her, my eyes on hers. Big boys don't cry, so I stood impassively as the bus roared to life and pulled out, keeping my eyes on hers until we could no longer see one another. I felt Norma's arm slip around my shoulder and we walked back to the car.
I remember the quietness of the summer night when we got back home. I bade Norma goodnight and thanked her for letting me come along. As she went inside of her house I walked across the street and climbed into my brother's 20-foot glass boat, one of my nighttime sanctuaries when I wanted to be alone and think. I sat there for a long time on a padded bench seat, numbly staring at the stars and
hearing the roar of the distant ocean, the passing of cars on a highway at the bottom of the hill, the rattling and clanking of a lumber mill a mile away on the bay. I awoke shivering, to a foggy, gray morning.
[Edited on 12/15/2008 5:22 AM]
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| Dec 15, 2008 @ 5:21 AM |
The First Kiss |
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custis
Posts: 1,890
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Part Four
Oklahoma is a long ways from Oregon. I tried to keep the hopeless romance alive with letters that I wrote faithfully every day, waiting by the mailbox for letters in return. Eventually I got the one where she said she was getting married, to the son of a preacher.
In the nineties, Norman and I managed to get back in touch. He lived in a small town about an hour away from me and we would visit one another and hit the town together. The small, thin boy had grown into a husky man who towered over me, but his eyes and bright friendly smile have remained the same. One night when we were leaving a nightclub, both of us pretty well smashed, he told me that his mother had passed away. The next day it seemed unreal, as if I had dreamed it. Embarrassingly enough, the next time we were together I had to ask him if he had really told me that.
It had been more than twenty-five years since I had seen Norma, and the full import of her death took a while to sink in on me. I felt deep regret that I had never had a chance, as an adult, to just sit down and talk to her. I had never taken the time to look her up and thank her for being patient and understanding with this crazy kid who had always hung around her house in the seventies. Most of all, I wish I could have thanked her for bringing both Susan and Norman into my life. One, a temporary gift out of my dreams, the other, a life-long brother.
I have asked Norm now and then about Susan and he just smiles and says she is fine. I asked him if he could get me a picture or two of her sometime. I got the same smile and non-commital nod. Perhaps he is wiser than I and knows that some things should just be left alone. I have loved others time and time again since that long gone summer with Susan thirty-five years ago, but it makes the memory of
of her tender lips and soft eyes no less poignant, no less special. It has taken a long time, but the tears that I refused to let fall that night at the bus depot have finally found their way onto my cheeks.
It is night here, again. Outside, the stars are in the same places they were in 1973, at least from my earthly viewpoint. I look at them and ask myself why I bother to write about these things, but I know the answer. I write of them so that they will live on and not be forgotten. Someone else will read them and perhaps feel the tiniest bit of what I have felt. Clouds are obscuring the stars
and a gentle snowfall has begun. It is time to go to bed.
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| Dec 15, 2008 @ 6:49 PM |
The First Kiss
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painter007
Posts: 17,854
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Nice post Custis........but Id like to add................just shut up and kiss me.... 
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| Dec 16, 2008 @ 5:13 PM |
The First Kiss |
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Silver1961
Posts: 4,326
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The First Oral Kiss
Thought I'd spice it up a bit 
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| Dec 16, 2008 @ 5:23 PM |
The First Kiss
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KatiefromStafford
Posts: 2,750
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Is there any way to find out who she married? With the internet, you can find anyone, if you look enough...
just a thought..
K 
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| Dec 16, 2008 @ 7:34 PM |
The First Kiss |
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custis
Posts: 1,890
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"Is there any way to find out who she married?"
Why would I want to know? She is now a 53 yr old woman, probably has 10 kids, I have never asked Norm how many she has, but they do believe in having big families. Best to keep my memories and leave her with her privacy.
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