Allison's Private Journal

March 23, 2003
around 6:45PM

Dear Journal,

guess what–I got my 1st kiss today! Well ya I’m special right, I’ve been to first.

Unfortunately it wasn’t that great. I thought my first kiss would be really special and romantic, but, basically, it wasn’t. It was in my garage for God sakes lol. And um, Josh is a pretty bad kisser. Not that I would know from experience or anything, but I could tell. He kisses kinda fast, like his tongue was just in and out (sev repeatedly), It’s just not good. And he was using way too much of it. ugh.

It’s kinda weird how he does stuff. like he has set plays. He followed me into the garage when I went to get a ball so he could kiss me (which I would’ve liked more if he knew how to kiss) (oh ya I bit his tongue a little like it said to do in a magazine if they’re using too much tongue lol) and like I was reading a letter Charlene brought for mom and dad about Chuck’s surprise party and he was right next to me w/ his hand on my butt. Come on man, Charlene was just driving out of the driveway!

He wanted to go walk towards the river, prob so we could make out, but I’m like we’ll do that some other day. lol denied! I know he likes me, but he could be a little more subtle, ya know? And like I went to sit w/ him on the rock steps and he had his arm around me, which I don’t really mind, but then he was like rubbing my leg and stuff. hello! parents prob. looking out the window duh! w/e well gotta take my shower so I’ll write later.

—–

Talk about anticlimactic! Isn’t this what we’ve been waiting for for, what, fourteen years? Be careful what you wish for, Little Allison. Be careful what you motherfucking wish for.

Thankfully, despite the lack of fireworks and rainbow-shitting unicorns that appeared when my lips first touched those of a young, spry male, I was prepared. I had been consuming CosmoGirl for years at this point, along with Seventeen Magazine and any other publication that might give me the knowledge I need to make a man fall in love. Even Girls’ Life, the Girl Scouts magazine, offered romantic advice for tweens occasionally. I’m not ashamed to admit I practiced like a motherfucker on the shower walls. So even though Josh sucked at kissing and he was a little rape-y in manner, I was willing to work with him. Trust, this is not the last time you will hear of Little Allison getting her gams rubbed forcefully in public and liking it (in a confusing, I-don’t-think-I-should-like-this way).

Which brings up a topical topic–that magical, grey-area land of sexual assault. Yup, we’re going there. As someone who grew up vying for the attention of young men as if it were equivalent to water and nutrients, the kind of attention I got from Josh on this oh-so-special day was thrilling. It was what I’d wanted all along, right? What I was asking for, perhaps? And being outwardly, physically pursued gave me a rush. I can still feel the butterflies I got, a combination of fear and hormonal raging I’d only experienced in my wildest dreams at that point. It was dangerously hot. This was my introduction to the physical side of relationships, and, as happens often in writing this blog, I’ve never deeply analyzed before how my first kiss might have impacted my experience with the rest of the kisses down the road. I don’t think in retrospect I should have felt the way I did.

How I wish I’d felt was repulsed that someone, even my “official” boyfriend, would lock me into kissing them by bear-hugging me (Josh was a good foot taller than me and a big, athletic dude). There wasn’t anything romantic about it. We didn’t lock eyes and smile at one another, like I’d read would happen in my magazines. We didn’t both lean in slowly. He certainly did not ask if he could kiss me. What actually transpired was he followed me into the dark garage, opened up for a hug, wrapped me up in a big, feely hug, and smooshed his mouth on mine when I moved my head to look up at him with Disney princess eyes, waiting for *that moment*. He stuck his tongue right in my mouth, in and out several times; it felt like a small, slimey banana that tasted a bit on the garlicky side (typically, my first thought when this event crosses my mind is “what the fuck did he eat that day?”). All the while, I’m pretty positive my father was inside the house. Both of my parents might have been, but any traditionally-raised lady from Middleboro, Massachusetts, has much more fear in her heart that her father will catch her making out than her mother. Especially when your mother has already told you that when she was in eighth grade, a boy she was making out with at a party put her hand down his pants. Thankfully, this did not turn out to be a family curse and I escaped eighth grade with only mouth-to-mouth and aggressive thigh-rubbing experiences.

I don’t mean to lament on my first kiss as an unromantic event. I do mean to point out that my state of mind about physical relationships, and this guy’s tactics, were wrong. Entering the era of sexual exploration on this blog is fucking terrifying to me–I repeat, FUCKING TERRIFYING. I am sharing real life stories here that affect me profoundly to this day. While it’s not my favorite part of myself, I am someone who tends to live in the past and the future simultaneously (some call it struggling with depression and anxiety) unless I make a conscious effort to stay in the present, which today, right now, means writing this blog. In terms of reliving the past, I constantly see how events I otherwise would have forgotten have made me who I am today–and that ain’t always pretty. A lot of the time, it’s totally fucking upsetting. Like right now, realizing that my favorite pastime at a particularly dark stage in my life–“going out” (binge drinking) and “meeting guys” (engaging in a range of sexual activities with young men I knew or didn’t know to a variety of degrees)–was even a thing because my foundation was broken. My perception of physical love was, for a very long time, totally fucked up and wrong.

Part of my goal in spreading the APJ story and expanding this project is to help you guys look back in similar ways and better yourselves through reflection, but another part of this all is that I want to make sure my generation protects our girls. I want my daughter or daughters, or sons, or my friend’s kids or a million kids watching some Youtube-of-2030 channel to be brought up with better foundations than I was when it comes to sex and self-perception and really knowing what’s good in life. It’s not how hot of a guy you can snag as a freshman in high school. It’s certainly not how well you keep up with the trend-setting crowd in rounding the bases. What’s good in life is so much more, which, thankfully, I did have a grasp on, but putting physical milestones at the forefront of the teenage mind, rather letting sex be an organic process that comes about when you’ve met only the special fellows or ladies (which, I must note, should really be part of the self-discovery process and not the other way around–discovering yourself in a relationship will get you in an exceptionally sticky predicament from which you may never escape–TRUST!), is dangerous physically and emotionally. Being consumed by the race to losing your v-card is just, ugh, just RELAX.

As a teenager, all I wanted was love. I actually did an okay job of pursuing that without fucking around (no pun intended) before I met the first One. Things got a little confused down the road, but I’m thankful to say I made it through the fire. Still, as my ex-boss says with a you-are-such-a-25-year-old headshake, “There’s always fire.” And so we’ve got to remind ourselves always where we came from, where we need to be, and, so importantly, how far we’ve come.