First Kiss

"I remember quite clearly the first girl I ever kissed. I was very young and inexperienced, no older than 13. No younger than 13 either. In fact, I was 13.

She was a very self-assured woman, slightly older, around 16. She wore confidence like a dress, and she wore her dress like a dress, so it was like she was wearing two dresses, but both matched her rose-colored shoes.

Her hair was long and feathery, golden, not real gold but just blonde, though calling it 'golden' makes it sound more poetic, I like to think. Her lips were fat, naturally so, not like mine that were still fat from that playground fight with the ugly kid a day before. No, her lips were beautiful, like sweet candy wax lips and you wanted to taste but not eat because that would be disgusting.

'Do you want to kiss me?' she asked. I'm no fool, so I told her I did, though I was very nervous.

I could tell she was very reluctant, wearing a shy smile and a twinkling sparkle in her eye as she tried to play all normal about it. And, kiddies, that li'l devil I was, that 13-year-old Sampson L. Hartwig, I leaned in and planted the most fantastic kiss on her lips.

'That's an extra dollar,' she reminded me, but it was worth every penny as she put her clothes back on while I watched to make sure no flatfeet cops were cruising by."

Penpal
"In my younger days I had a penpal named LeShandy. He was a boy roughly the same age and lived in a faraway place I had never heard of called Iceland. Sometimes he would mention, to my surprise, that Iceland was very, very green. And he had been... (10/29/01)

Penny Candy
"In my childhood there was a penny-candy store on the corner, run by a rail-thin immigrant who was constantly in jail when the country was at war. I would stop by there with all my boyhood pals and we would plunk fat copper pennies on the counter... (10/15/01)

Darby
"Uncle Trey had a dog that we all liked a lot, a dog by the name of Darby. He was a small white dog with wiry hair, I think he was a Jack Russell terrier. Darby used to love to dance on his hind legs. He'd do that for hours on end; all you had to do... (10/1/01)