In my last post, we delved into the deep dark abyss that is my dating life. Today we’ll continue to poke at the soft underbelly of the beast with a broom stick and discuss one of my more traumatic experiences, the most awkward first kiss ever.
As I mentioned before, my high school didn’t have many dateable girls, so the pickings were slim. I’m sort of a unique character (as if you couldn’t tell) and high school isn’t always kind to individuals. I did well enough, I suppose. I got dates for all the major dances and even managed to get a girl for my arm on Saturday nights here and there, but nothing worth mentioning. I did get drug through the mud for about a month prior to Senior Prom by a cheerleader, but I learned a lesson on that I’ll never forget.
Anyway, I made it to college, and I was good at that. There was room for individuals in college. I started playing in a band and was having a blast. Near the start of my second year, I was at a party at Wiley and Deuce’s apartment and I met this girl Angela. She was a tiny little thing, and even though we were trashed, she had this smile that just sucked me in. I didn’t ask her out that night, but she invited me to her lake house the next day. I declined, because we were so drunk that I didn’t think she’d remember the next day and then I’d just look like a jackass.
A week or two later, I was over at Roman’s dorm and I knew that Angela lived in the same building. So, I wandered around her floor until I found her room. This may seem creeper-ish, but at our school, everyone in the dorms had a dry erase board on the door so you could leave them messages. This was very similar to the Facebook wall nowdays. If someone told you where they lived, you were free to go write on their door, just like you’re free to add them on Facebook. I wrote a little note on her door saying I enjoyed meeting her and I hoped to hang out with her again. No big deal.
I didn’t see her again and I’d sorta forgotten about the whole thing until one night I was over at Deuce’s place for his birthday and Angela and her friend had baked him a birthday cake. They brought it over and we all ended up drinkin and having a good time. The evening wore on and her and I ended up all hugged up on the couch. No wallowing around or nothing, just big spoon/little spoon. I wasn’t gonna miss the opportunity this time, so I asked her out in the morning. She agreed.
Our first date was pretty uneventful, just dinner at Applebee’s (the finest eating establishment in Milledgeville at the time) and then to the bar with some friends for Tuesday night karaoke (a Terrell Tigers tradition). Because I completely lacked testicular fortitude, I did not kiss her that evening even after I walked her home. I did get another date out of the deal, however.
Our second date was dinner and a trip to the fair with Deuce and his ladyfriend at the time. It went pretty well and she and I wound up at my apartment watching a movie (The Quick and The Dead, if I recall correctly). We were laying on the couch and her head was resting against my jaw. It was at this moment that I sacked up and decided that I better kiss this girl.
It’s at this juncture that we should rewind back to my freshman year of college. I was playing football with a bunch of guys from my dorm and I’d just made a rather spectacular catch. As I was racing for the endzone, there was one guy in front of me and I tried to lower my shoulder to knock him out of the way. At the same moment, he leaned in to tackle me, driving the top of his head into the jaw bone on the right side of my face. Instantly I felt this searing pain and my jaw was all crooked. I couldn’t hardly open my mouth and I couldn’t explain to everyone why I was writhing in pain on the ground. I smacked the opposite jaw bone and my jaw cracked back into place. I wandered back to the dorms and spent the next three days holding an ice pack to my swollen face and eating nothing but jello.
Ok, back to the couch with Angela. We’ve been lying there for about half an hour with her head resting on my jaw. For a year or two after that football injury if I laid a certain way with my face resting on the pillow, my jaw would pop out of socket. It didn’t really hurt, it was just this thing and I’d have to kinda smack it back in. Well Angela’s head had been resting ever so gently on my jaw for the last half hour, and guess what? That thing popped out of socket. Actually, it slid out of socket real sneaky so I didn’t notice. I turned over to kiss Angela and as our mouths met for the first time I realized, “Shit! My jaw is out of socket!”
It was terrible. This was the most embarassment I’d ever felt. I could only open my mouth about half an inch and to her, I’m sure it seemed like she was making out with a stroke victim. If this happened now, I’d just have smacked it back into place and laughed it off, but back then I was scared to death. Here I was with a girl that I really liked, trying to make out, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why God hated me so much.
Thankfully, the make out session was short lived (not what I wanted, but what I needed). We ended up passing out on the couch and when I took her back to her dorm the next morning, I successfully kissed her, mildly redeeming myself.
A few weeks later, we were nearing what you might call a relationship, and were on a road trip to Orlando with another of her friends. On the ride home, we got to telling embarassing stories. I told this one and I’d like to think that’s what sealed the deal for me. Unlike many of my dating stories, this one has a mostly happy ending. I ended up dating Angela for 3 years. Don’t ask me what went wrong, I just woke up one day and the sun no longer rose in the east
[...] Dating: The Kiss of Death – What’s this? A dating story with a happy ending? Episode two of the Dating Trilogy. [...]