me’s blog

I’m starting this blog not knowing what I want to write about, but feeling like I have to top what I wrote last time.  Which is really stupid if I think about it because, well, if I could top myself, I’d never leave the house.  (If that makes no sense to you, send me a message and I’ll diagram it out.)

I just asked my recovery sponsor what he thinks I should write about, and of course he chimes in that sex is always a good topic.  True dat, but since my sister is reading this, I think I’ll keep from getting any more graphic than I did in that first paragraph.  For now.

Then he says I should talk about my first kiss.  Ahhh.  Now we’re talkin’.

It was the spring of my 11th grade year, and I had just transferred to Thomas Stone High School in Waldorf, MD, where my rockin’ cool mom was a vice principal.  Wait, let’s back up.  See, I had previously been enrolled at Oxon Hill High School, nestled in a charming area whose name some of you may recognize as a ghettolicious pioneer in getting P.G. County’s crime rate mentioned in the first five minutes of nearly every local news program.  And while Oxon HIll High School did have a handful of really incredible teachers, it was plagued by an increasingly violent population, absolutely no worthwhile after-school activities unless you were in the gospel choir or the step squad, and dark dingy narrow hallways that were intially designed to hold half of the school’s currently swollen enrollment.  The reason I was going there was because they had a Science & Tech magnet program that was supposed to provide the best opportunity for a decent education in our part of the county.  Those of you who know me, try picturing me rotting away in Chemistry and Engineering courses.  It was not a match.

So during the fall semester of that year, I was miserable.  My mom would come home from work everyday and tell me all these stories about band concerts and choir concerts and a theater arts CLASS (!) and all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do with Physics or the ghetto, and I was more than just a tad jealous.  I remember on Halloween she came home and told me all about what the kids had dressed up as, and apparently there was one sassy-ass girl that she actually had to send home because she’d shown up to school clad in a cone-bra as Madonna.  Nice!  The closest thing to a Halloween costume that anyone at my high school had donned was pimp-meets-drug-dealer chic.  And I don’t think that was a costume.

I just realized I’m utterly incapable of telling a short story.  Sorry folks.  I’m no Poe.

Anyway, at some point in December, Mom took me to a production of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" that was being performed by the students at her school, and I was FLOORED.  An actual PLAY?  And, um, SHAKESPEARE?  With a dream ballet set to a gorgeous PETER GABRIEL song?  Inconceivable!  I went to visit the school for a full day of classes the following week, and a couple days later I was enrolled there.

I immediately gravitated toward the drama crowd, and one day was introduced to a brassy, voluptuous young woman named Michele Windsor.  She was like, "Oh yeah, your mom sent me home on Halloween ‘cuz I was dressed as Madonna and she didn’t want my tits hangin’ out."  Hee!  I don’t know if it was my inner gay or what, but Madonna and I immediately became fast friends, and her friends sort of adopted me as the new kid, with the added allure of my status as the son of the coolest vice principal in the building.  I was in like Flynn.  [Side note:  Who the fuck is Flynn?]

Later that spring, I think a bunch of us had been hanging out on a playground or something (?), and afterwards we were riding around in Scott Lowry’s car.  Ah Scott Lowry.  Except for the notorious case of chronic bacne that almost kept him out of the Armed Forces, the incessantly rampant rumors of his wee wee-wee, and his latent tendencies towards showtunes and Disney characters, he was quite a catch.  And the first best friend I ever had.  I think at this point he had already had sex with Michele, but apparently she didn’t feel a thing, so I’m not sure if it "counted".  So yeah, we were riding around in Scott’s car, and Michele and I were in the backseat, and we were all talking about how everyone had been saying for weeks that she and I should be dating or whatever.  And at some point, she basically dared me to kiss her.  Now, despite having been severely attracted to guys for as long as I can remember, I was still not aware that "gay" was something that a person could be.  I held out for as long as I could.  I REALLY didn’t want to kiss her.  But then she started calling me "chicken shit".  So I did it.  I got it over with.  I kissed Madonna.  Like a virgin.  And it was awkward.  But sweet.  And, most importantly, it was over with.  We both knew it was nothing more than a kiss, and the next day the inevitable rumor mill started up and I was a stud for a day or two.  Granted, I was a band/choir/drama stud who’d acquired the nickname "chicken shit", but still, I was a stud nonetheless.

My kissing skillz have come a looooooong way since then - nowadays the rumor mill has me pegged as one of the best in town - and Michele has been married for something like 10 years.  My ill-fated second kiss is another story, which perhaps I’ll get to when I’m at a loss for a blog topic in the future.  But, to bring it full circle for you few but faithful readers, the following year Michele and I were the leads in our high school’s production of Cole Porter’s musical "Anything Goes", a show which opened with the two of us trying to top ourselves and each other by expressing our mutual admiration through adorably rhymed superlatives in the song "You’re The Top."  Yeah, this jazzy little number featured lyrics whose oh-so-subtle double-meanings may have been lost on me at the time.  Lyrics like "but if baby I’m the bottom, you’re the top."

Ha.  If only sex were still that simple.

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