when i was in the 3rd grade i was obsessed with girls. utterly obsessed. i was 7 years old and hadn’t even come close to puberty, but i was fixated on the idea of having a girlfriend. in fact, from september until december in the 3rd grade i asked every girl in my class to be my girlfriend.
for better or worse they all said no. kind of understandable, as i was 7 and they were 8. i mean, really, what self-respecting 8 year old girl wants to be the girlfriend of a desperate and pre-pubescent 7 year old boy? but although i had asked every girl in my 3rd grade class(mrs. travers’ class, royle school, darien)the ne plus ultra of crushes was, for me, suzy childress. she was the 8 year old love of my life. i have no idea what became of suzy after 3rd grade, but from my 7 year old perspective in 3rd grade she was a perfect and beautiful little russian doll of a girl and, for months, i had the purest and most innocent pre-pubescent crush on her.
pre-pubescent crushes were so odd. you’d fixate on someone and desperately want to be their boyfriend, but what would you do if, as a 7 year old, you actually did have an 8 year old girlfriend?
long walks on the beach discussing strategic arms limitation treaties? poring over catalogs trying to find outdoor furniture for your time-share in sag harbor?
what would i have done if suzy childress or any of the other 20 girls i had crushes on in 3rd grade had actually said ‘yes, moby, i’d love to be your girlfriend.’?
i would’ve been stumped, and probably said, ‘ok, so, uh, what do we do now?’
this did sort of happen when i actually had my first ever real girlfriend. carol hanley(is it wrong to ‘out’ pre-pubescent crushes/girlfriends?). i was 11 and she was 12.
and, as is often the case with 12 year old girls and 11 year old boys, she was WAY more developed than i. i had never kissed anyone and she had kissed quite a few people. she even knew that you were supposed to kiss with your mouth open. i, alas, did not, and this proved to be my undoing as her boyfriend. see, carol and i kissed twice, and then she broke up with me because i didn’t know how to kiss with my mouth open. the relationship had lasted 5 days. and she cast me aside so that she could go out with tom dunklin who did, apparently, know how to kiss. well, i can say with authority that he knew how to kiss because a few hours
after carol broke up with me she started making out with tom dunklin in front of me in the royle school playground. ah, the vicissitudes of 7th grade romance. i actually wasn’t terribly hurt, as i was just amazed that i had even had a girlfriend.
and i remember my first kiss. wait, is this the sort of thing that i should be sharing with complete strangers? eh, we live in an age where everyone pretty much shares everything about themselves, so i guess it’s ok to share the details of a first kiss, especially as the specifics are kind of pathetic, and everyone likes pathetic first kiss stories, right? well, carol and i were at her house(or, actually, her parents house, as not too many 12 year olds own their own homes)and we were sitting in her bedroom listening to the beatles and looking at the pictures of the beatles that came with the white album. we were sitting on her single, metal-framed bed, and i was utterly consumed with nervous excitement because i had sort of figured out that:
a-i had a girlfriend
b-i was sitting next to my girlfriend on her bed
c-i was allowed to kiss her.
so i leaned over and kissed her. and i remember thinking that it was really nice. unfortunately no one had told me that you were supposed to kiss with your mouth open. oops. so after about 20 seconds of closed mouth kissing(i mean, come on, i was 11 years old, was i really supposed to be experienced?)carol jumped up and said ‘i have to go help my mom with dinner’. so i left on my bike and rode home in the rain, flushed and giddy with the fact that i’d had my first kiss.
she gave me a second chance, and we had another closed mouth kiss a couple of days later. soon afterwards she broke up with me to go out with tom dunklin, who, as we established earlier, knew that you were supposed to kiss with your mouth open. then after she and tom were ensconced in open-mouthed kissing 7th grade boyfriend/girlfriend bliss one of carol’s friends, who i guess was kind of mean, said ‘carol broke up with you cos you’re not cute and you don’t know how to kiss.’
this actually stumped me. see:
a-i didn’t know that you were supposed to kiss with your mouth open, so how i didn’t understand how someone could not know how to kiss? wasn’t kissing just two people putting their lips together? how could anyone not know how to do that?
and
b-i didn’t know that by ‘cute’ girls meant ‘attractive’ & ‘desirable’
so i was left thinking, ‘carol wants to go out with someone cute? like a treasure troll or a puppy? cos treasure trolls and puppies are cute. huh. that’s odd. i guess i’m not cute.’ and later i realized that oftentimes it’s best not to understand a mean-spirited insult. it’s better to be utterly nonplussed than aware, at least as regards insults.
i mean, isn’t it better to have someone insult you in a language that you don’t understand? if a cab driver from somalia starts yelling at me in his native tongue i can assume that he’s saying something like ‘sir! you are possessed of great wisdom and intellect, sir!’ instead of ‘fuck you, get out of my cab you piece of shit!’
right?
but, yes, i was dumped in the 7th grade by carol hanley because i wasn’t cute and didn’t know how to kiss. and now i have no idea where any of these people might be. the last time i saw tom dunklin he had hair down to his waist and he was working for the forest department in oregon.
which sounds like a fantastic job, if you ask me. but carol hanley and suzy childress? i have no idea where they might be.
i hope that they’re happily married to cute boys who know how to kiss.
-moby
