and also because it is one in the morning and i cannot yet sleep as i have not yet found the strength to stop watching vlogbrothers videos.
and because there was this one vlogbrothers video where hank gives advice on first kisses, among other things, such as pets who eat romance novels and how he made someone decide his college majors for him because he didn't want to.
which led me to reflect on my first kiss.
my first kiss was with a boy named quillan, and while it might actually aid my telling of this story to include a picture of him, i'm not going to do that. if you want a visual, all you really need to know is he had nearly-shoulder-length brown hair which he parted directly down the middle with no bangs and even when it was brushed repeatedly it never looked any less like he only showered every other tuesday of the month.
fortunately, his hair was the only feature of his which at all hinted at uncleanliness.
in seventh grade, which was the time i met him as well as the time of our first kiss, quillan wore pants that never entirely covered his ankles and he had a badminton net in his backyard and his mom was a published poetry writer and his dad made guitars and his brother was a volunteer firefighter and one of his numerous older sisters had dreadlocks and also a teeny son who quillan called "gherkin." quillan's family was, in many respects, quite awesome.
he also had a bedroom which was an entirely separate unit from the house, where his parents never really bothered him and therefore made for an ample place to drink tea and listen to mix tapes. i mean, make out.
the thing was, seeing as quillan and i were both in seventh grade and therefore awkward and blushy, it took months of everyone around us shoving us together (literally - i actually have a memory of being forced to share a chair with him during class at one point, not that i really minded) before we would admit to each other that something might be going on.
of course, upholding the ever-applicable fact that i am a crazy person, half the time while dating quillan, i hated him. we were actually pretty mean to each other. it's sort of like when you're in second grade and your mom tells you that jesse viele from science class is only throwing paperclips at your head because he likes you. (wait, you mean that only happened to me?)
anyways, quillan tried to convince me to kiss him for a long time, and for a long time i wouldn't, probably almost entirely because i could tell he wanted me to so much. and then one day we were in his little house-room and he was laying down with his eyes closed and probably holding and empty coffee cup which had ten minutes ago contained tea when i just decided to go for it and leaned over and kissed him.
to which he instantly responded, "did i miss?"
which i thought was weird, considering i was the one doing the kissing.
