| 4. Kissing Girls | | Print | |
|
I had to take a local bus to and from school. With a top speed of thirty miles per hour, it took almost an hour for the pre-war vehicle to crawl through several villages on the way. I was one of the last children to get off the bus when it reached my village at the end of the day. We were expected to diligently work, read, or converse quietly. However, this wasn’t always easy. Girls of the same age (10) from a nearby convent school also used the bus, as did adults.
Jane and Julie Gordon lived in the next village to mine. They were twins and went to the convent. Jane was going through a romantic period which constituted snatching my cap and only giving it back to me if I kissed her. Not wearing a school cap on the bus was against school rules . Only by my explaining the consequences of misbehaving on the bus did Jane agree to strike a bargain with me. She would not snatch my cap or kiss me on the bus if I agreed to cycle over to her house at the weekend. But I would still have to sit next to her.
It was sitting next to Jane on the bus that I realized how neat her handwriting was. There was no ink splattered spidery writing with multiple crossings out. Her books showed off a remarkable ability for penmanship. She told me that the nuns would brook no sloppiness. At our school we studied penmanship, too. We had special italic nibs with which to practice; but all I got for my effort was a callused finger and a seismographic scrawl.
Biology was a subject we didn’t do at school, but the girls did. It was a mysterious subject. Jane and the other girls had secret diagrams that they preferred not to discuss. I didn’t push the subject as girls and women had secrets we were not supposed to know about. My mother told me that one should never look inside a woman’s purse. I was never sure why, but I knew life was full of secrets. One boy at school told me that it was necessary to “wee up a girls bum” when you got older, but you weren’t supposed to know that until you were fifteen.
I met Mrs. Gordon in her kitchen that looked onto a lawn that ran down to the river. She was pleasant and plied me with tea and cake, and then Jane, Julie, and I went off to play. However, Jane had an agenda. Jane and Julie took turns to practice kissing me in their bedroom. This was a big step up for me in my sex life. Previously, I had been an enthusiastic player of the doctor and nurse examination game with some of the village children, but I could see how kissing was a more involved and complex issue.
I became kissing boy. Practice makes perfect. The girls were very encouraging for the most part, but a bit harsh on the critique if our teeth would bang together or there was too much slobbering.
The thing about girls is that they talk to each other. Helen, a neighbor of mine, got to hear about kissing practice. She wanted to try it. She was at the same school as Jane and Julie and lived a quarter-of-a-mile away. During the previous summer we had spent a lot of time climbing trees. She called herself a tom-boy and she was a good tree climber. I admired that.
I liked Helen but she was almost six months younger than me and I told her she wasn’t old enough yet. She told me I didn’t realize she was a girl and went off in a huff. I had enough on my plate with Jane and Julie.
But Helen had a sister who was raven haired and nearly fourteen.
I was playing “Second World War” with my friend Calvin in a field that had been plowed and then left to dry. We picked up clods of earth and hurled them at each other. They were our hand-grenades. It was then that I noticed Anne with her friend sitting on a fallen tree across the stream. She was smoking a cigarette. Her lips were red and she blew the smoke out like a grown-up. Anne had breasts. I stood up to take a better look at the girls when a clod of earth landed on my helmet. “You’re dead Richards,” yelled Calvin. I wanted to know Anne, and her breasts, but both she and they were unapproachable.
I don’t know what it was about Calvin but he had the knack of embarrassing me. He was my best friend and went to the village school. He had just received a new bicycle after leaving his old one in our driveway. My mother had driven over it and reduced it to the sort of thing that was fashionable in modern art galleries. Sculpture I think they called it.
To be continued. If you're not already on the list, sign up for the next episode |