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Short Stories   Stories From a Childhood in Maine   Essays   Poetry - Haiku	More Vignettes: First Piano Lesson   The Fastest Beethoven in Maine   The Horse Pulling   Shame, Blame & Regret
		A Kiss Is Not Just A Kiss This is not a musical story. This is a moment in a boy's life; a moment remembered with chagrin, embarrassment and not a little bewilderment. I'd like to say life is simpler now that I am older and supposedly wiser. I won't because it isn't true, that I am wiser, that is. Boys wear themselves inside out and men outside in. Grown women want the boy in the man and girls want the man who isn't in the boy and won't be there for many years. It's a conundrum. Few men solve it in time for it to do them any good. Twenty-twenty hindsight is a man's lot and what passes for wisdom, always has been. The only difference between a philosopher and me is how many words it takes us to say the same thing. Philosophers seldom say anything simply. They use Latin words like A priori and A posteriori. Frankly I haven't a clue what philosophy has to do with someone's hind end; well I do but it's too rude for this story. I'll go read some more. Maybe I'll figure it out in time for it to do me some good. I estimate there are roughly three thousand four hundred and thirty books about philosophy, maybe a dozen of which are being used in a practical way by anyone anywhere. That ought to tell you something. I mean, how many Stoics do you know? There's a big difference between keeping a stiff upper lip and living a life like Zeno, the Stoic philosopher. Love that name. First time I saw it I was sure he was one of those fellows who got shot out of a cannon at the Ginsberg Traveling Circus. There's definitely something to be said for reading in an organized manner. When I was eleven, life was exhilarating, strange, sad and difficult. It wasn't bad. That's some more hindsight. Later when I was tramping around some of the more exotic parts of South America and South East Asia I discovered what bad was all about. Living hand-to-mouth in a small town in the back woods of Maine, we thought we were poor. We weren't poor at all. But at nine I didn't know these things, I only knew what I saw around me and it wasn't always good. My father and mother who had been having difficulties for many years would be divorced in a year. He wasn't that easy to live with. Because of this I spent a lot of time away from home, most of it in the woods behind the house. The rest I spent in school. We played baseball in the summers, skied, went sledding and tobogganing in the winter. In the fall I stole apples and brought them home in a tow sack. My mother turned these apples into pies and turnovers and other delectable things. She pretended they weren't stolen even when she was removing rock salt from my scrawny shanks. Mr. Charlie Bradeen very carefully placed it there with a 12-gauge shotgun on a moonlit night in the fall. I use real names here as I hold these people no malice and often great affection. I don't ever recall thinking Charlie was a bad man because he shot me. I did not whine or play the victim. I was stealing his apples. Likely if I had gone to his front door and asked he'd have given them to me. Later events taught me that if you want to play games with people who have guns you better be prepared for the consequence. Here's my recipe for making apple pie. "Wait for September, a dark night with a half moon. Slip out of the house as silently as a herd of Wildebeest stampeding on the Serengeti. Proceed stealthily through the deep forest, up the hills behind the house to the forest-side of the apple orchard. Bring two burlap sacks. Fill them with the finest Macintosh apples. The apples were so crisp and delicious the juice leapt through the skin onto your face. Preferably you will have scouted the area during the day and marked the trees with the best fruit. Steal the apples…" Who cares about the rest? That's just mechanics. Who says there is no soul food in Maine? As usual I digress. I have a friend who says ninety percent of the story is between the lines in the readers mind. There's probably some truth to that. Anyhow, this is a story about romance. There are times when kisses are so completely romantic the most hardened skeptic would wish for a summer evening with the moon so bright that the plainest girl and the homeliest boy become Heloise and Abelard. I was fairly certain in proceeding years that I would never fall prey to such pathetic mooning about. I had seen my older brothers undergo this strangest of aberrations and could find nothing in their behavior that resembled sanity. Judas Priest! They could have been playing ball, or fishing for God's sake! Instead they chased after Judy Lloyd like Jo Dimaggio after a fly ball! And with much less success, as I recall. It is interesting in retrospect how one comes to be in a certain place doing this or that when nothing that came before gave a hint of what was to come. That is not entirely true of course. Each effect is always preceded by a cause. This is not an accidental universe, certain philosopher's blathering notwithstanding. The problem is that causes are often so well hidden that present effects seem to be the work of God or some spirit living in the big oak down in the meadow. Were I God, which should there be any question, I am not, I would be offended. I would certainly have better things to do than make Mrs. Rankin's rose bushes die, or the fish refuse to bite, as they did when I took my brother Bob fishing. These are events whose causes can easily be determined. Mrs. Rankin put enough water on the roses to raise the level of the Mediterranean Sea three inches and my brother Bob wouldn't even let the fish taste the bait before he yanked it out of their mouth. I am a well-mannered fisherman. I am willing to let the fish dine before I do. I think I mentioned somewhere earlier that civilization came to Cornish in the form of movies. We didn't have a theater. We had the Odd Fellows Hall. In retrospect, if I were going to start a group I don't think I would have named it the Odd Fellows. I didn't belong and was considered more than a little odd. Regarding my reputed oddness, I clearly remember an elderly lady sitting in a chair on her verandah with a lady friend one summer day as I strolled past, bent upon charitable deeds and Christian good works. She whispered, Sotto voce, which I think means so loud she could have been heard in Portland forty miles away, "There goes one of them Ladew boys. You mark my words; he's up to no good. Those boys will come to a bad end, always reading books and burning things down. We were nothing if not precocious when it came to fire. Every Saturday afternoon they showed a movie. Mostly they were westerns. Observant fellow that I was, I noted that every one of these stalwart heroes was riding around the same damn bunch of rocks. Even so, they did have certain character traits that I admired. At the end of the movie, after they had rescued some silly girl from the clutches of assorted bad men, they rode off into the sunset. Sometimes they hugged their horse, which in those long ago days seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Then Hollywood got wise…or whatever; they figured out that romance sells. Cowboys went to kissing girls instead of their horses. In retrospect, I am inclined to say, it's about damned time. But in those bygone days, it was as near to heresy as one could get in this boy's mind. Adapt or die the man said. So, after a steady diet of my heroes chastely kissing damsels in distress I began to have a change of heart. There was a lot of kissing going on in the world and I guessed I had better get with the program or become a social outcast. My father was practical and said a fella ought to try things out for himself. I looked around my small world and sought a target for my affections. There weren't but maybe ten girls around my age in the whole town so selection was going to be brief and more practical than not: Like who might be willing to try this out without running home and telling their mother or older brother. It couldn't be Sissie Poole. She had buckteeth so pronounced she could remove bark from an oak without opening her mouth. She had a nice personality though. I sorted through the lot and ended with Suzanne Watson. She was pretty and could hit a baseball to all fields. Admiration has a lot to do with affection. If she reads this she'll laugh and say she doesn't remember, to which I say, thank God! Having decided on the object of this experiment in interpersonal relations I was faced with what seemed an insurmountable problem. When and where would this event take place? Should I try at school? Not likely. Her older brother, Butch would try to beat the crap out of me and my pals wouldn't talk to me…figure I was a sissy or worse. I wasn't worried about Butch, I could whip him and he knew it. Kiss her at a baseball game? Pardon me…nice catch Suzanne…here's a kiss just to show you how much I appreciated that splendid bit of fielding. Makes me shiver with terror just thinking the thought. Maybe if I sat next to her in the movie…when the lights went down. Nope, wouldn't work. I wore glasses; might poke her eye out; blood and goo would gush…well you get the picture. I had a lot to worry about. I probably spent two or three weeks just trying to work it out. This is a long time when you think of it, especially as I am a fairly intelligent fella. On warm summer evenings the kids would gather to play Kick-The-Can or just wander around looking for something to do. In back of the old house where I lived was a series of pastures and hills that went along behind the houses on Main Street all the way to the Watson place near the High Road. There were usually horses up there, which a bold fella could catch and ride if they had a mind. I was up on the hill well after dark on a moonlit night when I met Suzanne out walking. I said, "Hi, whadaya know?" Carey Grant, eat your heart out. We sat on a rock enjoying the night making small talk about school, baseball, whether the principle was a Communist hiding out from the FBI, you know, important things. But it wasn't going anywhere. I was planning the Event. I have no idea what Suzanne was thinking. My mind was a blizzard of thought. How do I do this? Should I hold her hand? I'd seen that done with good results. Should I kiss her on the cheek, the forehead, the…lips. Big, huge brain freeze. I could kiss her hand, Captain Rodericke Mountjoy Thorpewood did that and girls fell all over him with heaving bosoms. I read that in one of the historical romance novels my mother was addicted to. Needless to say that made no sense to me at all. Heaving for God's sake. Please! Around and around it all went. It says a lot for my determination at that age that I persisted. Finally, I grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her hard on the lips. I like it; she tasted like pepsodent. She jumped up like a horsefly went up her nose so I jumped up too. Then she hit me with a short right that would have put the immortal Jack Dempsey on his ass. It laid me out like smoked mackerel. Bang on the left eye. She stood over me…furious and shook her fist at me so angry no words came out. I stayed right where I was. I sure as hell wasn't getting up to receive more of that fine right. My eye began to hurt immediately. She had three or four older brothers and had obviously acquired some skills as they say. All I could think to say, plaintively, was, "Judas Priest, Suzanne, what did you do that for?" She said nothing. She turned and ran off over the hill toward her house. I lay on my back on the ground trying to figure out where I went wrong. Not once had any of my heroes of the west ever been decked while kissing the girl. Lash La Rue didn't even have to grab the girl. She grabbed him! Where did I go wrong? I was very sad and confused. I liked Suzanne, she was pretty as any girl could be, and as I said she could hit to all fields. We were pals, and pals don't go around punching each other in the eye. Then I realized I was in trouble of an entirely different kind. I could barely see out of the left eye. I knew, even in the dark, I had a serious black eye, a shiner to end all shiners. How did I know this? I had been in my short life the recipient of numerous black eyes. However, they had all been acquired properly, even righteously. I had been struck there with baseballs, bats, knees, fists, tree limbs and accidentally by the bumper of my father's 49' Ford. These were badges, battlefield scars, to which any boy worth his salt could be justifiably proud. I was now faced with going home and having to explain. This I knew was not going to be easy. My brothers both had IQs in the 150s or above and seldom fell for any of my exaggerations, no matter how excellently creative. My mother would not ask, she would heal, cure, and tend with great skill. My father didn't even notice us after he went into his office in the evening. And then the next day I would be out about town with my pals…they would surely put me through a grilling to make the great Eliot Ness proud. I sat on that rock, alone, in pain and worried. Would Suzanne tell? That was too horrible to contemplate. I briefly considered boarding a cattle boat to Brazil but I only had fifteen cents cash and a fine cat's eye marble. More importantly I hadn't had supper. Now boys don't set out in life planning to be liars. But I'll tell you here and now there was just no way I was going to wander into the house and tell my mother and brothers what really happened. Can you picture it? Hi, Ma. Hey Dave, what cha doing? Hi, Bob. Oh, this? Well, I kissed Suzanne Watson up on the hill and she punched me in the eye, knocked me right on my butt. No way! I may have been a fool but I sure wasn't an idiot. The village already had one. Maybe it was time for a little of that stoicism I mentioned earlier. I spent a long creative time up on that hill. Who knows, this may have been the start of my literary inclinations. Makes sense to me. I won't go into all the possible ways I conjured to explain what I could not hide. But meteorites falling, owls flying into my face, tree limbs and other natural events were tested and found wanting. I walked very slowly back through the pasture toward the lights of the house in the distance. The moon lit the way nicely. Understand I could have walked back home without falling in pitch darkness. I crossed the small brook where in a previous winter I broke the little fingers on both hands sliding. I skirted along the edge of the small pond where bullfrogs suffered my boyish efforts as a spear fisherman. When I climbed over the barbwire fence I stumbled and fell flat on my face. There it was! Divine intervention. "I fell climbing the fence, Ma." I wouldn't be lying either. I'd just omit what happened a little earlier. I could be convincing because it really happened. My spirits lifted like a flock of geese heading south for the winter. It's a pity I had to sort of tell the truth, I really like the meteorite story: Lots of potential drama there. I went into the house through the barn, woodshed and to the kitchen. Kitchens in homes in the country are where you live; the rest of the house was for sleeping and company. My mother was baking something. The smell reached me in the barn. I am sure I slavered like a wolf in winter. My brothers were sitting at the table reading, ragging on each other about girls, the usual. By the way, need I remind you recent events had put me off women forever? Lying on my back on that hillside removed forever my interest in romance. I believe that particular forever lasted pretty near two years. My brother Bob, ever observant of detail noticed my damaged eye. "Hey, look at that, he's got a shiner." Ma and Dave looked, of course. Thanks a lot Bob. "Who hit you?" he asked. "No one hit me," I said with feigned disgust. "I fell crossing the fence out by the pasture." My mother came and examined it closely. Ever ready to heal and make things better. "I'll put some ice on it. "Hold still, quit squirming," she commanded. "I'm starved, Ma," I said, hoping to divert attention from the injury to safer subjects. "Well, if you were home at a decent hour you'd get to eat with everyone else," she said. She fed me of course. She would have fed Patton's 3rd army without a complaint if they arrived on our doorstep. My father entered the kitchen to get some coffee or something. He had his reading glasses on and examined me over the top of them. "That's a good shiner. Who punched you?" "No one, Sir. I fell crossing the fence out by the pasture." He looked at me for a long moment. "Out by the pasture, huh?" Did he know? He had a nose for lies like the Spanish Grand Inquisitor had for sin. "Yes, Sir." I'd learned not to embroider my stories with him. It was like quicksand, you slowly sank deeper and deeper until you were well and truly caught. Thankfully he lost interest and went back to his office in the front of the house. My brothers and also lost interest. Amazing! I was prepared to defend that lie to the death. I had suffered ignominy and deep shame and no one gave a great rat's patoot. Later I lay in bed upstairs unable to sleep. I had experienced a great mystery and did not fair well by it. The perfume from the white lilacs that were taller than our two-story house scented the air. The half moon, still on the rise, made surreal shadows across the ceiling. I had so many questions. Why did she hit me? Where did she learn to punch like that? I was qualified to judge being a fair hand in the punching department myself. Would she tell? I probably groaned with that thought. I was deeply thankful that it was summer and I didn't have to go to school. Likely I would have had to defend my honor with several fistfights and the attendant chance that I might acquire another black eye. Then I thought about the kiss and stranger still, decided I liked it. Her lips were soft and she smelled good. I could see how cowboys might get interested in that sort of thing. I mean, I had been slobbered on by and affectionate horse and truly kissing girls was much better. Somewhere in all that chaotic meandering I went west on a dream. The next day I hung around the house until my mother told me to go away and let her get something done. I wasn't going into town, which because of its size was a short walk. So, again, I found myself on the hill behind the house. I was probably daydreaming because Suzanne appeared before I had a chance to flee into the forest, which I most definitely would have done. I was sitting on my favorite rock. She sat next to me. I turned away so she couldn't see the effects of that excellent straight right. She wasn't having any of that. "Can I see?" I muttered something unprintable and turned to her. I am sure I lit up the entire town and surrounding counties with my blush. "Oh…", she looked embarrassed also. ""I'm sorry." I couldn't hold it back then. "Jeez, Suzanne, what did you hit me for? You could have just said don't do that. We're pals for Pete's sake!" She hung her head. "I'm sorry, really. I don't know why I did that. I was surprised, I guess. You startled me." There was a long silence while we both tried to think of what to say next. She spoke so softly I could barely hear her. "I don't mind, you know, being kissed that is. It wasn't so bad." I think that is called, damned with faint praise. Well what did I expect; I wasn't exactly experienced. "I just didn't…it surprised me…you just grabbed me…" "Well, I'm sorry Suzanne, I won't do it again." If I had half a brain I would have noticed the disappointment on her face. But the decision had been made, no more kissing. Leave it to cowboys; they sure as hell knew more about than I did. "All right," she said. "You playing ball this evening?" This was good, we had moved to safer ground. This was something I could talk about, something I could relate to. We both went off to our summer day lives eased in mind. Some years later I realized that despite that black eye and the shame, I learned something. So listen up guys. You want to kiss the girl, move slowly. I mean go ahead and do it, it's good fun. But move slowly. Girls like to have a chance to agree or disagree with the things that happen in life, not just be forced to experience them. Twenty-twenty hindsight tells me that first kiss was worth a black eye and then some.
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