The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Two

The Cool Room in Favorite Aunt’s house is still one of the most comforting rooms in the many-roomed house of my heart. It was where the air conditioning lived in that sweltering, old-fashioned house. It was perfectly Eighties and all the way comforting, wood-paneled walls, small, curtained windows, deep-turquoise-blue couch with some kind of white print, maybe flowers. Pleasantly cavelike, with a glass pocket-door that maybe we slid shut. It was where the TV lived, and where The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow and I somehow found ourselves alone.  (I still don’t quite understand how that happened, can’t decide if it was kind of Favorite Aunt to leave us alone or if it was weird creepy matchmaking—it’s occurring to me that I never experienced non-sneaky, non-naked kids-being-attracted-to-each-other situations so I really have no idea how it’s supposed to go.)

How it went was, chaste, beatific, awkward, sweet. I lay snuggled in his arms for long, quiet stretches of time.

Until him, I had only been kissed by selfish, careless, insistent (and, by 2019 standards, sometimes pretty rapey) men and boys, so there is a very good chance that I was a terrible kisser.

My new friend may have had less experience at kissing than I did, but I think he had much more experience treating others like human beings. If my kisses were terrible, hungry, aggressive things, he took it in stride. I can hope that he eventually mellowed me to a more loving and thoughtful pace. Or maybe we were just teenagers doing our best.

After what seemed like hours of making out but probably wasn’t, he said “No thank you” and backed his face away. That hurt and felt like a mystery, but I think (I hope) I just put my head on his heart and gave it a rest. There were eventually more snuggles and more kisses, but I’ve always wondered if I or society or Favorite Aunt or all three of those things pressured him into continuing to kiss me. I didn’t think about any of that at the time. My heart was floating and selfish and somehow also generous with joy. I was a blooming little flower of love.

I forget where we were going or coming home from, but I have a powerful image of laying in his lap in the backseat of Favorite Aunt’s van, in another highway sunset. Pink sky, low-flying airport planes, lots of toll booths. I gazed up at his face feeling both blissful and disjointed—was this the face I would love forever? The answer, as with most faces I’ve been that close to, is both absolutely yes and not at all.