Eighteen

I kissed a woman for the first time when I was eighteen. I still remember that night- the whole weekend, really- like it was yesterday. I’m going to phenomenally impress you and tell you that it was October 1, 1994. There’s a reason I remember that exact date, and not just because it was the first time I kissed Claire.

Claire and her roommates had a party that night and damn near everyone in the music department was in attendance. As I was learning pretty quickly as a college student, after a hard week of school it was time to party. Since I wasn’t yet 21 and was a total rule follower, I wasn’t super into drinking just yet. I enjoyed hanging around my new music friends and getting to know them through sober lenses. I guess you’re not getting to know the real person when they are a few Everclear shots into the night, but I digress.

Claire’s house was pretty far from campus, so I had hitched a ride with a friend. Several hours into the party, he let me know that he was leaving. I gathered my belongings to join him, and I realized that my dorm identification was missing. As it was pretty late, I wouldn’t be allowed into the dorm without it. Claire offered to let me stay the night, and said she would drive me home in the morning. I helped her clean up, and she invited me back to her bedroom to keep talking. Nervously twitching, I followed her.

I should pause here a moment and explain a few things: I found myself oddly and fiercely attracted to Claire. She was 24, and I seemed like such a baby at 18. Besides the fact that she was gorgeous and every guy in the music department was in love with her, her voice was incredible. Her speaking voice was soft and soothing, but then she opened her mouth to sing, and this effortless, glorious soprano voice filled the room. She would finish singing in seminar and flash her stunning smile as people applauded. I was mesmerized.

But there was one thing that constantly plagued me: she was a woman- why did I melt into a puddle when I was around her? This was a totally new feeling to me, and something that I couldn’t reconcile.

Okay, back to her bedroom. We were talking nonstop getting to know each other, and we laid down on her bed and kept talking. And talking. We kept moving closer to one another and suddenly we were holding hands; then a little while later, we were holding one another as we were talking. She started stroking the back of my hair as we were talking and laughing. I melted everywhere, not being able to breathe. My face was buried in her neck. I felt deliriously happy. I pulled my head back to say something, and without hesitation, our lips met.

Now, I can’t say that at that point in my life I had kissed that many guys, but I can say that I had never experienced the feeling that I was having while kissing her. It was euphoric. I didn’t know if it was the softness of her lips, her intoxicating perfume, the feeling of her body pressed against mine, or feeling like I had an emotional connection to her. Or it was all of it. All I knew is that it was the most normal I had ever felt being close to someone, and I didn’t want to let her go or stop kissing her. I guess she was feeling the same as I was since we didn’t stop holding and kissing each other for hours. We eventually kissed each other to sleep.

When we woke up, Claire and I both seemed a little stunned and confused. We talked for a little while about what had happened overnight. We both got dressed and she drove me back to my dorm. Just like the ease of taking a breath, I leaned over to kiss her goodbye; our lips met and I felt my breath leave me again. It was just so normal and I felt like I floated up to my dorm room.

That feeling of weightlessness left me as soon as I walked into my dorm room to 14 missed calls, and nearly as many voicemails. My grandmother had died the day before- October 1, 1994. I immediately made travel plans and Claire drove me to the airport. She got out of the car, wrapped her arms around me, and deeply kissed me before smiling and saying “I’ll see you when you get back.”

I was not at all mentally or emotionally present at my grandmother’s funeral. I was so consumed with thoughts of my night with Claire, desperately wanting to get back on the plane to go back to school so I could see her... I so badly wanted to kiss her and be in her arms again. But was that going to happen? Would this week apart from one another kill whatever brought us close together to begin with that night? Was it all just a dream?

Claire and I were together for nearly 4 years. As we were each other’s first girlfriends, it was not at all an easy road, especially in the South in the mid-1990s. There were parents and siblings to contend with and guilt over religious upbringings in conflict with being gay and friends who did not agree about our relationship and on and on. Sex was awkward for a long time for a multitude of reasons but we learned to talk about needs and desires. Communication was tough, but we always seemed to sort out our thoughts together. Even though we were together, we found ourselves dating guys on the side as if we were trying to prove to ourselves who we really were; were we actually gay? Were we just confused? Did we happen to fall in love with who we were as humans and not necessarily because we were women? We’d go on dates or make out with guys and come back together and just laugh. We gave each other the space to figure it out, but we were always each other’s safe space to land.

That night- October 1, 1994- and the following years, as tumultuous as they were, changed the trajectory of my life. I learned to trust my intuition, to approach all of life’s chaos gently with patience and understanding, the most important thing you can offer a partner is your ability to listen and learn, to loudly be proud of who I am, and above all else…

Love is Love.