My First French Kiss

That tongue. That tongue. That tongue. The way it slipped through my lips and sluiced into my mouth, wrapped itself around my own, then danced me one way and t'other. Oh, my God! My fifteen year old body exploded with the slippery sweetness of it. I'd felt pain and pleasure before but nothing like this. It was as if an unbearably sweet charge began in my mouth and traveled down my spine like Jacob's ladder. Zapadee-Zapadee-Zapadee-ZZZZZZapppp, like biting into a juicy fruit when the juice trickles down your throat and chin and neck and chest. It obliterated the rest of the world. Who did this to me? Her name was Suzanne. She did this to me. 

Back story.

She was nineteen and a student nurse. I was fifteen and an orderly.

Suzanne. A small town girl from Cumberland, Maryland. In later years I thought of Leonard Cohen. Remember, "Suzanne by the river..."?

Further back story.

Illusions die hard. Imagine this happening today. Spring,1956. I was fifteen years old and certain I wanted to be a doctor. One day I was driving with my mother. As we passed Lutheran Hospital I asked her to stop. I'd taken it into my skull that I was going to ask them for a job. Which I did. And got it. I told them I wanted to be a doctor and proposed to work as an orderly part-time while I was in high school. They gave me the job. Again, imagine this happening today. A fifteen year old just off the street emptying bedpans on the med-surg floor of an urban hospital. Furthermore, get this:  I was promoted to the emergency ward and then to surgery: gunshot wounds, car accidents, stabbings, miscarriages, autopsies - I was there for them all. I even worked my little sister's emergency appendectomy. Of course, the fact that I failed math, chemistry, Latin and physics didn't help with my med career. It's taken me years to ferret that one out.

Three score and seven years later she lingers like a fog at sunset and snuggles into my past like a sweet nap, although at the time, it was damn near unbearable. As far as Suzanne was concerned, my brains were eggs to be scrambled, a runny sunny side up on a good day. What she would do was touch my arm as she passed me. Once she actually drew the fingers of her hand gently across my midsection. She might as well have disemboweled me. As you can see, that was it for life. Every time she was near me I stopped breathing. When she looked at my face she saw me. Her green eyes triggered my damp and immature heart. All I wanted was to be with her, whatever that might be, wherever that might be, however that might be, whenever...I was barely treading water. I had no clue. 

One day...One afternoon...One morning...Damn, who knows what time of day, but we found ourselves in a deserted stairwell. I never saw it coming but suddenly there it was - Suzanne's mouth on mine, Suzanne's tongue on mine, Suzanne's breasts under that starched white bib the student nurses  wore. My memory has the kiss lasting a nanosecond then Suzanne tearing herself away from me and disappearing up the stairs. 

A couple of years later, she was still on my goodbye list. Just prior to shipping out for Parris Island, I went to visit her, illegally, after hours, in the hospital. "I really did a number on you, didn't I?" she asked, fully aware that she had done just that. I remember her manner as apologetic, but I can't remember anything else. Boot Camp obliterated  the rest of it.