My first french kiss and the dirty M word

A few days ago, I made a post about my Thanksgiving weekend getaway, and about visiting one of the houses I grew up in. I wrote how I wanted to re-climb every tree and re-walk every inch of that neighborhood again, but instead I had to settle for a quick drive-by this time. That visit stirred up a lot of old memories for me, memories I hadn’t thought of in years. Memories I could simmer in for hours.

My childhood best friend, Erin, took this photo in Summer Creek. I was 12 or 13 here. We were doing a “modeling” photo shoot of a each other on a disposable camera. Trying to be super artsy, hence the tree. Turns out Erin was a much more gifted photographer than I was; the ones I took of her either had my finger over part of the lens or terrible lighting.

I’ve also been Marie Kondo-ing my life-long photo collection, which may seem weird to some, but not weird if you’re familiar with her method, and once you see how big my photo crate is and how little storage space I have at my home. I voraciously devoured every page of Marie Kondo’s book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, (on audible— in the car, of course—because what mom with a one-year-old and five-year-old has time to read?) and I really enjoyed her philosophy on minimalism and letting things go that do not “spark joy.” Especially descending from a family with a slight inclination to hoarding. The last stage of Marie Kondo’s process is the sentimental stuff, like photos, since those are the hardest to part with. And since, by the final stages, one will have gotten quite good at parting with things that don’t bring them happiness. And it turns out, it’s actually not that hard slimming my photo collection down because: A) why do I need to keep all the random photos of people I don’t even remember or whose names I don’t even know? B) do I really need loads of crappy landscape or scenic photos of cities I traveled to years ago? C) do I really need doubles of every photo I’ve ever taken in my entire life?

Well, the answer, of course, is: no, I don’t.

So, combing through a lifetime of photos and visiting the house I lived in during my early pubescent years has brought up so many memories from my life—the good and the bad, the funny, the icky, the sentimental, and even the inappropriate. And although I plan to write a book about my life one day, what better way to start compiling my memories than through my essays on here, with you all. The only diaries I have that I can bear to read are the few pages I have from childhood. The rest—throughout my teenage years and beyond—are way too cringe and give me a giant dose of the idiot shivers. But hey, I guess there’s value in that too.

Well, let’s start with a fun one I hadn’t thought of in many years until the last few days: my first french kiss.

Summer Creek was a big heaping slice of the American dream. That was the neighborhood I grew up in from 5th grade through 8th grade. A middle class neighborhood in Escondido, which is referred to as North County in San Diego speak. The whole neighborhood is comprised of only three house designs, repeated over and over again throughout the development. Tacky, late eighties, cream-colored stucco houses with clay-red terracotta roofing, inspired by Spanish architecture, but lacking all of its predecessor’s character and charm. Grassy, green lawns and sunny California sun, the neighborhood was one big loop with a creek running through it. Hence the name. A big ravine, that I noticed this time had a sign out front that says “beware of rattlesnakes.” I don’t remember that sign being there when I was a kid. My friends and I traipsed through the rocks and brush, looking for ponds and tadpoles, blissfully unaware of any looming threat of rattlesnakes.

I drove by this tree last weekend for the first time in over twenty years. Climbing trees was a staple of my childhood.

I know this neighborhood like the back of my hand. It was very insular, no busy streets running through it. Designed to be its own little microcosm. I always felt safe there, except the one time I thought I was about to be kidnapped by a gardener, and so I abruptly knocked on a stranger’s door, sobbing uncontrollably. To this day, I don’t know if my gut instinct saved me from an untimely death or if it was just paranoia. But I’ll go more into that story another day.

When I think of Summer Creek, I think happy thoughts. I think sunshine, skateboards, climbing trees, sleepovers, the smell of chlorine, so much giggling and laughter, puberty, hormones. Hormones. This was the house I lived in when I learned the word masturbation, a thing only boys were allowed to admit to and joke about. I started to suspect, with shame, that this dirty name referred to the cool thing I liked to do under the covers at night. The thing I used to do under my baby blankie when I was a little kid, on the living room floor, thinking no one could tell what I was doing—until my mom had to burst my bubble and tell me to stop one day.

I stumbled across my sexuality by accident, at four years old, doing the crab walk around a heated swimming pool in Lake Tahoe, as I crossed paths with a pool jet. I could never unlearn what I learned that day. Once you know, you know. And it wasn’t bad or shameful until that God-awful word was attached to it, making it sound like some sort medical procedure or disease.

My Summer Creek years could have been a Judy Blume book. Maybe the same could be said of every American girl’s coming-of-age years. Maybe that’s why my best friends and I all devoured the pages of Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters in junior high and high school, many times over. I still remember when I finished that book for the first time, at 13. I was sitting by the edge of my swimming pool on Summer Creek. Fat, salty tears were streaming down my cheeks, as I sat, hunched over, with my face in my hands, surrendering to the drama of it all. And as my limbs went limp with despair, the thick paperback novel rolled into the pool. I fished the wet book out of the cool, clear blue water, and every time I re-read that book in years to come, its rippled crispy pages always reminded me of that day. If only Judy Blume could have seen me in that moment by the pool. What more could an author ask for.

My junior high years were rife with a voracious curiosity and intrigue about boys, about kissing, and all the lusty stuff portrayed in Hollywood movies. There was even a chapter devoted to obsessing over the hot teenage lesbian a few years older than me that lived a couple streets over. The whole sex thing seemed close enough to glimpse, yet safely out-of-reach, like looking a tiger in the eyes, through the thick glass at the zoo. I wielded my feminine superpowers like the cobra from the Jungle Book putting Mowgli into a hypnotic trance. I was the ultimate flirt—like a cat terrorizing and pawing at a mouse, yet the biggest tease—still safe in my innocence.

Cody was the neighborhood hottie. He had movie-star good looks: puffy kissable lips, a deep raspy voice, strong arms, tan smooth skin, dirty-blonde hair, and he dressed like a snow-boarder. Your classic California dreamboat. At least that’s how I remember him. It was the summer going into 7th grade, and he was going into the 9th grade.

My older sister, Anna, paved the way to womanhood for me, and I was eager to follow. She’s two years older than me, and we’ve always been thick as thieves. Two peas in a pod. We were best friends with the two step-sisters who lived next door to us, Melissa and Leah. They were the same ages as us. They were mormon, which was familiar to us because our mom grew up Mormon, and there was a big community in San Diego. But they were very laid-back mormons. We were at each other’s houses all the time, getting up to all kinds of shenanigans—cracking each other up, comparing our developing bodies, tanning by the pool, trying our first sips of beer, having sleepovers.

We would sometimes pitch a tent in our back yard during the summers and do campouts with no grown-ups. This was the best. In my current safety-minded brain, I think about how exposed we were in that tent. How one would only have to hop over that wooden fence to come snatch one of us up and steal us forever. But the neighborhood just felt like its own safe little bubble.

Well, we knew we were going to have a campout sleepover in the yard one night, with Leah and Melissa, and one of us cooked up an elaborate plan to invite Cody, the hottie, to sneak over and come hang out with us in the tent in the middle of the night. I don’t remember who it was, but it was a good plan. Four teenage girls with raging hormones got be alone with the most crush-worthy dude in the neighborhood, in a tent, in the middle of the night. When I think back on that night, I think: giddiness, euphoria, nerves, endless giggles, and intoxicating attraction.

The five of us played a game of truth or dare as we shuffled around over our sleeping bags. Cody got passed around by us four girls—two pairs of sisters— as we all took turns having our first real tongue kiss. I was so jealous of the girls before me, eager for my turn. It was too good to be true. I was basically waiting for my turn to kiss Brad Pitt. Would my turn ever come?

Well, come it did.

Just thinking about it now has an intoxicating effect on me: the heavenly plushness of his pillowy lips against mine, the parting of them; his warm tongue, soft and textured, like uni; the minty gum in is mouth that we passed back and forth; his masculine scent. I was drunk on his pheromones and high on serotonin. I caressed the back of his head, feeling his soft hair in my palm, because I read in a teen magazine that this was what you were supposed to do when you made out.

I could have done that for hours. It was way too short, even though I think it happened once or twice more. I think I kept stopping it short because I was so nervous that I was gonna make a fool of myself by doing it wrong or something. But it was long enough to have bragging rights. And boy did I use them.

I got to be the first girl in my group of friends that frenched a guy. When the 7th grade school year started, I made sure all the popular kids knew. I was a star. So grown up and cool.

Back to that night.

After hours of the best truth or dare game ever, Cody quietly snuck out through our gate, and made the three minute walk back to house, and snuck back in.

I’m not exactly sure what chain of events conspired when he got back home, but I’ll tell you what happened the next day. My sister and I got a rude awakening at dinner time. There was a mysterious knock on the front door, which my dad got up from the dinner table to answer. When he opened up the front door, Cody was standing there, each of his parents on either side of him, and a feeling of horror rushed over me. I tried to ascertain the muffled exchange taking place, but wasn’t able to make out much. It was short, and then I heard my dad say “thank you” and close the door. With a pit in my stomach, I watched my dad walk back to the dinner table like he’d just seen a deer in headlights, with a crease between his eyebrows.

My sister and I received the dreaded news that Cody had come over with his mom and dad to apologize for coming over in the middle of the night last night. I felt sick. It’s all a blur, but I know we were in big trouble. That it was awkward as hell. I don’t remember having any specific punishment because my parents didn’t really do that. They just would get super mad at us. But my sister and I had each other, at least. Safety in numbers.

The next day—or maybe several days later— as my dad drove me to my best friend’s house down the street, I remember him bringing it up to me again, telling me I could have gotten an STD.

Huh? From a French kiss?

I’m not exactly sure what kind of orgy he thought went on that night. But, ew. It’s all so weird and awkward to think about.

It must be fun having teenage daughters!

Long live Summer Creek.

Please heart/comment/share! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this essay, and if it stirs up any of your own memories! See ya soon. xx Lindsey