The Pauli Girl Was Nice, But...

I do not remember for sure the first time I ever had a beer, when I was growing up. I know it must have been sometime around when I was 15 years old, typical adolescent hijinks and skullduggery involved to “score some brewskis”. I know it was with a group of my friends, my drinking buddies, if such a thing could be said of kids who were years away from being able to legally drink. We didn’t have much money then, and even less common sense, so the emphasis was on whatever we could get. My buddies drank Budweiser; I was the holdout for Pabst Blue Ribbon (in bottles, thank you very much). We didn’t much care, as long as it was there.

I do remember the first time I became aware of how much I liked beer, and it happened on a late summer evening, sitting at a picnic table with a bottle of PBR in my hand. I remember sitting there picking at the label and joking with my friends, watching the sun go down behind the trees and houses across the road. I titled that bottle back and swallowed a big mouthful: it hit me that this tasted so good, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted more, but not so much to get drunk. The buzz was certainly sought after, but I just really dug the taste, the slightly stinging bitterness, the faint sweet taste of the malt. Although I certainly wouldn’t have been able to describe it that way at the time; I didn’t know anything about it. It took years and a lot more beer before I knew what really was in it. But I never forgot that first moment of illumination.

It was also about the same time that I had my very first kiss. I very clearly remember that moment. It also happened while sitting on a bench, on a fall afternoon, in a park not too far from my boyhood home. My best friend and I, along with our girlfriends, had gone for a walk in the park to “get some fresh air” (wink, nudge). There was a little pond there next to a garden amongst some very tall pine trees, with benches scattered about. We were walking around in the garden and my friend, being more forward thinking in these matters, quickly made a beeline for a more secluded section of the garden, girlfriend in tow. Before I knew it, I lost track of them, leaving me alone with HER.

Not knowing what else to do, we found a bench and sat down, close together and barely touching. It was like we thought we would explode if our bodies came into contact, matter and anti-matter. But contact was inevitable; the gravitational pull was too strong. We held hands and watched some squirrels, sitting there in the afternoon sun, and then it happened.

Ka-BLAM. I think we turned to each other intending to say something but the momentum just carried us right into a kiss. Just like that. I was so stunned (and dizzy) that all I could think to do was to put my arm around her and just keep on kissing. Which we did. To the point of not being able to breathe.

For the shy, dorky kid that I was (and in some ways, still am) that moment was transcendental. I had never done anything so intimate, so personal, so physically intoxicating, in my life to that point. I still recall the golden light from the sun, her hair swirling around my face and tickling my cheeks and the sheer heart-racing power of being so close to a female who seemed to like me too. To quote Monty Python, from The Martyrdom of St. Victor:

“…but on the sixteenth day, he cried out, saying “This is FANTASTIC! OH, this is TERRIFIC!”

And it was. I was dizzy, I was swooning, and I felt drunk. The irony of it is, she and I broke up not too long after that. Even so, the taste of strawberry lip gloss never really left me after that day, much like the taste of barley malt swallowed on a summer eve. For me the first beer and the first kiss had a lot in common. They both opened my eyes to a larger world of possibilities, awakening my senses to delightful things previously unknown. They both impressed upon me the ecstasy and the agony of pleasure, making it clear that in drinking deep of certain things one must be very careful not to lose control.

They made me aware of the power of touch, taste, smell.

The secret to enjoying a beer or a kiss, really, really enjoying I mean, is to approach each one as if it were the first you ever had.

But, seriously? If I could have the opportunity to do one again, I’d take the first kiss over the first beer, any day…both may make you warm and fuzzy but a kiss is the stuff of life, my friends, the stuff of life…