The First Kiss (...and a proper one!)

THE FIRST KISS (...and a proper one!)

Eduardo  as a  child on a  bike.  

The first kiss was still far away...

In 1972, my father closed the corner store he ran from our house and opened a bicycle and tricycle repair shop in a sort of flea market on the second block of Buenos Aires Avenue in Chimbote, between Pizarro and Garcilaso streets.

At the workshop, bicycles were rented by the hour to the neighborhood boys. Those were times when owning a bike was almost a luxury. After school, I would help my father in the shop, and I did the same during weekends and school vacations.

Every day, the workshop was crowded with teenagers waiting for their turn to rent a bike. For some reason, the girls preferred that I be the one to help them. And that is how I became friends with many of them... and even more than friends!

By late 1973, I was thirteen years old. At that time, to prevent thefts at the shop, my father sent my brother Fernando—who was fourteen—and me to sleep there. We went quite happily; in fact, there was a very good reason for our high spirits.

Every night when we arrived at the workshop, Fernando and I would pick the best bikes and go for a ride. I always went in search of the neighborhood girls, who punctually waited for me at their doors for their "turn" to ride on the crossbar.

Night after night, half a dozen girls would hop onto my bike. For some, it was a short ride. For others, a longer route through darker stretches...

By late 1974, I was hugging and kissing several of these girls every night. However, none of these kisses scattered along the bike route was meant to be the first proper kiss of my adolescence; that privilege was reserved for a kiss that would arrive in the summer of 1975.

Her name was Nelly. She was a little taller, darker-skinned, and older than me. She was pretty, with slightly curly hair and a long, distinguished neck. I enjoyed her company a little more than the others, and I found her conversation more interesting as well.

We would kiss at her window, or sometimes in the shadows around the workshops on the second block of Buenos Aires Avenue. We had been kissing and hugging for several weeks until the day of the definitive kiss finally arrived.

It happened like this:

One night, in front of the workshops, standing on the railroad ties that ran along Buenos Aires Avenue, I was kissing her. Suddenly, she gently pushed me away. In the glow from the Martinez Funeral Home’s neon sign, I could see her gaze. And she said to me:

“…Eduardo, that’s how a boy kisses his mother.” I hadn’t even recovered from my surprise when she added: “I’m going to teach you how a boy should kiss a girl.” And then, she kissed me.

It was a new and different kiss. A kiss that made all the wasted kisses before that moment pale in comparison. A kiss that marked a “before” and an “after.” A kiss that charted a new era in the innocence of my fourteen years.

Nelly smiled. “Did you like it?” she asked. She also asked if I could repeat the lesson. I don’t remember what I answered to the first question, but I tried to be diligent regarding the second. She had no further complaints.

Sometime later, my relationship with Nelly ended. I don’t remember how, either. What I do remember is that two years later, she left her old school and came to finish high school at Santa Maria Reina, right across from my house.

In those days, every evening I would wash my face, groom my hair, and stand on the corner of my house to watch the students leaving school. Among the crowd of girls, Nelly would pass by. I would smile at her shyly. She would smile back mischievously.

And as she smiled, in the brightness of her eyes, I seemed to find the reflection of a more distant smile—the one I saw two years before, thanks to the glow of the neon sign at the Martinez Funeral Home, in the darkness of the second block of Buenos Aires Avenue...

...the reflection of Nelly smiling at me after the lesson and the first proper kiss of my adolescence.

New Hampshire, USA

November 2011

Eduardo,1975

ps - If the reader were curious to know more about Nelly, a previous article provides additional references. This is the link:

A FORGOTTEN OLD PHRASE

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