The Greatest Kiss of All
By Toni Jeffrey
PROMPT—Never will I forget ...
Am I one of the few and the proud who remembers my first real, passionate kiss? I don’t think I’m a sentimental fool, but maybe?
My first (pretend-ish) kiss was due to one of those kissing-in-the-closet games middle schoolers tended to play at parties at which the ostensible on-duty parents don’t actually supervise.
Cecilia, the party host, determined which girl and which boy were assigned to kiss each other (in pairs, not middle school benign orgies), although we had barely developed our sex drives. So cute? Perhaps some of the attendees thought so.
Being so young and naive at age 12, of course I didn’t think to object to going into a dark closet with someone named Mark Gross. I wish I were making up that name, but no. Yes, gross. No, not Mark’s fault. Not fun, not awful. Nothing I would care to repeat in my lifetime.
It was four years before I kissed anybody else. But gosh, the wait was sooo worth it.
I met Steve serendipitously. Because I knew his younger brother and his former girlfriend, I had heard he actually existed. But I didn’t meet him until I wandered around our high school carnival after having run away from home, just for a couple of days. I was a drama queen at age 15.
He was in charge of an arguably safe carnival ride at age 16. I guess management didn’t screen their staff; the ride passengers simply assumed the guy operating the ride knew what he was doing. Nobody died while I was there, so the assumption was apparently correct.
Somehow, our eyes met while I could see him at the top of a steep staircase, at which he staffed a desk while operating the aforementioned safe ride. Of course, I had to walk up.
We smiled. We gabbed. I honestly don’t remember what we talked about, but we parted while grinning like idiots at each other.
After I came home, l summarized our encounter in my written diary. “Steve will take my virginity. Before I turn 16.” (Wish I had saved the actual diary, sigh.) It took longer than that, but spoiler alert: it ultimately did happen.
We had a go-away-come-here relationship. Most school days, we met up at the high school bench that was our usual rendezvous spot, then drove to a nearby secluded park. Hung out, gabbed, listened to music, smoked pot in responsible-ish quantities. I returned to my afternoon classes only slightly stoned. On the other hand, Larry (from my afternoon Spanish class) nicknamed me “Red Eyes,” so perhaps I was not coping as well as I thought I had. However, I won the outstanding foreign language student award when I graduated, so who had the last laugh?
Anyway.
The big night arrived: October 22, 1978. Journey concert at Santa Clara University’s Leavey Center. I know, Journey, sigh. But I was a fan at the time, and my sister had bought me two tickets to the show for my 16th birthday. I asked Steve if he wanted to join me and he agreed. For some reason, we met up at our usual high school bench rather than his picking me up at my house. Perhaps to avoid the parental awkwardness? Or the underaged possession of beer? (None for me; I don’t like beer.)
Journey was so much better before they let Steve Perry, um, join the party. Regardless, it was fun. We had a blast at a reasonably intimate show.
But back to the kiss thing.
Steve brought me home in his Ford Pinto wagon, which his mom may or may not have permitted him to borrow. I had him drive into an inaccessible area of my parents’ smallish property. In a coy and slightly flirty way, I asked him: “Do I get a birthday kiss?”
Never expected a kiss like this. Hell had broken loose. In hindsight, I can only wonder why we didn’t devolve into a decadent and passionate pile of teenage sex in the back-ish seat of the Pinto wagon. I feared I would shrink back into my parents’ house as a lovestruck pile of goo. But although the pile-of-goo thing didn’t literally happen, I was so hopelessly in love.
The next days and months were the usual go-away-come-here thing. We still hung out, gabbed, smoked pot. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but sometimes we drank too much. Mostly me. But he always kindly took care of me. In particular, he did the helpful gesture of holding back my hair so I wouldn’t vomit on it. Thankfully, this was only necessary a couple of times.
As I previously indicated, he ultimately was my first lover, as I predicted as soon as I laid eyes on him. But he was quite the gentleman for nearly two years before we did the wild thing.
I have always been so bemused that I retain the oddest aspect of The Big Night: he had eaten a tuna sandwich earlier. Not possible to brush his teeth. So here I am unexpectedly experiencing The Big Night, and I have to smell tuna breath? I hate tuna.
After our relationship progressed to the wild thing phase, he always wanted to jump into bed whenever we hung out. Because of the unfortunate olfactory memory and the fact that I wanted to do things other than have sex, I was not okay with that. So we parted ways.
Until our eyes again serendipitously met across a crowded room four years later.
After once again grinning like idiots, we did the friends-with-benefits thing a few times. Thankfully, he had gotten much better in bed since our first encounter and apparently had stopped eating tuna sandwiches.
And he could still kiss like a sexual maniac. But our time ultimately ended and we last saw each other the day I graduated college.
Thanks to the magic of parental obituaries, I learned he had married and had four kids. I had hoped he found happiness, but it’s been 40 years. And he died last year under unfortunate circumstances. No overdose or suicide, but an awful health emergency. So sorry to learn he passed entirely too soon.
I still have the bowl he gave me shortly after we met. I still have my yearbook in which he insisted he would “love me next year.” I still have the garter (whaaat?) he gave me while we were smoking pot on the night of my high school graduation.
Steve, may you rest in peace. And thank you for the greatest kiss of my life.
Toni Jeffrey is a writer living in California’s beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains. She wishes she had the guts to dye her hair purple. Her first book, Professional Bum: Lessons Learned From My Twentysomething Adventures was published in December 2024. Excerpts from her forthcoming book, “Tell Me Why,” are posted at tonijeffrey.substack.com.
