Vincent's Kiss

As a gay man who came out late in life, I write stories about the struggles of young people trying to figure out who they are and the obstacles they face along the way. I try to paint pictures with words of those experiences

• Short story
• Fiction

								
Vincent’s Kiss


	I was 13 the first time I got kissed. I mean by someone other than family. It was early spring – the end of March or early April, I believe. The day was warm for spring, but you could still feel a little chill in the wind, especially in the early evening. I was sitting on the porch swing with my best friend Vincent. He was 13 also but a few months older. We were gently swinging together on one of those wooden-slatted swings hanging from an A-frame on his back yard patio. We were just talking and laughing about old Sister Mary Jude at our school – St. Thomas – and complaining about too much homework. “I kinda like her,” Vincent said, and I just rolled my eyes. “She’s weird,” was always my response. Vincent rolled his eyes. “That’s only because she wouldn’t give you an ‘A’.” Amid other topics of discussion – baseball, favorite TV shows, and, of course, girls (not always flattering) – there was the usual question about what we wanted to do before we got called in for supper. Vincent shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and said: “I don’t know. What do you want to do” followed by another shrug and “I don’t know” from me.  
	The delightful smell of homemade spaghetti sauce gently eased out the kitchen window that sat just above our heads. “Spaghetti,” I said, “must be Tuesday.” 
	“Yeah,” Vincent replied looking out towards the back yard where we would certainly play many whiffleball games during the upcoming summer. “Always Tuesday.” 
	The rattling of dinner plates and tinkling of forks and knives announced that the table was being set. We didn’t even have to look to know that Vincent’s mother was leaning over the kitchen sink to get closer to the window screen and announce the supper countdown: 
	“Ten minutes, Vincent, and don’t dawdle!” 
“Well, I guess I better go,” I said. “My mom is going to be calling in a minute, too.” 
And that’s when it happened. 
Vincent was looking at me – kinda staring – like he sometimes did when we were talking. He looked down at his hands that were doing nervous things like rubbing them together like you do when you wash your hands. Then he would wipe his hands on the tops of his legs. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he said quietly, now looking down at the cracked concrete of the patio below our feet.  He paused and looked at me funny and quickly leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and sat back. He stared at me with a look filled with fearful anticipation mixed with hope, his face slightly turned to his right and waited for my response. 
I punched his lights out and went home.
	Vincent lived two houses down from me on the same side of the street.  I took my time as I headed home. I knew I was in big trouble. My mind was a jumble of thoughts and feelings: What did I just do? He deserved it! Did I hurt him? Why did he do that? Did I like it?  Oh my god! I’m in so much trouble! I stopped and sat on my front porch steps, my mind dancing between fury and tears. When I finally went in my mother was on the phone with Vincent’s mom and there was no doubt, by the look on her face, that she now knew what I did, and she was pissed!
	“Just a minute, Martha,” I heard her say as I was making my way – about half-way, in fact – up the stairs to my bedroom as quietly as possible when she yelled with that edge in her voice that made it clear she was angry: “William Daniel, come down here this instant!” She never called me William unless she was really angry and William Daniel only when whatever I had done was on a par with a mortal sin. To a good Catholic, which she was, mortal sin meant going to hell and hell was what you were about to pay. “Come down here right now!”
	When I heard both my names I grimaced and froze mid-step and nearly fell as my body couldn’t decide whether to finish stepping up or to turn around and obediently go down. As I reached the bottom step, I saw her standing there with both hands on her hips. She had set the phone’s handset down in the cubby the phone rested on specifically for leaving someone on hold. I could hear Mrs. Holtmeyer, Martha, still yelling at my mother. 
“Do you want to tell me what went on with you and Vincent?” she asked. To any other listener, it sounded like an invitation to a fair and reasonable discussion. It was, in fact, the precursor to a prisoner-of-war interrogation.
	“I…he…uh…we,” I stuttered, trying to find the right starting point.
	“You blackened at least one of Vincent’s eyes, probably both and bloodied his nose is what you did,” she said sternly, not waiting for me to continue, her hands still firmly planted on her hips. “Why in God’s name would you do such a thing? To your best friend, for Christ’s sake!” she continued as she raised both arms in a gesture of bewilderment then letting them fall with a slap against her sides. It might be important to add that my complete realization of just how much trouble I was in came with that question. What she usually said any time she was exasperated was: “For Pete’s sake!”  I was doomed.  The only other time I had ever heard my mother bring God into an angry conversation was when my father brought home a brand-new pink and white 1963 Buick LeSabre without telling her – she reacted with the same divinely modified question. The subsequent ‘discussion’ with my dad, as she liked to refer to it, went on for nearly a week.  I fully expected the same or worse – this was a divine double!
It didn’t help at all that she brought up (with the second divinity reference!) the fact that Vincent was my best friend. I felt a queasiness starting in my stomach and a kind of regret somewhere in my mind that confused me.
Realizing I was in deep, deep trouble, I did the only thing I knew to do. I pulled out all the stops and told the truth. “He kissed me.”
She froze. Her hands, which had returned to her hips, now slowly reached up and gently rested near her mouth. “He what?” she haltingly asked, her face contorted somewhere between disbelief, shock, and disgust.
“Vincent kissed me,” I said, this time using his name, so it was totally clear to her what really happened. arms dropped again to her side. She looked like I told her Vincent had stabbed me with a knife.
	“Where?!” she angrily threw at me, her doubt and disbelief evident in her hands returning to her hips as she leaned a bit forward.
	“In his back yard,” I said.
	Her face grew more agitated, so I thought she needed more detail, “on the swi…” She straightened up, hands still on her hips and then it suddenly dawned on me what she was asking. “Oh… Oh!” I exclaimed. I pointed to my cheek and the exact spot where Vincent’s lips had landed. “Right here. On my cheek.”
I have no idea what was running through her mind at this point or if she even heard Mrs. Holtmeyer’s voice still calling her name through the phone, but she picked up the phone, alternately looked at me and then up to the left a couple of times then mumbled something that sounded like “I’ll call you back good bye,” and slowly hung up, without looking, mind you.

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