Almost a Year in the Making

I was in my car singing at the top of my lungs to that 'Africa' song by TOTO. A bag packed in the back with a swimsuit and a change of clothes, along with my ENTIRE makeup bag, because seriously you never know when you'll need it. I was driving on the 495 headed towards Annapolis, and I'm not going to lie; I was nervous.

I've been texting back and forth with Man (yes that's going to be his nickname, because that's who he is in my phone) for a little under a year, and I don't think I'd actually seen him live in the flesh since December or January or February*, maybe. Sure I had seen more recent pictures of him, which I received one night while with my chikas, and we subsequently all drooled a little, because while he had been quite attractive to me, these new pictures made him look like an Adonis. And while I think I'm attractive, I don't think I'm the equal to an Adonis, so I downed an entire lemonade-glass-from-the-fair full of sweet tea on the way there, thinking, this could be awkward or this could be good.

So we swam, and we drank, and we laughed, and I got a bath from his dog (seriously the pup could not and would not stop licking me - she licked my legs, my arms, my hands, my dress, my face, my feet, EVERYTHING) and we ate junk food, and we watched Up in the Air with his friend passed out on the couch behind us.

But before long the movie ended, and Man slid his arms around me slowly, the darkness enfolding our bodies. I could hear him smiling and feel the warmth of his breath on my nose. His giggles cut through the humidity cloistering around us, but slowly our noses touched and then I felt his beard slide over my cheeks and chin, till the breath slipped from his mouth and into mine, a sickly sweet cigar breath lingering on my tongue.

"Wait a minute, is my beard bothering you?"
"No, no it's fine."
"You sure?"
"It's perfectly fine, I like it."
"Good!" He said as he pulled me the last few millimeters towards his face and rubbed his beard all over my face.

Yes.

I got bearded, and after experiencing the greatest exfoliant known to woman, we fell back into the original pattern amidst laughter and our constant questioning each other as to what was so funny.

What ensued was the most epic. EPIC. first kiss of my life. I have them ranked, mentally and, let me tell you this is definitely number 1 out of a shit ton of people. For the longest time, a guy I only kissed once the first week of my sophomore year of college held the title, unchallenged, but the gauntlet was thrown, and he has been unthroned.

Later, as I drove home, I texted my friend Z something along the lines of, "I would give up every other man on the face of the planet, and wait an entire year, again, if it meant that at the end of it, I got to kiss that man again." After she got over the shock of me, disowning every guy in my rolodex, she sensibly said, "really? you'd give up all guys for that kiss." - She really knows me too well. So I thought about it and sent her back, "I can guarantee no man will ever match that kiss."

Because readers, it's like that line from the movie The Princess Bride, “Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.” I'm not here to say that it tops the kiss between Wesley and Buttercup, but it definitely ranks in those 5 somewhere.

And on top of that, he's a good guy. He's fun, caring, tender, enthusiastic, friendly, outgoing, openminded, and looks damn good in a trucker hat. And you know how many men meet all those qualities (outside of the trucker hat), out of the ones I know, I can count them on one. friggin. hand.

So my trucker hat is off to you sir (mainly because I don't know where it is - it says don't mess with texas though - so if anyone sees it, I'd like it back, I loved that thing). You have astounded me beyond comparable thought.

*update: definitely December because I was relatively taken during the first few months of the year.