“The first kiss is where you get to know someone. And every kiss after that is a shadow of that first one.” –Betty Draper, Mad Men

My very first kiss was in preschool for a popsicle. I don’t remember the kiss much, but I do remember the popsicle.

Then there were the plethora of spin the bottle type games, including a special one we made up called “pass the tic-tac”.

The first real one happened when I was 12. He touched my boobs, I touched his thingy, it was hormonal and full of the insecurities of puberty.

When I kissed my first woman a few years later, I was even more nervous and excited than I had been at 12.

One would think that this awkwardness would go away, but it hasn’t. Reaching that first kiss with someone is still just as thrilling for me as it had been back in junior high.

The slow movement forward, checking to see if they want it as much as you do, praying they want it as much as you do, then finally realizing they do want it as much as you do.

Kissing used to be such an intimate thing for me that I would save it only for very special people. Periods of my life have been marked by anti-kissing decrees and I have had sex with people without our lips ever touching.

Nowadays, I’m not as anti-intimacy, as I used to be, but I’m still just as sensitive to kissing. I can tell how much I like a girl by how long it takes me to kiss her. If she makes my clit throb, I’ll grab her and have at it right then and there. But if she makes my heart Twitter, I may never even attempt a hug.

The night I first kissed Tsunami, we lay in bed, slowly getting closer and closer, until we finally had no choice but to meet. The tension was so strong I thought nothing could ever top it.

Then I kissed The Wind.

Over a year of flirtatious texting and intimate conversations led us to finally meet in her bed late one cold San Francisco evening. Cuddled up in every blanket she owned, I spent hours naming her body parts in Italian until she finally let my lingua meet hers.

The Wind had a way of making each kiss feel like a first. The tease and tension of her tongue kept me in anticipation for years, and the dark shadow kisses Betty Draper talks of never crept their way into our love life.

The mouths that I’ve met since The Wind have been nice, but nothing has blown my socks off in the stomach-churning intestinal twisting way hers used to.

I have hope of that changing soon, though. I’ve spent the past few weeks flirting with three separate yet equally intriguing women, all of which I’ve had the opportunity to kiss, and all of which I have passed on.

Which means all three are potentially troublesome.

The longer I wait to kiss them, the deeper my fear of what that kiss would emotionally mean to me. I want to grab them and get it over with, but I can’t. All three are too interesting to waste our first kiss on a whim.

So I must wait. This means, poor unfortunate readers, that you also must wait.

At least we’re held in anticipation together.