Thinking about that first kiss story again, how I skirt certain details to avoid risk of offending anyone. Also feeling obligated to explain that the incident did not inflict long-term trauma for me, nor did it fuck me up sexually any more than I am fucked up sexually simply by nature. Remembering the incident does not make me sour or vulnerable. But is it safe to mention that the girl was borderline obese? Should I omit that detail, which might be considered an impetus for my revulsion, when in fact I don’t find chubby women unattractive siimply on account of their weight. And what of names. Should I not mention that her name was Beth? Going to look her up right now.
Found nothing.
I was wrong about Lily’s last name. It is not Ziegler, and I wonder where the hell I got that name. It was, however, a very distinctive name that search engines kept trying to correct to something more generic. This made it easy enough to find her on ancesty.com but nowhere else. Trail goes cold in 1991, when she appears to have moved to Baton Rouge. If she got married and changed her name I would have to take further steps to track her down but this is not that kind of pursuit. Just a curiosity, and the possible chance of an innocuous contact in which I would thank her for asking me “Where are you going?” She had me figured out from the get go. Oh i did find her picture in the 1982 yearbook. She was in 7th grade, and her face looked shockingly like I remembered it: still taking shape. She looked very different a few years later in high school, when she dated a guy named John.
Oh and the funny thing is that an image of one Lily Ziegler looked frighteningly like this Lily of yore.
Trying to remember what i talked about today, besides that first kiss. Oh, the Simon family, and the O’Brien family. One of the Simon’s was what i would like the record to show (hah) was my first real kiss. I mean, it occurred by mutual consent, which is not to say it was anything less than awkward and gawky, as teen romance tends to be. She and I never went anywhere after that but we were friends. When I started dating R a year later this Ms. Simon was enthusiasticc for her. I wonder if R. knew anything about my brief past w/Ms. Simon. I looked her up (Ms. Simon) some years ago and she seemed good. I couldn’t tell if she was married but she had a kid and seemed to be in touch with her two brothers, who I was frriends with and liked a lot.
All these ramblings are not meant to suggest that I am specifically reflecting on past romances. Just stream of consciousness stuff that started from Lily’s asking me “Where are you going?”
Where am I going?
