When I was thirteen, my parents were invited to a cookout next door between several families in the neighborhood. They would always start as family cookouts and later dissolve into adult parties. The kids go to bed while the adults stay up late. You can remain a little longer once you get to a certain age. The neighbors directly across the street were Jim and Dolores. They were both teachers by day and cheaters by night. There were about twenty couples and a few teenagers at this event. As the day melted into the evening, music was blaring on the record player, and drinks were freely flowing. Most people were either outside or in the kitchen. Delores was in the living room, drinking too much and dancing with different people, making spouses jealous. She kept looking at me weirdly and, every so often, would wink. I didn’t know any better and smiled.

I was checking out the record collection…lots of lame stuff like Trini Lopez, Beach Boys, Sinatra, and popular artists from the sixties. I was looking at a Beatles album when Delores grabbed my arm and asked me to dance, not asking but telling, and before I knew it, we were spinning around the living room dancing. She smelled of perfume, cigarettes, and alcohol. In seconds, she was trying to kiss me and succeeded in planting her tongue in my mouth, at which point I pulled back because I thought a parent would walk in. “Not here,” I said. “Meet me behind my house in five minutes.” The words blurted out of my mouth from somewhere…maybe a future me. She slithered away with an insane smile and headed down the hall to the bathroom.

I hurriedly slipped out the front door and went to the back of my house, waiting excitedly in the darkness. What was I thinking? What was I going to do? That was a weird kiss with the tongue…no one ever mentioned that when my friends talked about kissing girls…maybe it was because she was drinking and made a mistake. Like staggering when you walk. I was getting nervous, and all at once, I had second thoughts. What would I do? I returned to the party, where the adults gathered, made a plate of snacks, grabbed a Coke, and sat next to my mom.

The second I sat down, Delores’s husband stepped outside and asked if anyone had seen his wife. He had a look in his eyes like he knew she was up to something. He walked around the side of the house. I got up, entered the back door, hurried to the front window, and peeked out just as Delores was staggering back towards her house from mine, and they met in the middle of the street. They were arguing…shouting with hands flailing, and finally, kissing, and I could have sworn she looked over his shoulder straight at me and waved. I returned to where my mom was sitting and stayed by her side until they sent me home. I never went to another cookout there and avoided Delores whenever she came to visit.

TM DiSarro
From: THE MEMORY OF RAIN available on Amazon