THE BLUNDERED BUSS

by
Patrick McManus

Having pretty well exhausted my interest in quantum physics, which took
the better part of three minutes, I recently turned to a much more fascinating subject for
pondering: the firsts of my life, such as first kiss or first fish. Oddly, I haven't been able
to extract my first fish from the mists of time, but memory of my first kiss leaped forth
with agonizing clarity.
Perhaps what makes my first kiss so memorable is that it was conducted more as a
scientific experiment than as an act of adolescent lust. I simply wanted to determine
what kissing a girl felt like, nothing more. My interests at the time centered mostly on
guns and hunting, and I tried to transfer my knowledge of shooting to the act of kissing,
the similarity in these activities being that in each there is a target you're supposed to hit.
The situation was this. My cousin Buck showed up at my house to request a favor
of me. Buck was several years older than I and possessed a driver's license along with,
and more importantly, a car. He would on occasion interrupt the car's basic purpose as a
vehicle for his amorous pursuits and use it to take me hunting and fishing. The car was
his main hold on my loyalties, other than brute force. The reason he had singled me out
for the favor was that someone-I didn't know who-had started a rumor that I was quite a
ladies' man and that most of the girls in my freshman class at Delmore Blight High were
absolutely crazy about me. The person who had contrived this mischief had even
suggested that I was a great lover. He had even invented numerous fictional anecdotes in
support of that reputation. I realized, of course, that the person who had started the
rumor was probably a shy and insecure boy totally lacking in experience with the
opposite sex, a lad not unlike myself. I could only sympathize with the rumormonger,
and saw no reason to cause him embarrassment by denying the rumor, much as I would
have liked to when I heard the favor Buck requested.
'Hey, lover boy," he greeted me. "Guess what you’re doing Saturday night."
"Going to a movie," I said. "A Randolph Scott Western. I can't miss it."
"Yeah, you can. Listen, I got a big favor I need to ask you. You know my new girl,
Velveeta? Well, her cousin, who's about your age, maybe a little older, is coming to
town, and Vel insists that she hang out with us. So I need you for the cousin. I figure I'll
take 'em
out for Cokes and burgers, and then I'll pick you up on the way out to the gravel pit."
No, not the gravel pit! For years I had lived in terror of one night finding myself
lured to that infamous hole. The gravel pit was the local lovers' lane, or in this case,
lovers' pit.
Hey, the gravel pit," I yelped. "You don't have to twist my arm to get me to go to the
gravel pit!"
"That's better," Buck growled. "If you'd just said so first, I wouldn’t have had to
twist it.
Thus it was that the following Saturday night I found myself on the opposite side of
a back seat from a girl who looked like a movie star. She had blue eyes and tawny hair
and an actual figure, and she was darting glances at me that sophisticated young women
reserve only for freshly squashed worms on a wet sidewalk. The small part of my mind
unparalyzed by terror deduced that this was going to be a long and harrowing evening at
the old gravel pit. I made a mental note to mention to Buck the next day the anguish he
had caused me. Then I'd kill him.
Scarcely had we arrived at the gravel pit than Buck and Velveeta began exchanging
passionate kisses. I made a quick study of Buck's technique, never before having had the
opportunity to observe passionate kisses at close range, so close in fact that the sounds
emanating from the front seat reminded me of those made by toothless Old Man
Crawford slurping up a bowl of noodles. Never before had I put Old Man Crawford and
romance in the same thought, which says something about the stress of the evening.
Although I appeared outwardly calm and casual, despite the loss of all feeling in my
extremities, my mind had recovered from its paralysis and now ricocheted about the
inside of my skull in wild panic. To rein it in, I started to pretend to myself that this girl
was merely another quarry to stalk. I would simply apply the same psychology I used to
fend off buck fever, or in this case, doe fever. I was by no means totally opposed to
kissing the girl, because I had long wondered what it would be like. It would be
interesting to analyze the sensations, coldly and objectively, as a scientist would do with
any experiment.
Despite my painful ignorance about all matters related to the opposite sex, I
nevertheless realized that it would be uncouth of me to treat a girl as a mere science
project. Before attempting to conduct the experiment, I thought I should first get to know
something about her as a person, such as her name, for instance. My attempt at engaging
her in preliminary casual conversation was not helped by the noodle-slurping sounds
emanating from the front seat.
"By the way, what's your name?" I inched across the seat toward her, beginning my
stalk.
From the front seat: slurp smack slurp slurp smack.
"Opal."
"So, how about them Yankees, Opal? Won three in a row." Inch inch.
Slurp smack slurp slurp smack.
"Yeah."
Slurp smack ...
"Uh, hot lunches at our school are really terrible. I bet they are at yours, too. You
like noodles?" Inch inch.
Slurp smack
"Yeah."
As I drew within firing range of her moist scarlet pouting lips, Opal suddenly tilted
back her head and closed her eyes. For a moment I thought she had dropped off to sleep,
but then realized she had somehow divined my intent, and even approved of it, if only as
a means of killing time. Cold sweat gushing from every pore, I took a deep breath and
poised myself for the shot, finger tightening on the trigger, so to speak. Then I made a
stupid error: I shut my eyes! Blindly I went for the target, only to discover too late that I
had miscalculated the trajectory. My dry, puckered, quivering lips closed not on a soft,
more or less receptive mouth but on a hard, unyielding protuberance. Startled by the
unexpected sensation, I popped open my eyes to reorient myself and discovered I was
kissing the bridge of Opal's nose! Cripes! Two wide and indignant blue eyes stared
directly into mine from an inch away, rather disconcerting, I must say.
So back to witty conversation. Presently, Opal closed her eyes and tilted back her
head once more. As I pondered whether to run the experiment again, with my eyes open,
a tiny snore escaped her lips. I knew then that I had no great talent as a lover, or as a
witty conversationalist either, for that matter, and in the future would concentrate only on
stalking game possessed of either four legs or feathers. Still, a first kiss is a first kiss,
even a blundered buss.