A wet cotton sock was stuck between my heel and the broken sole of my beat-up Converse. Vancouver wasn’t built for snowy Canadian winters, and neither was I. The prospect of attending the rest of the eighth grade made me want to stick my tongue on the #22 bus stop and have it sawed off. I glowered at the lack of John Hughes’ Benders and Molly Ringwalds amongst my boring 2006 counterparts. I untied and retied the stained laces of my shoes, my fingers slowly losing feeling. Five years prior, two months before the 9/11 attacks, my mom had died from ovarian cancer. The lingering awareness of death awoke the lack of life in the living. I had become the walking corpse of my nightmares, and I hadn’t even been kissed yet! I had to get out and into the world on my own.
***
Two years later, at age sixteen, I spent the first night in my new bed in Favara, Sicily. The cold tile floors smelled like a no-name brand hospital, and I crumpled the thin, freshly ironed sheets between my legs. Scooters beeped and whirled animatedly outside my open window in the heavy September humidity. “I’m here. I’m really in Italy.” Underripe and hungry.
In October, I was wrangled up with the other exchange students that were placed in Sicily and plopped at a hotel next to an active volcano in Catania. The local legend says that Mount Etna is a parent that erupts when angry, so, if you live close by, leave a wine bottle on your kitchen table so that it’ll spare your house. I marinated on this as my fellow international teenagers commiserated over the melodramas in our local piazzas and the ever-increasing kilos from the mouth-watering food we just couldn’t stop eating.
One boy in the group, a tall blonde named Martin (“Mar-teen”) from Austria, gave the vibe that he just happened to wake up in Sicily one day, things just happened to occur to him, but he was perfectly happy to be along for the ride. Constantly gripped by a need to control my life adventures, I gaped open-mouthed at his laissez-faire attitude. I immediately (ever so casually) clung to his timetable, spotting him in the hall between workshops and waving “hi” at lunch. He soon happened to get cornered by me before dinner. We saw a conga line forming, and he suggested we join. My growling stomach almost murdered me when I agreed without hesitation. We followed the herd of students and volunteers around the hotel, our thunderous singing snake collecting bodies from hotel room to hotel room, as bottles of wine appeared as quickly as they were finished. I caught on that it was the volunteers supplying the booze, but, as they were descendants of Mount Etna, I wasn’t surprised.
Our conga line staggered into the final room of the night, and Martin’s firm grip released from my shoulders. I wondered if my Danish friend Ditte, who was also my hotel roommate, knew where I was. My dad, who was 9,519 km away, sure didn’t. It was past midnight, and nobody moved from our hotel room as our cackling and mush of tipsy languages ensued; we’d all adopted Italians’ second language anyway: hand-talking.
At 4 AM the consensus was that it was time to sleep. We found spots on the floor, armchairs, and two double beds. Bodies dangled everywhere. Nobody seemed to want to leave their new comrades, or maybe they just didn’t know the way back to their rooms. Martin and I shifted close to the bed as two girls let us pass, knowingly nodding and smiling at me, which let the gravity of sleeping next to Martin drop into my gut. He gestured to the right side of the bed, and we climbed in, trying to take up as little space as possible with two strangers on our left.
Dark and quiet, my heart pounded on the mattress through my back. Martin rolled from his back onto his side. We were nose-to-nose. My mouth went dry. He placed his dripping lips on me and they went SMACK SMACK SMACK SLUUUUURRP as his tongue wrestled with mine. My first kiss was French! And Austrian! And Sicilian! SLURP SLURP SLURP.
A few girls in the corner giggled. Then a few male laughs joined the gaggle. It hit me. I was having my first kiss in a small theater of about 30 people who were forced to listen to our moist soundtrack. I tried to kiss quieter as a girl erupted with the vocals “I KISSED A GIRL AND I LI-IKED I-ITT” in a thick accent. The lyrics and volume grew and grew with added voices until the entire room was scream-singing “THE TASTE OF HER CHERRY CHAPSTICK!” The hotel room burst into deafening applause, and I buried my burning face into Martin’s chest as he laughed and hugged me goodnight.
The light of the morning made our icy departure feel like what my future self would recognize as a one-night stand, as we waved and mumbled that we’d see each other later. My palms started to sweat, and by the time I was back in my assigned hotel room, I was in full panic mode. Had I messed it up? Was I terrible at kissing? Thank goodness Ditte was still there getting ready.
“Ditte! Martin, that guy from Austria? We kissed!”
“Oooooo.” Her mellow Scandinavian voice trilled.
“Yeah! What do I do now?” I searched her experienced face expectantly.
“What, is this your first kiss or something?” She looked horrified. I slammed the breaks on my hysterics.
“No! I just…don’t know how he feels about it.”
“Okay well I’m going to get some breakfast, see you later!”
I had finally gotten what I thought I wanted: to be far away from Vancouver. However, I longed for my friends back home who would’ve shrieked with me, gone over every detail, and warmly planned for the next line of attack. Instead, I was alone and, as it was the age before smartphones, fully disconnected from home.
***
That afternoon, I climbed into my host mom’s mint green Fiat Cinquecento, hundreds of lemon and orange trees whipping past my open window on our way back to Favara. Their ancient roots held onto each other like nuns walking to their local church, arm in arm. The citruses would be harvested, squeezed, and poured into San Pellegrino cans, then shipped all the way to my corner store in Vancouver.
I exhaled as I fingered the paper in my pocket. I had independently gotten over my nerves and hounded Martin down for his e-mail address an hour before departure. (Europeans were just starting to get introduced to Facebook at the time.) He had a great way of curving his As, and I couldn’t wait to study his writing in private. I swallowed the weekend, feeling my private joys and my private aches warm my belly with a quiet confidence I’d never tasted.
I leaned my head against the passenger’s window, letting the late October sun scorch my skin as my host mom fanned herself boisterously. We weaved through the Sicilian hills as her growls grew louder, dams of sweat threatening to break into her mascara at any moment. Her annoyance with the heat rolled over me. I was moving. I was mapping my life without a GPS. And my socks were perfectly dry.
