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i was raised in a highly religious household where i was taught that dating was for marriage. middle school romances, then, were frowned upon and seen as fickle because they ā€œjust lead to unnecessary heartbreakā€œ. as fucked up as this logic was, it made sense to me at the time and little me became an expert at suppressing any and all romantic urges, knowing that one day, when i was old enough, my time would come. brainwashing runs deep though, and this sense of being too young for a serious relationship never left me. time passes, and one day i find myself at 18 years old sitting in the most romantic gazebo in a forest with this girl i felt i really liked at the time. i tell her how much i like her. she says she feels the same. my heart is pounding like never before. yet, terrified of commitment, feeling ashamed of having feelings, and having the sense that im going to have to marry this girl if things went any further, the moment came and went and we never kissed. we end up moving away from each other. i spend my next years at college feeling heartbroken but also wracking my brain over why things never truly felt right with her. i do shrooms, my religiosity unravels, and i finally accept that im gay. internal crises ensue and i spend a good couple years ā€œdoing they workā€, as they say. flash forward to 23. iā€˜ve moved to the city and have my own apartment. i’ve just come out two months prior. i decide i want to start dating (big because i had never actually dated anyone, esp men). i meet someone online and we go out a few times. i’m absolutely charmed and he tells me how bad he wants to kiss me but i have to decline because i still feel like i barely know him and i don’t want to regret it. i explain my lore to give reason for my apprehension. like, the stakes are now HIGH - my brain is way too developed at this point for me to waste my first kiss on just anyone. one evening shortly after, we’re chatting on the couch in my apartment and that pre-kiss feeling is in the air. he asks again if he can kiss me and i say yes. he leans in, does the deed, i kiss back, and we make out for close to three hours (needed to make up for 23 years of nothing). one of the best nights of my life. it took years of self-work and un-conditioning to get to that place in my life where i could experience/enjoy a moment like that and im so proud of myself for it<3 epilogue: we continued to go out but ended up doing the whole anxious/avoidant situationship dance which nearly destroyed me in the end (i still think about him every day). but we had some good times lol
Oct 17, 2024

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So one of my flexes is that actually I had a great first kiss experience. I was 15, it was with my girlfriend at the time. We had been dating on and off for a few months (this was both our first like serious relationship that counted so it was pretty messy in soooo many ways). We had been best friends for a long time before dating and we always had feelings for each other. We were in my house playing Dictator on my iPad, sitting on a bean bag in my room. We were cuddling and the tension was over the roof, and after holding the most intense stare ever I ask "what?" (and I knew what was happening but I wanted to play dumb so that she would say it and then I would not have to start it because I was nervous and we had never kissed and thought she might reject me?) anyway and she went "god, I hope I don't regret this" (which like looking back no wonder I was afraid of getting rejected and like damn bitch but also we were teens and she was very nervous too). So she KISSED ME and everything inside me exploded. We proceeded to make out for like a full 40 minutes with some breaks and like got hands under shirts and also this was the first time I ever touched a boob and it was MINDBLOWING and AWESOME (i love boobs). The breaks we took in between were also pretty sweet. Our relationship up to this point and also after was full of hiding because neither of us wanted our families to know we were together so we were always looking to get intimate in positions were breaking apart at a moment's notice would give us plausible deniability (I still was a cishet man so it wasn't a closet thing back then, but neither of us was ever very close to our families that way). We would play a couple of rounds of Dictator and then make out in the ad breaks. Also my dog was around and wanted to play and was SUCH a bother. In the end the secrecy wasn't effective because the bean bag was right in front of my door (which I was not allowed to close) and we noticed at some point my mom was passing my room on the way out of a room we never saw her walk into in the first place...? So she definitely saw us, we just don't know at what part (hopefully not when we were getting handsy LOL). We dated for a couple of months more, broke up because I left on a semester abroad, got back together after two years and had a much better, healthier, steady relationship for that time. We don't speak anymore (but that's a story for ANOTHER day) but last we spoke about this we both remember this kiss very fondly.
Oct 17, 2024
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This is the photo that I stare at longingly as we talk on the phone. I miss him terribly right now. We met outside of a funny little bar (Avant-Garde in Ottawa) during a break in sets where everyone was smoking outside. I actually came to see his friend’s band but he and his friends were absolutely tearing up the dance floor. I decided to go up and talk to the cute ginger boy (lover boy, Cam) and the goofy guy from the band (Noah) and they told me about a DJ set Noah was doing the next Friday. Cam never got my number so I had to go, obviously. He finally got my instagram (make better choices, ask for their number) that night and I dmed him and asked what he was doing the next day - he was going to read on his balcony. I’d learn later that this man is a very avid reader (love). I asked to join and that was our first date! He’s the first person to ever cook for me, and he even set me up on a chair and with a baguette with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. We dated for the rest of the summer, about two months, then I went back to school in a different city and we parted ways. He thought we’d never talk again but I hit him up whenever I came back to town and even asked if he’d like to spend a couple of days cooped up when I was back on winter break. He said yes and we drank wine and watched good movies and ate grapefruits. That weekend together brought us really close. I wasn’t in Ottawa the next summer but I did spend two weeks completely alone in Kakabeka Falls between forestry contracts in Northern Ontario. Those weeks I called him most days for hours despite us not having really talked in months. Then I came back to Ottawa for an internship this September. I’ve always been really weird about relationships, so I told him I just wanted to be friends. So we were, but also we would *platonically* share the twin bed I had at the time when it was late and I didn’t want him to spend exorbitant amounts of money getting home. He actually told me he wanted to be with me in October, but I was scared and said he wasn’t what I wanted. We stayed friends. December 21st I wanted to go see my favourite local band (Baby Richman) back at Avant-Garde. They have a super psychadelic sound and one of my roommates gave me shrooms to take. I was supposed to go with my other roommate, but she cancelled last minute. Not wanting to lightly trip alone in public, I invited Cam. The night was great, but when the music ended I didn’t want to stay out. I wanted to lie in my soft bed, feel my soft cotton pyjamas, and look up at my twinkly lights. Lying on my bed with Cam, we talked for hours. I cried at how beautifully he described his family’s Christmas traditions. That night I realized just how much I want to be an integral part of his life. We were a year and a half in the making. He is wonderful. He’s funny, incredibly smart, and inspires me to improve every day. He also always stuck around, despite many efforts to push something so good away. I am so lucky to be reunited with him in July.
May 26, 2025
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i will tell the tragic story of both of my first kisses: I was a bit of a late bloomer romantically, and didn’t engage in pining of any sort until about age 15. At some point during my 15th year on this earth, I asked out a girl I knew named Adina who had very beautiful eyes, and we ā€œdatedā€ for a couple of months: we sat in coffee shops for an hour once a week or so holding slippery, sweaty hands and not making eye contact. This continued until my 16th birthday part sleepover. We two were the last still awake, and there, in the dark, on the hardwood floor of my living room, she kissed me. I remember she put her hand in my hair and i felt blessed. She pulled away and as I was gearing up to say something, she said: ā€œI don’t think i like girls actuallyā€œ Woe! I in my soul felt damned but tried to handle it with grace. We are still vague friends to this day. second kiss: A few months later, I met a boy who ate paper plates, had a reputation for being mean, and regularly skipped class to play guitar in the closet of his school. I deemed it prudent to lose my virginity to him (a confusing but not surprising decision in hindsight.) we started courting, and one day in the autumn, under a tree in washington square park, we kissed. Again, it was beautiful. Until halfway through he pulled away, excused himself, and threw up behind the tree. WOE AGAIN!!! Turns out he had strep and did not tell me. we dated for 10 months, broke up, and then dated/broke up again later in life, with much tumult and excitement along the way. And that is the story of both my first kisses and how I believed I was cursed forever!!!
Oct 17, 2024

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