nothing like the first time
The first time I ate avocado was so amazing that I came
And that was the first time that I came so the only thing I could compare it to is the taste of avocado. Almost the same
The first time I got high, I ran into my friend’s bedroom and I hung onto each corner of the mattress because I knew that I would be flung into space if I didn’t hold tight
Two years before that I went to my first concert. I was high all night. And the first time someone clapped for me on stage I floated three inches off the pavement walking home
Only one girl has ever really wrapped my stomach into pretzels. She didn’t give me butterflies. She gave me pterodactyls
I’m talking terrible internal bruising and the first time I kissed her was like the first time I saw fireworks, which was like the sky first kissing me in the eyeballs
In high school the self-defense counselor taught us that to defend ourselves against a rapist, by sticking a thumb into the corner of his eye socket and popping it out like a grape
Babe, for the chance to be with you, I would pop my own eyeballs out and say, "Here. I only have eyes for you."
So everywhere you went you’d carry me around in your pocket and every time you pulled out a handful of loose change I’d get to wink at you and a thousand miles away you would think of how charming I am— me— weaving blindly through LA traffic. You— in some bullshit other place
But you shouldn’t leave first times until the end of summer
Because you went off to college, years passed, and I realized I was the only one calling anymore
And that first kiss hardened into the last. My love : retarded, preserved, a pterodactyl in a tar pit, the music over before it started, a lost guitar pick
I’ve stopped trying to match it, searching for that magical attachment
Because marriages are not fucking Disney
Bad marriages are sandcastles
Good marriages are McDonald’s hamburgers
You can leave a good marriage on a plate in the sun for fifty years and it stays pretty much the same
They key, I hear, is to fight routine— to make the smallest moments gleam and mean something
And if you ever feel yourself fading, face paint your old and aging creased-up cheeks gold-plated with a jar of first-time and if you need a youthful spruce-up just grab a tube of that newb juice and lube up and if you’re hurting just rub the good stuff where you’re burning
But a word of warning
The first time tends to make the bad times worse
There’s the rub
It doesn’t make things better, just louder
It amplifies a murmur ... er-er
Great is greater. Greater is greaterer. And broke ...is broker. And bone... is boner
It’s not a perfect formula
But the first time that I kissed you, the door of your crappy Civic already half-open, you said "I’m glad you did that."
And I have a feeling that, for you, it wasn’t a first-time
It was a "this one time."
But I will remember that moment for the rest of my life, even if I have to arm wrestle Alzheimer's for it
And if I ever get a chance to kiss you again, you know, a second time, I'm gonna stick my tongue out and lick you right across your face. Because I’ve already kissed you. But I never licked you
And you’ll say, "Ugh. Why did you do that?" And I’ll say, "Hey sexy. Did someone slap you across the face with a banana slug or is that a big shiny trail of first-time on your cheek. Maybe we can go back to my place and gets some first-time on the sheets."
It’s worth it
After all, there’s nothing like the first time
The first time’s always perfect