INTRO MUSIC
AMBI: Montage of phones ringing.
AMBI: Montage of answers, “Hello?” “Hello?” “Hi, Valerie.”
Valerie: Did I ever tell you when my first kiss was? (Take from interview w/ Micky)
Susan Godfrey: No.
Micky Donahue: I don’t think so.
Kailyn Diaz-Lee: No.
Michael Conklin: No.
Valerie: My name is Valerie Conklin, and I don’t remember my first kiss. I don’t remember who my first kiss was with or where it took place. I’m lucky, though. My best friend since kindergarten, Frank Lewis, remembers his.
Valerie: Frank, who was your first kiss?
Frank Lewis: You.
Valerie: Listen to how confident you are!
Valerie: I went to Frank’s apartment the other day to bother him about this memory that he has, but I don’t. Frank and I met in afterschool, became best friends, and in second grade we started calling each other our boyfriend and girlfriend.
Valerie: When I was a little girl, I fancied Frank as tall, dark, and handsome. I am perfectly average height, fair and blonde. We have pictures of us holding hands and walking through the Bronx Zoo in two different colored blue coats. We looked like cartoon characters drawn to be easily told apart by five-year-olds.
Valerie: Our parents were called in because the teachers wanted to let them know that their kids thought they were dating
Frank Lewis: I think we definitely were dating.
Valerie: They just wanted to make sure that was okay. Mom told me that she was like, “Yeah, Frank seems like a nice boy.” And I guess your parents said something similar because there was never an intervention.
Frank Lewis: No, there was no issue.
Valerie: We were best friends all throughout elementary school. We dated for a large portion of it, and then after fifth grade, I moved to Brooklyn. At the time, there wasn’t really a way for us to keep in touch. I just had his home phone number. I asked Frank to break out all of his old journals. He still has a bunch from elementary school. I tried to find some of mine, but I’m not as good of a record keeper.
Frank Lewis: Dear journal, there are four days left to school, but it feels like two. I miss my friends. I’ll miss Valerie the most. She was going to move away. Keep the secret journal. I love her. I cannot even resist it. She left me too. I’ll kiss her on the last day. I’ll kiss her no matter going back. Love is a very complicated affair. Then there’s your phone number. So there is no follow-up on this, but my brain tells me it’s true when it happened because again, I remember sneaking back into the closet.
Valerie: I don’t remember it.
Frank Lewis: I know. That’s ok.
Valerie: At this point, I told Frank about a memory I had. I remember one time telling you that it was weird that we were boyfriend and girlfriend, but we didn’t kiss.
Frank Lewis: Yeah, then we started to kiss. I think it was like fourth grade. We started kissing after.
Valerie: And I don’t remember any of them.
Frank Lewis: Well, you initiated most of them except for this one, which I remember initially.
Valerie: I did?!
Frank Lewis: Yes, you did.
Valerie: I don’t remember a single kiss.
Frank Lewis: I remember at least four.
Valerie: Four?!
Frank Lewis: No, you kissed me a lot in fourth grade
Valerie: On the lips?
Frank Lewis: Yes.
Valerie: Good for me, man.
Valerie: You might be thinking that Frank must have made this up because he remembers it and I totally don’t, and that is technically possible except that I trust my friend and I don’t think he’d lie to me about this.
Valerie: Here’s what I remember. I remember kissing a boy in sixth grade because I had to audition for a part in a play that I wanted. The director wanted to make sure that he didn’t cast someone who was too nervous to kiss a boy on stage. A lot of other girls auditioned for that part, and a lot of them thought it was a really big deal because it was their first kiss. But I remember saying it wasn’t a big deal because I had already had my first kiss.
Valerie: In the intro, you heard me call a bunch of my family members and friends to ask them if they had ever heard of this kiss. One of them who knew me in middle school had this to say:
Kailyn Diaz-Lee: It does sound familiar. I actually distinctly remember it. I remember talking about it with you in that sense, even though I certainly didn’t follow up about what your first kiss was. I don’t remember why I remember that so specifically.
Valerie: Ok, thanks.
Valerie: I poked around and found as much research about first kisses as I could. Pretty much every abstract I read pointed out that there really isn’t a lot of study about this. Some research from a book called Flashbulb Memories indicated that people are more likely to remember the details of their first kiss than losing their virginity. An article from the International Journal of Sexual Health in 2007 outlined about a million emotions that get tangled up in memories of a first kiss. Pretty much every other link I clicked was a thinly disguised excuse to give me hot tips for my first kiss.
Valerie: As I mentioned, I’ve known Frank for a pretty long time. We’ve been very good friends that whole time. So I told him what the project was with this podcast and he told me his theory why I don’t remember our first kiss
Valerie: I’m going to try and ask people if anyone else remembers me talking about my first five, four kisses.
Frank Lewis: Maybe it doesn’t count for you because you did it so often.
Valerie: That’s a crazy theory.
Frank Lewis: You were doing pecks on cheeks and on face all the time, and then you did also pex on lips. You did it all the time, and I only counted my first kiss as the one where I did because I was like, no, this is not a peck.
Valerie: I’m pretty sure it was. I mean, I guess, I don’t know how smoochy was it?
Frank Lewis: It wasn’t French kissing.
Valerie: Well, of course it wasn’t French. Well, I mean, I guess not “of course.” Children try things.
Valerie: I don’t buy Frank’s theory. So I called my mom back.
AMBI: Phone ringing.
Valerie: I have one more question, sorry.
Susan Godfrey: Okay.
Valerie: I grilled her asking why she thinks I don’t remember my first kiss, and she got very philosophical about it. She knows me pretty well too.
Susan Godfrey: If you don’t hold your first kiss of something sacred, if you’re not this romantic person that imagines Prince Charming coming and waking you from this sleep of no man loving you, and finally your life begins, of course you don’t remember it. The actual act isn’t as loaded, and I think you running around kissing Frank on the playground, whatever.
Valerie: I also wonder if that just wasn’t the important part of my relationship with Frank.
Susan Godfrey: Not at that age, no, of course not. You guys were buddies. Maybe because he was a guy, this kind of relationship has to have a different definition.
Valerie: For real, that’s the end of it. Thank you, mama.
Susan Godfrey: Of course.
Valerie: Bye-bye, mom.
Susan Godfrey: All right, bye.
AMBI: Phone hanging up.
Valerie: So I’ve reconstructed the memory of my first kiss, and I’ve talked to my oldest friends about it. What do I think? I’m glad that my first kiss was with someone I really, truly loved. Even if that relationship was not what I thought it was at the time.
Valerie: This has been Valerie Conklin. Thank you so much for listening.
OUTRO MUSIC
Piece at D&S
(Photo by Emma Delahanty)