I’ve admittedly been ignoring my other blog – this blog – for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I’m paranoid that my words could stain my reputation in the same way that red wine permanently bloodies my favorite white tees. After my name appeared in a feature story in the Union Tribune, I was a little worried that my parents, conservative Christians, or worse my dad’s high school students, would stumble upon some of the less than conservative content here. Sometimes I treat this blog as a private personal diary rippled with confessions and dark secrets. Every now and then a relative stranger will reference one of those dirty little secrets in a public setting, and I’m reminded how my preferred form of release is being consumed by an undefined and masked audience of peers, enemies, and strangers.

Being open makes me a target, a target for all my jilted former lovers, a target for people who pretend to be my friend in public spaces but openly mock me or attack me and do so in a way that isn’t too difficult to decipher. We all get older, even the bullies on the playground, but the playground just morphs into different realms, it never disappears.

So while I contemplate how best to satisfy my saucier side, I’ll recount a relatively innocent story. Everything you read is true, not a sensationalized version, but a colorful description of the absolute worst kisser to ever have the opportunity to plant his lips against mine.

I met T at a bar in Mission Hills. I was standing outside inhaling the cancerous fumes from my Camel Silvers (yes I did smoke at one point in my life) when an olive-skinned, muscular man with a face that distinctly reminded me of my baseball crush, pitcher Jake Peavy, walked past me and blatantly gave me the once over with his eyes. I suppose he liked what he saw, and on a purely superficial level, so did I. T was wearing a Padre hat, wife-beater, and jeans. His aura screamed man, and my vodka soda-less self went inside to consume a beverage in the hopes of getting warm enough not to care that his body language and outbursts inside the bar were definite signs that he was already swimming in a sea of beer.

Over the course of the next few hours, I drank to dumb myself down to T’s level and we eventually got to the point where we could talk. It turns out that T was my age, putting himself through school, and rooming with the other T who was trying to bed my best friend. I wasn’t quite drunk enough to ignore that T reeked of liquor and beer, couldn’t utter a sentence without slurring it, and had trouble standing upright. When he asked for my number, I had enough self-respect to shut him down. I used the ever popular line, “maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

A week later we did run into each other again – at the same bar – under the same circumstances. We started to make it a point to run into each other. After ending a relationship with a man who took very little care of his body, I convinced myself the slightly stupid man with an impossibly toned body deserved a chance. Of course he totally blew it. T and the other T were supposed to meet up with Angie and I for drinks and then do a double date dinner. T and the other T showed up late, pounded shots of tequila, and never found the energy to leave the bar – but I did, and I made a scene in doing so. I embarrassed T in front of his friends by rejecting his advances and leaving without saying goodbye. Even hammered I couldn’t believe how disgusting his behavior had been.

Several weeks later, after several avoided calls, T managed to convince me to meet him for a drink. This time around T seemed surprisingly sober, his body looked better than ever, and he even appeared to keep up with my witty repartee. We started doing the touchy flirty thing. He touched my leg, I grazed his; I stared a little too long into eyes, he stared a little too long at my breasts. At 2am bar time, T asked me if I wanted to see his pad. I was in the mood to make-out, so after I said my requisite line “I’m not going to have sex with you” to ease my own anxieties, we left the bar to head to his place a few blocks away.

The 2 minute car ride over was riddled with awkwardness – I think I was sobering up and slowly regretting my lapse in judgment. At T’s house he gave me the tour. It was a two story house, shared by four men, who obviously were undisturbed by the utter chaos of the house. T grabbed a beer for the both of us, and we went outside so that he could smoke. Clarity pierced my muddled brain. I couldn’t ignore the obvious. The backyard was littered with empty beer cans shedding light on T’s personal devils – alcohol and cigarettes. I was getting prepared to offer some bullshit reason for leaving when T grabbed me and pulled me closer to him. As T preemptively stuck his tongue out, I shut my eyes and hoped for the best. My mouth was suddenly accosted by a warm, wet, sloppy mouth, and a tongue that wanted to explore the entire depth of my mouth. I instantly tried to coach his horrendous kissing technique by rejecting his tongue at every turn with a closed mouth. I’m not sure why I didn’t just walk away; any and all sexiness had evaporated from the equation, but I stayed long enough to learn that there was no way to teach T to kiss better. Along with the proffered verbal guidance that backfired, I tried to demonstrate, with tips, how I enjoyed kissing, but T is not a quick learner, so he continued to try and assault my lips and mouth with an overzealous tongue that couldn’t seem to decipher the difference between my lips and the rest of my face.

There are more horrific details to the story, like the unkept bathroom with at least 5 spiders who looked anxious to bite me as I peed, or the bedroom that smelled of stale beer, but let’s just say the evening was unforgetable in the worst kind of way. I waited until T passed out, which thankfully didn’t take very long, grabbed my purse and snuck out as fast as I could. I never saw T again, although I heard through the grapevine that he was disappointed and surprised that I wouldn’t return his calls. I just didn’t have the heart to tell T that kissing him was nauseating, and obviously none of his previous dates had done so either.

Browse Timeline

• « The Ugly Weight of Relationships
• » Bad Form