First Kiss-Last Kiss
Unexpected things happen. Cars skid on wet roads. Ice dams break. Buildings collapse without apparent reason. A tsunami wave rushes down a channel flooding farms, fields and towns. Snow falls in June or September killing buds in the former and dusting blood red roses with white in the latter. As you reach over to move your mouse while working late and on a deadline, your elbow brushes inadvertently against your project partner’s fully clothed breast. She laughs. Then she leans in and kisses you.
For a moment the world stands still. You are uncertain what to do or say next.
Pulling back in surprise you look at her, neither too long nor too short a glance. You are trying to gauge her feelings and understand what just happened. Was the kiss meant seriously? Perhaps you lean in for another kiss, embracing the unexpected. Or perhaps you chuckle quietly and suggest a study break to figure out what just happened.
Following the kiss, surprise, excitement, and a hint of awkwardness mingle together. Your heart races uncertain if it should slow down to a normal rate or stay pulsing for whatever comes next. Your mind struggles to catch up. You feel so many things in so few seconds. Exhilaration, curiosity and maybe a little trepidation take hold. Your mind keeps asking, “What just happened?” Some first kisses are like that.
In reality most first kisses are predictable. Often their meaning can be gleaned from the context. Some kisses are as formal as sending a thank you note. Many first kisses are simply the punctuation mark at the end of a date. Leaving an evening with a quick kiss near the doorway or upon exiting a car is almost a prerequisite. It says this night is over and no more than that. Such first kisses are often the only kiss.
Where the first kiss happens may reveal much more about its meaning. The first kiss could come outside someone's house, after a movie, or in a parking lot. A first kiss in a public place may be nothing more than an enhanced handshake. However, a first kiss taking place in a quiet isolated space can be the mark of growing intimacy.
First kisses often fade from our memories.
Last kisses are different. Last kisses can linger over years, over decades, over the span of a life.
Last kisses can have a profound emotional impact. They can carry the weight of finality. Their memory may trigger deep sadness or bring a wry smile. They can be the markers of life before or of life after. Sometimes a last kiss marks the end of the most significant chapter in one’s life.
A last kiss can carry within it, within two pairs of lips touching-regret, nostalgia, sadness, betrayal, longing and the deepest sorrow imaginable. Those lips joining one last time can leave an indelible impression resonating long after the kiss itself has faded. The thing is one or both of the people touching lip to lip may not know this is it, this is the last kiss.
It is possible that in the days and weeks leading up to a last kiss, there may be tension in the air. Each party in the relationship may have some unspoken sense that something has changed, and not for the better. Words choked back and lingering glances say something is wrong, something is troubling. But when the last kiss comes it is often a surprise.
It's the unpredictability of a last kiss that makes it so poignant and haunting. First kisses, carry the promise of beginnings. Last kisses arrive without warning, catching us unprepared for their enduring significance. The moment might only be recognized for its finality in hindsight, leaving echoes of what was and what might have been.
Max & Sam
Mid-March nights in the Midwest are bleak and cold. Daytime temperatures may top the freezing mark, but nights will be much colder. Sudden brief showers scatter a few snowflakes about. Breath still steams in streetlamp light. Clapping your hands together for warmth brings a soft patting sound from your soft leather gloves. This was the kind of night Samantha, Sam to everyone, was heading out into.
This cold weekend was a break for Sam. She told Max, her boyfriend of almost a year that being home for more than a few hours was intolerable. There were reasons, real reasons she needed to get away and be gone. Between the darkness of emotions at work and her parents’ unrelenting judgment of her situation Sam needed some air, some distance.
Currently Sam’s days are spent working at a home for troubled kids. These were abused kids. These were tough kids who acted out in violent and sometimes devastatingly tragic ways. Her job was to make sure nobody’s lid blew. She also made sure people got to lessons and mealtimes, that the kids observed reasonably acceptable hygiene, and that nobody did something they could not come back from. The job was tough and emotionally draining. Sam’s job was hard to turn off in her head when her shift ended.
The country was in recession. Times were tough. For a young woman with a degree in general humanities with a minor in public service studies, nobody was hiring. Department stores weren’t giving her a second look. The state wasn’t looking for workers. Sam basically had to take the first job that was offered. The only jobs out there for her were as aides in social work or quasi-social work settings.
Sam lived with her parents, but that wasn't ideal. Still the rent was free, and what she could afford. In addition they let her use one of the family’s cars to drive to and from work. But the price for free rent, free room and board and free use of the car was unending lectures on her poor life choices from both of her parents.
Her parents had repeatedly told her during her college career that she would be unemployable with her degree. Each of them took her aside at various points over the last five years urging to change her major. They urged her to take accounting and general business courses but she flatly refused. She was committed to a plan, a nebulous plan. In the end, even Sam couldn't verbalize the goals of that plan to herself.
On this cold March Friday Sam got home from work at about 6:45. She shepherded the kids, her kids, to dinner and back to the cottage. The night staff came in at 6:00 and Sam did not linger. She had packed her overnight bag the night before and made arrangements for her mother to drop her off at the Amoco station. This was the bus pickup here in this sprawling suburban village.
Her mother knew Sam was traveling to see Max. She was okay with that. Sam’s mom would also be happy for a weekend without fighting, without walking on eggshells. Sam’s mom had no illusions about what would happen this weekend. She put Sam on the pill at 15 because the girl was precocious. To Sam’s mom Max was tolerable. He wasn’t a drunk or a druggie and Max was pursuing a decent degree in engineering. If anything Sam’s mom that Max might be too normal for Sam. Maybe he would be a good influence on Sam, she thought. Maybe if her daughter got laid some of the anger would fade.
As always the bus ride took about seventy minutes on mostly freeway roads. Sam just pushed the seat back and listened to the large bus tires go zing, zing, zing as big old beast rolled on. There were three small town stops between Sam’s home and the college campus. Passing the first one Sam wondered why they even swung by these stops where almost nobody ever got on or off. Sam didn’t pack headphones and forgot her book. So she just stared out the window and got mentally lost, almost hypnotized, watching the lights across the dark fields appear and then fade.
Sam was jolted back into focus when the bus made the arcing turn off the freeway and rolled down the that ridiculous high offramp bridge down to the streets of her destination. Gears were grinding and the comfort of the freeway ride was replaced with jumps and jolts and the rocking of the bus as it hit potholes and twisted through narrow turns on neighborhood streets. A few minutes later the bus rolled into the station and about half the passengers disembarked. Sam just had a backpack filled with two nights’ necessities so the creaking and banging of the doors beneath the bus were irrelevant to her.
Sam didn't have to look far to see Max waiting. When he saw Sam Max dropped his cigarette, crushed it out and came over and gave her a very comforting hug. It was almost nine thirty when Sam and Max walked together, his arm around her shoulders, back to his room. Sam had grabbed a sandwich back home, washing it down with Diet Coke before heading out. Max ate in the cafeteria during the 5-7 dinner hours. Max was a four year dorm rat. The prospect of buying and cooking food frightened him.
Max was a year younger than Sam. They had met in the fall of the previous year when she punched meal tickets in the dorm’s cafeteria. Little daily conversations and jokes led to a date. A date led to drinks, then sex, and finally to their almost year-long relationship.
This was Max's last semester. He would graduate in May if his team could get their shit together and finish their capstone project for Design Day. Prima Donnas all. But all the drama of his team and the pressure of the design project fell away because Sam was here. Max was hoping he would get a job close to Sam and that maybe they could take next steps.
The walk back to Max’s dorm was long and quite cold. But there was no snow or rain and the stars were out. Max kept his arm around Sam the whole way back. Feeling her soft warm body next to his made Max forget about all the pressures and tensions of this last term. In addition to the project he had more job interviews scheduled for the end of next week. But with Sam’s black hair and piercing blue eyes beside him there was no world but them, there was no time but now.
Max’s roommate had taken the early bus back to the city. It was probably the same bus Sam rode here on, a turnaround trip. Max pulled his arm from around Sam to get out his key. As soon as the lock clicked open Sam pushed into the room while Max turned around to lock the lock. Turning back into the room Max saw Sam’s jeans were already on the floor and she was wiggling her way out of her soft white panties. Before Max could kick off his shoes Sam was naked and on his lower bunk with her legs open and a sly smile on her face.
Max and Sam made intense love on that narrow bed. It was so rigorous that Sam’s kicks upward pushed the top bunk off two of the short metal posts that connected foot ends of the two beds. The upper bunk half collapsed on them and they rolled apart laughing. Max quite naked jumped out of bed and set things aright and then crawled back in. They finished their lovemaking in a quieter, more tender way. When they were done their bodies remained pressed close together. Sam usually talked after sex but tonight she was quiet, contemplative.
To break the odd silence, Max asked Sam if she wanted to grab a beer at the French Outpost. The Outpost was a campus bar that served French fries, beignets, Monte Cristo sandwiches and Belgian beers in bottles with French labels. Sam nodded an assent and mouthed an almost imperceptible, “Yes.” They dressed quickly and with a short stop in the dorm's respective men's and women’s bathrooms they departed for the bar.
The Outpost was about half way between the bus station and Max’s room. On a Friday night approaching eleven it was pretty crowded and busy but a couple left one of the booths just as Max and Sam arrived. They snagged the table and flagged a waiter down to get an order in before the kitchen closed. Sam wanted a pint of Guinness and Sam asked for some poutine and a glass of the house red. With the exception of expressing surprise at getting a table so easily and placing her order Sam remained quiet. Max wondered if he had done something wrong. This was the longest Sam had been around him and not said anything.
The drinks arrived quickly and the poutine soon after. The waiter gave them two small plates and placed the poutine between them. It was a house specialty and meant to be shared. Sam continued to be quiet. Normally between bites they would talk about what they had done during the week, what friends they had seen or talked to, and how fucked up the world was. But Sam’s silence continued. Oh she nodded as Max talked. She moved her head up or sideways answering yes or no when Max asked her direct questions. But mostly she was silent.
Drinks finished and the food eaten, the waiter brought them their bill to move them along. Got to turnover those tables on a busy Friday night. Just like that they walked back to the dorm, in the cold, under a star-filled sky, in silence. After another quick trip to their respective bathrooms to brush their teeth they rested side-by-side in Max’s bed. Sam wore one of Max’s t-shirts and nothing else. Max wore only a rake’s smile. They made love again.
They lay there on the bed the sheets and blankets wrapped around them in the disorganized fashion of passion’s recent embraces. A soft fleece blanket was pulled up over their now naked bodies. Max’s arm rested behind Sam’s shoulders. Small speakers played soft music punctuated by the random clanging of the dorm’s old steam radiators. Max had lit an incense cone in the little carved Buddha that sat atop his dresser.
Max decided to gently probe the silence. "So what’s up? You are quiet as you have ever been since I have known you. I don’t think you have ever gone through a whole evening with so few words since we met back when you were saying,“Meal ticket please.”
Sam shifted slightly and her now bare shoulder moved a little further up against Max. Her head turned just slightly further away from him. It appeared she was looking at the flat white ceiling when she began, " Do you ever wonder what you will be thinking 40 years from now? I mean when you are sixty two and looking back at your life? Do you think you will feel like you have made the right choices so far? Are there things you should change, or we should change?”
Max pulled his head up to look directly at Sam’s face and eyes. He was concerned about whatever was troubling her. Max wasn’t concerned about the two of them. He was pretty sure in his mind at least, that their relationship was rock solid.
Max responded, "Sam what’s up? Where is this coming from? I mean I do think about what happens next. I am hoping one of these interviews I am doing will pan out. It is a tough job market. But I got the grades and I had an excellent internship last summer so I feel I will be okay. I am pretty sure the chair of my department will write me a favorable letter. But what I will be thinking 40 years from now? No, I am not focused on that at all. I picked my career path long ago, probably in 5th grade when Ms. Deavers my math teacher told me I had an engineer's mind. Since then, I have been focused on exactly what I am doing now. Are your parents getting to you? Is it your job? I mean some of the histories of those kids that you have hinted at are pretty dark, scary even. Do you want to do something else?”
Sam settled back and turned her face toward Max smiling a little bit. "Max you and I are so different. I have never known what I wanted to be. I guess I was just hoping the wind would carry me someplace good. I don’t know what is going on. I like my work. I think helping kids is really my calling or some part of it. Don’t know if I want to be a care assistant forever. Maybe it is just the constant questions from my folks and their frustration with me being at the house. Max this isn’t about you, I really do love you."
Max looked at Sam with all the gentleness and understanding his heart contained, " And I love you too."
Sam shifted her position again but Max was okay with it. Sam dropped her naked leg between his unclothed limbs and her toes rubbed his. She continued, "I just don’t know what I will do about where I am living because at the rate I am going I will be a prisoner in that house for a long time. Max quickly answered, "We’ll figure it out."
Sam at that moment slid her hand down Max’s torso and whispered, "I guess we will." The conversation stopped there. Bodies shifted and the night became the joyous thing nights are supposed to be. Sam never returned to the topic the next day. For that day they did the normal things you do at the edge of a campus. You scan through used vinyl. You eat at Taco Bell. You walk through the campus’s memorial gardens. Sam seemed much like her self to Max. She talked, she laughed, she told a joke or two.
On Sunday morning they went out for brunch and drank fancy coffee drinks while reading a fat newspaper. On that Sunday evening, under a clear sky, Sam and Max walked together back to the bus.
Max and Sam waited for thirty minutes in an old converted DQ for her ride. The bus to the city and its suburbs was late. They made small talk. In particular, they remembered when the station was a Dairy Queen and how this particular Sunday night run always ran late. At different moments each of them got up and stared out the window into the blackness scanning for the bus's lights. Eventually it arrived and Sam boarded her backpack slung over her left shoulder.
A few minutes after the Trailways bus pulled away rolling partway over the curb cut, belching diesel fumes and grinding gears, Max lit a cigarette. Inhaling deeply, he shook involuntarily from the chill air. He had waved goodbye even though he couldn’t see Sam through the bus's tinted windows. He stood unmoving staring at the bus’s running lights as they faded into the distance on the way to the interstate. Inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs, he began his ‘brisk’ walk to his room.
After Sam boarded the bus home Max heard from her only once. He had called and written but her parents said she was not in and there were no return posts. It almost killed Max. His heart ached and he was wracked with self-doubt. Things seemed so right, so perfect. Had he done something wrong? Had he missed a sign that Sam needed help?
No call ever came. Her parents clearly started screening his calls because they never answered when he rang and eventually he gave up.
Some months later Max received a postcard from New Mexico. It was the only communication after that cold March night. The postcard didn’t say much. Sam wrote she hoped Max was well. She said she would call when she got settled somewhere. The. Front of the post card was simply a picture of a large cactus in the desert. There were no words that said move on. Eventually e did. There was nothing that signaled it was over. It was.
It was only many months after Sam ghosted him that Max really moved on. He had taken a job a state south of where he had grown up. He liked his work and they liked him. Sam one Thursday night met Trisha in the grocery store checkout lane. She was blonde, short and cute. They joked about what was in each other’s cart and the tabloid headlines near the register. On a whim Max asked her out.
One date led to another. It took a couple of years but they eventually married and had kids. For a time they were happy. But then they weren’t. Max divorced Trisha when he discovered she was sleeping with one of the Cub Scout Den’s dads. Trisha hadn’t asked for much in the settlement. He kept the house and they shared custody equally. She remarried to that Cub Scout guy, a doctor. Max didn’t have to sell the house because he could afford the monthly nut. He did well at the engineering firm. He had became a very young partner. Twice burned by relationships Max was now taking time away from dating and intimacy.
What the Last Kiss Hid
Pulling into the driveway, Max jumped out of the car and walked in through the side door. He set his briefcase on the desk next to his laptop. The man knew he would work through the weekend. Hey the Lexus and this four thousand square foot home on an acre lot would not pay for themselves. Dropping his jacket at the end of the couch Max took off his tie, kicked off his wingtips and poured himself a drink from one of five single malts in the liquor cabinet. As he glanced around he wondered if this was where he was meant to be, if these were the things he was supposed to have. He hummed a few bars of Talking Heads Burning Down the House. Max knew it was the right band but the wrong song.
The house was quiet. The kids were at Trisha’s for the weekend. They would return late Sunday night. Next week was his week to be the cook, the scullery maid, the drill instructor, the school taxi and the hockey dad. Luckily both boys are on the same team this year. Trish was handling transport to this Saturday’s practice and Sunday’s game.
Max would start this weekend like he had started most dad only weekends over the past month. He clicked through the menus on his smart TV until he reached YouTube. He then worked his way to a Ted talk title called The Future is Waiting for Us to Care. Care's female speaker was dressed in a stylish professional suit. She had written a book with the same title and it had bubbled around just off the best seller lists for a few months. Her credentials were her book, her MSW degree and teaching at a California school. The talk focused on how our methods of caring for at-risk children have failed and what she saw as the path forward. Drink in hand Max settled in and watched the video from start to end. The speaker was Samantha Hargraves. Sam. His Sam.
One of Max's college friends who remembered Max and Sam as a couple sent Max the URL. There was nothing in the email that suggested who the speaker was. Instead, it said simply that it was a meaningful talk and Max should watch it. Max was gobsmacked when he opened the URL at work and saw that the speaker was an older but still beautiful Sam. He googled her name and the book's name. Each had its own short Wiki page.
According to her Wiki Sam almost immediately after ghosting Max drifted west to where some relatives lived. She got a job in the public system of adolescent care in Colorado. While she worked in the system, she completed her Master of Social Work at the University of Denver. Judging by the dates in the post she headed west almost immediately after that last weekend they spent together. Sam's book came out two years ago and the Ted talk was a little over a year old. According to the Wiki Sam had never married. Currently she is splitting her time between being an instructor in a social work program, writing and lecturing.
Max settled in to watch the talk as he had done many times. His mind reeled from seeing her. Sam was older but she still had the various habits and tics that made her who she was. Her right hand reached up twice in the video to move her hair. It was the same casual motion as when they were together. As he watched she brushed her now shorter hair back. Her half laugh with which she often punctuated her sentences back at university showed up a couple of times when she expressed her hope for change in the child welfare system.
After the first couple of viewings Max searched Google for personal details about Sam. He found her email at the school where she taught. Using a dubious ‘search someone free site' he came up with a possible phone number. He had used several of those sites and was pretty sure of her home address.
But he did not write to her. Max did email her. Nor did he call her. Max instead remembered the weeks and months following the last kiss at the bus station. He remembered how in those weeks and months his thoughts crashed from side to side in his brain and his guts were in perpetual knots. Max had only gotten through those last months of school because of his drive to be an ‘engineer’ with a capital E.
And Max remembered the last kiss, a kiss he did not know would be the final punctuation mark in the Sam and Max story. Yes he kept returning to that kiss at the bus station. That night Max carried Sam’s backpack to the depot for her. Max set it beside her as she dug around in her purse for a bit to find the return portion of her ticket. When she grabbed the printed ticket she held it up with a look that said. "Viola."
Sam had then wrapped her arms around Max and kissed him long and deep. As Max recalled, the clinch and the kiss lasted for what seemed like a minute. He remembered her perfume's vanilla scent. He remembered the moisture on her lips. The kiss that ended with Sam promising to see Max next weekend. When they separated Sam looked away. The kiss seemed passionate but Max knew it was lacking something. The kiss had all the physical components of passion but Max sensed it was emotionally empty. The last kiss at the bus station was long but Sam seemed distracted and almost absent.
The moment of that kiss encapsulated their past intensity. Max realized in retrospect that the kiss also heralded their inevitable separation. Clearly Sam knew it then but Max didn't. Sam had hidden well the finality of their last kiss. She had hidden well the death of their relationship.
Max clicked the TV off and took a long sip of the peaty amber liquid in his glass. He would need food before he downed any more Scotch. He rose and walked to the refrigerator, opened it and stared into the middle distance.
Max’s mind kept returning to the bus station. Instead of kissing the younger Sam, his mind turned to the professional Sam from the Ted talk. His mind stripped out the background of the rigid plastic seats and lockers at the bus station. In his mind he created a neutral space with a kiss that lingered. It seemed to be all that mattered. But even in this phantom space the kiss, while filled with warmth and familiarity, also contained an off note marking the silent acknowledgment that their paths were diverging.
Max long ago realized that sometimes goodbyes aren't spoken and last kisses aren’t announced. He also knew goodbyes often linger in the space between a touch and a downward glance. The kiss at the bus depot had profound weight, more poignant than words can convey. In spite of his recent focus on the video, Max had quietly accepted the change that occurred so long ago. Tonight would be the last time he watched that video.
