Let me preface this one with a disclaimer. If you're like me and not into reading blogs or even watching WB dramas in which stupid people vent their stupid emotions about stupid kiss stories that have no relation to anyone else's life but their own, skip this sucker. However, if you're into shameless and boring stuff like chick lit or The Real World or crap like this that evidently gets turned into books, read on by all means. Also, this story and my reactions to it are excellent firepower for making fun of me, which I personally think is the best reason to look it over.

At the beginning of last September, before classes started for the new semester, I found myself at a birthday party, drinking absinthe (for the first and only time thus far) and Bacardi 151, among other things. Just getting thoroughly trashed, sans vomit (c'est bon!). I'll admit that it had been a while since I'd had so much to drink -- quite a dry summer altogether, actually -- and my common sense was a bit on the fritz. Everyone there was reasonably drunk, I'd say.

I'd like to point out here (to myself, at the very least) that what I've written so far sounds not only pretty clichéd for the whole college-age memoir circuit, but also not terribly unlike so many rape victim tales I've read over the years, though not so many as to resemble a fetish for that sort of thing. You can't really escape them though, and I'm certainly not going to be the one to tell Suzy Q. GHB-Target that her story kinda sounds like a bunch of them I've heard before, and wouldn't she mind snazzing up the details a bit to liven the thing up for me. Set it on the moon or something, or at least a moonwalk. On a submarine, I don't know. All these things seem to happen at bars and parties, that's all I'm saying, and the whole rape genre is hard enough to sit through without the added discomfort of an unoriginal plotline. In any case, to allay your fears, no, I was not raped last September, despite my introduction conforming to that particular genre.

Anyway, so everybody had been drinking a bunch. I wasn't worried about myself personally because my apartment was right around the corner. I was happily slumped in a chair, watching miniscenes and conversations pop around me like the froth bubbles on the top of my (third?) cup of Guinness. I can usually achieve that splendid detached drunkenness where the sound gets a bit dull but motions and colors make up for it, probably most akin in experience to those scenes at the beginning and end of Saving Private Ryan when the world goes briefly mute for Tom Hanks. And then suddenly (it seemed to me), I was part of a circle of people without having moved into it, and we were playing spin-the-bottle. Which I had never played before.

I'm going to have to break out of the narrative again here to provide a bit of back-story. See, me never having played spin-the-bottle before touches on the greater issue of me never having kissed anyone before. And obviously, like Ron's situation at the beginning of the new Harry Potter book, family members and the ilk don't count (unless, of course, I grew up in Alabama, which is a blatant lie, and I am embarrassed for the both of us that it even crossed your mind). There I was, newly 23 and if not, perhaps, still more amused by TV shows, then definitely getting more response from them than the opposite sex.

How does one go 23 years without achieving something as simple as first base? Well, I'm sure it didn't help that I spent the last two years of high school and, let's face it, freshman year of college completely obsessed over my now long, lost bestest friend Christine, without any amorous reciprocation on her end. I've written a small pile of poetry on the subject. I'm also no Brad Pitt, though how many of us are, really? I have no social self-esteem. I got no game. The list goes on. Anyhoo, despite brief no-tongue pecks from Nicole in third grade and I-think-her-name-might've-been Margaret one year at summer camp, my lips kept to themselves. This existence, by the way, is quite a depressing one, and I do not recommend it. By all means, kiss away. Grope, even. Heavy pet.

In any case, there I was in a spin-the-bottle circle, too tipsy to fully understand the ramifications of the situation. It became clear early on in the game that we were playing with real kisses... this was no virgin-daiquiri, fifth-grade version. The conclusion I hope you are arriving at is that the first person to spin me would, unbeknownst to them, share with me my first real kiss. In my sanitized, Disney childhood, I learned that first kisses are Important Life Moments, only to be shared with your one true love, or at least your high school sweetheart. And I had somehow allowed myself to be sucked into a den of iniquity, no true love or sweetheart around to rescue me, my mind too booze-addled to react properly. When the bottle pointed at me, it only seemed fit that the spinner was also named Dave.

I have previously in this journal addressed the issue of my supposed homosexuality. My predilections for scented candles and poetry notwithstanding, I am not even close to being a so-called metrosexual; I have little to no style, hipness, or dancing ability. Yet disbelief sometimes persists, my frequent gay-character acting and some awkward moments propelling it along. This was one of those moments.

I suppose I could've pursed my lips and repelled the encroaching tongue. But Dave happened to be bisexual, and how would that've make me look? Homophobic? Insecure? I would've probably ended up having to explain the whole stuck-at-home-plate situation. I'd've been kicked out of the circle, an estranged onlooker, a leper at whom all the normal, socially-developed bottle-spinners would stare askance.

Reader, I kissed him. Our teeth clacked together. He tasted like alcohol. It was an altogether terrible kiss. After he pulled away, he gave me an odd look and said, "That was... weird." I'm sure he chalked it up to reluctance on my part to kiss another guy. Which, I guess, is a half-truth. The game progressed, and I had soon shared my first kiss with a girl, but it was too late. My first real kiss was with a guy, a bisexual guy, in a game of spin-the-bottle, at age 23. This Important Life Moment was officially a Total Screw Up, and there was nothing I could do about it. And I might have driven myself insane obsessing over it... if I hadn't started dating Hilary about a week later.

Okay, that wasn't so bad, right? But it was long. Wow, I'll just type all day if no one stops me. Type type type type type. I guess writing it out all prosy was like cathartic and stuff, but, damn, look how many words that was. That's like a four or five page paper. Way too much if you ask me. Bloggers should be shot for things like this.

SomePoems version 5! Isn't it pretty? I decided to switch over my main page and archives over to the new version, even though I'm not done building the new pages for poems, pictures, and links yet. The main effort was for what's up already though, so I imagine the other parts will be up soon enough. I'm still deciding whether to put my links into a category in my MT backend, or just text them out. Meh, I'll figure it out.

I just got home from the Harry Potter launch party, at the Barnes and Noble in Towson. I continue to find it amusing, between this event and my experiences at the last launch and two movie premieres, how many Harry Potter fans actually look like Harry Potter. There are more than a few of them. I also came home with all manner of free giveaways, including a LiveStrong-style green bracelet, a poster, round plastic eyeglass frames, a temporary lightning bolt tattoo, a sheet of stickers (for my awesome collection! no fuzzies or oilies, though, too bad), and, oh yeah, I bought a copy of the book too.

The employees were all wearing these black launch date baseball caps with an owl on the front, and I was dismayed to find out that there would be no chance for me to get one, since they will be raffled off to the staff members at the end of the weekend. If you know me personally, you probably know I collect hats, and I doubt that any of the 20 lucky raffle winners feels as passionately about getting one of these as I do. I'm gonna take a trip to some other stores tomorrow to see if I can't convince someone to give one up. I see some bastards have already put a few of these up on eBay, so I may end up getting one from there.

I finally started watching the SciFi Channel's new Battlestar Galactica series, after letting it sit on my hard drive for months. It has by far the best special effects I've seen in any television show ever, and solid acting-- for real, not even just by sci-fi crappy standards. It's always good to see three dimensional characters on TV. I've heard that fans of the original 70s series find egregious faults with some of the changes that this version makes, but I never watched the old one (which I hear is quite crappy), and I'm happy to sidestep all that nerd-slinging garbage.

Okay, okay, I know, the divulging-ness is on its way, but first I've gotta talk about something serious that's been bothering me for a while, like a couple of years now. I was watching TV with some friends and we must have flipped to ABC Family (is that right? the name keeps changing) or whatever, because a straight-to-video Olsen twins movie comes on. Now this post isn't about "oo, what an unnecessary fuss is being made over the Olsen twins" or "oo, the Olsen twins are so hot now that they're legal" or even "I have painfully mixed emotions about the Olsen twins being portrayed as sexual objects due to the fact that I saw them grow up in TV shows and movies." So stop butting in with your post conjecture (not post-conjecture).

Anyway, the movie opened up playing the B-52's song "Roam," at which point I was either impressed by the inclusion of a cool band on the soundtrack of a bad movie or dismayed by the hijacking (oo, I was just red-flagged) of a cool band by the soundtrack of a bad movie. Then the movie's title came up and it all came crashing down. Because, as all you faithful Olsen-twins-direct-to-video connoisseurs should have figured out by now, the movie is called "When in Rome." Now, I'm assuming that whoever decided to include this song must have been doing it for one of the following reasons:

1. They imagined that kids would assume that all instances of the word "roam" in the song were actually the word "Rome." This theory brings up some interesting historio-socio-political arguments. The most common phrase in the song is "Roam if you want to. Roam around the world." If "roam" is replaced by "Rome," are the filmmakers referring to the Roman empire, spanning around the known world of the time? Are they advocating a return to a new Roman empire, perhaps run by the Olsen twins? Or are they suggesting that the Olsens' multimillion dollar worldwide empire is similar in scope to the Roman empire?

2. They imagined that kids would correctly assume that the word was "roam" and assume that "roam around the world" means traveling to one city in Europe. I guess that, since Americans are supposed to have a laughably small knowledge about the rest of the world, placing a film in a foreign city could perhaps make them feel like world travelers. You know, like those people who have stickers of Paris and London on their suitcases and hatboxes, and say fancy things like "ciao" or "excuse me."

3. They imagined that they could convince B-52's fans to watch an Olsen twins movie. That's just silly.

Okay, you're gonna be mad, but that Harry Potter book is calling to me to read it, so it doesn't look like I'm going to get to the whole revealing story thing tonight. But soon. Here's a preview: it involves me kissing someone. Ta ta!