My best friend Collins once told me how a first kiss should be. He sat me down in his car, took my hand, and explained that it should be easy, sweet, and pure. The first kiss, he said, was supposed to be enchantingly gorgeous and fragile. There shouldn’t be any groping, or loose movement of the tongue. This was the beginning, and to jump into something, like an over eager baby bird flying for the first time, could be messy and rough. Collins got a starry look in his eyes, his mind floating somewhere in his memories. I thought he was thinking about his first kiss with August, his steady boyfriend for about a year now. August didn’t seem like the kind of guy to be slow and pure. August drove a mustang, was never without his leather jacket, and always had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was funny though, because as I sat there in Collins’ 1956 Oldsmobile, I thought about how that would be exactly what August would do, because that is what Collins thinks a kiss should be. August loves Collins, is crazy about him, and everything Collins’ loves, so of course, August wouldn’t rush in on him. He would take his face in his hands, and brush Collins’ lips with his. There was probably a heat filled pause, full of longing and butterflies. Then, Collins, with his Buddy Holly glasses and always too loose sweater, would pull August close, kiss him quickly, and put his face in the crook of August’s shoulder, and there they would be, perfectly content to just hold each other, kissing every now and again, never saying anything but each other’s names. Every kiss they had, started out exactly as their first one: simple, sweet, and, pure. Now Collins was telling me to go get my kiss.