The First Kiss

We would sit on the Spanish steps until our lips were swollen and chapped, until our tongues were coated with the taste of cigarettes, until our skin had melted and darkened from the heat of the sun. We would sit there wanting to be older, or at least look older, assuming everyone was staring at us, assuming everyone wanted us. We wanted our lives to advance, but we didn't know in what direction. We would wait, patiently watching the "baggy pants boys" as we called them. They were such a rarity in Italy that when you found one you had to hang on. "The baggy pants boys" also consisted of leather-, chain-, and spike-wearing punks, tie-dyed hippies, and fifty-year-old drug addicts. They had a designated corner where they would all meet and disturb the peace while policemen hid around corners watching from afar. Every day we went there we would move closer and closer to their corner. We were spiders, and they were insects trapped in our web.

I had never seen Gian Luka there before. I figured he was new, so I let my cigarette dangle from my fingers as if offering something, as if telling him that everything I had was there for the taking. I didn't think I was enough for him. I didn't think I was enough for anyone. I liked his deep dimples, messy hair, and "I don't care" attitude. I wanted him. I wanted him to want me. We all had a designated baggy pants boy that we would watch like a dog begging for food at the dinner table. Our heads cocked, our eyes open, longing. We wanted them, not knowing what we wanted. He asked me if I would help him with something, would I come with him. I said yes, putting one weak foot in front of the other hoping "help" didn't mean far away, hoping "help" didn't take place in a bedroom. He led me down the Spanish steps and around the corner. I followed his shadow, not him. I was afraid of him. We stopped at a soiled public bathroom, and he told me to wait there as he kneeled on the stairs below me. He told me to tell him if someone was coming, as he took out a coffee can and began putting the contents of it into plastic bags. "Drugs," he said. "But not really.