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Who kissed whom first? If Arnold kissed me first, should I refer to him in the language of today—sexual offender, transgressor, abuser of power? Or do I refer to him in the language of the late ’90s, when my forty-five-year-old self wrote the scene? The president at that time was Clinton, and the blue dress was in the news. Men who preyed on younger women were called letches, cradle-robbers, dogs. Or do I refer to him in the language of 1970, at the apex of the sexual revolution, when the kiss took place—Casanova, silver fox? And how do I refer to myself? In today’s parlance—victim, survivor?
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I didn’t yet know how to explain to the group that his age was my aphrodisiac, that I needed to be desired by someone older and important so that I could feel special.
The girl in the painting wasn’t a nymph or a victim or a survivor or a sugar baby or a gold digger or a bimbo or a fatherless girl desperately in need of an older man’s affection. The girl in the painting had a steely confidence in the knowledge that she was loved.
How do I convey yearning for a kiss while at the same time acknowledge the predatory act of an older man kissing a teenager?
I had intended to write the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but I could not find it, or else I found it everywhere.
As I helped him up the stairs to reach our seats in the reserved section of the theater, Arnold said, “This was the best summer of my life.”
I crossed the room and stood over him. He stirred and opened his eyes. There might be a dispute about our first kiss, but there could be none about our last.
