The Kiss Test

Today is my mother's birthday.

It is also the birthday of the first boyfriend I ever had in high school.

The third boyfriend I ever had in my whole life.

Who were my other boyfriends?

Boyfriend #1:  Kindergarten with Ms. Stroman.  His name was Ben.  A few months before kindergarten started, my mother took me for my first hair cut.  The hairdresser named Terry had short straight dark brown hair.  She had man's hair and a man's name.  I thought it was confusing.  But at least she was very nice.  She thought that my blonde unruly curls that fell past my chin were very sweet.  She and my mother agreed that they would be even sweeter if they were shorter. A big bowl of curls on top of my head.  So she chopped the hair around my head and soon there was a bowl of curls above my ears and all the way around.

"Oh that's adorable sweetie," said my mother from behind the hairdresser chair.

"Isn't she cute?" said Terry the hairdresser.  I didn't know why Terry called me a she.  Now that my hair was so short, I looked like a boy.  That afternoon we were supposed to go swimming.  My bathing suit was white with red stripes and a blue flipper-the-dolphine jumping just above my bellybutton.  I knew that I couldn't wear this bathing suit anymore.   With my hair so short, everyone would know that something was wrong. 

I made my mother take me to the department store where she bought me ugly green and blue shorts that I would wear every day now that I was a boy.

Then I arrived in Ms. Stotman's junior kindergarten class.  My hair was still short. Terry had trimmed it just before school started.  On my first day of school, I wore my "Party Animal" sweat suit.  Lime green pants and a sweat shirt with lime green sleeves and a white body with some monster type animal and the words "party animal" on it.  Very flattering.  But at least I wasn't pretending to be a girl.  During free time, Ben and I met in the dress-up corner.  He suggested that I put on a tutu.  I decided that this meant that I was a girl again. I put on the tutu right away.  On the playground, Ben and I kissed on the lips.  Our parents let us hang out with each other on the weekends. We traded stickers. 

Once at Ben's house, we took off all of our clothes in the backyard, turned on the hose, and then sprayed each other and the windows of the house. Inside, the couch got wet. Ben's dad got a little bit angry at us and gave us pretend spankings while we were still naked.  The naked spankings felt thrilling.  After junior kindergarten, Ben and his family moved to Australia. 

During senior kindergarten, Ben sent me a postcard:

“Ben says he loves you and misses you and wishes you were here.”  LOVE BEN

That was the last I ever heard of Ben. 

Boyfriend #2:  I got my next boyfriend in grade one in Mrs. VandenBosch's class.  His name was Kevin.  Halfway through grade one, Keven had to wear braces on his legs like Forrest Gump.  So his legs were always in the shape of a triangle.  To walk, he had to swing them to and fro.  Then he had to go to the hospital to get an OPERATION.  I don't think that we became boyfriend and girlfriend until after that.  When Kevin returned to school, he had to use a wheelchair.  I remember waiting on the pavement for the school bell to ring and we kissed on the lips many times.

Then I skipped grade two and lost all my friends and my boyfriend.  When you're in grade three, you're not allowed to kiss boys in grade two.  Absolutely not. 

Boyfriend #3:  This was the one who was born on October 9th. The same day as my mother.  We met in grade nine band class. I played the trombone and he played the saxophone.  We both had braces.  At the school dance, he asked me to slow dance.  In grade nine, I was in love with Michael Brown and Alex Crampton who were both on the swim team.  I saw them every day at practice but they were way out of my league.  So when the saxophone player asked me to dance, I said yes.  I hated dances, but slow dances were the easiest because you didn't need any coordination or rhythm. The guy decided how much space there was between you.  The saxophone player decided there wouldn't be too much space and I could feel his boner between my legs.  I felt mostly neutral about this experience, but a little bit cozy.  The next week, we went out for lunch every day.  There were no boners and no kissing and I felt okay about this.  On Friday, it was his birthday.  I made him a big chocolate cake.  At the end of the day, he asked me out.  Like would I be his girlfriend.  I said I would think about it.  At swim practices, while we were doing our abdominal exercises, I asked everyone what I should do.  Michael Brown said that I might as well go for it.  I thought the world of Michale Brown so I figured I would follow his dating advice.

That night, I called the saxophone player back and said that yes, I would go out with him.  The next week, whenever we went out for lunch, we held hands.  At the park, sometimes he would put his arm around me.  I tried not to lean over in the opposite direction.  Every once in awhile, he would put his face full of braces close to my face full full of braces and then I couldn't help it.  I would look the other way. 

At night after swim practice, we would talk on the phone. A lot of the time, I would do my homework at the same time.  I was an excellent student. The saxophone player always called me "hon." At the end of our phone calls, he would say, "Bye, I love you."

Sometimes I would say I love you too, and sometimes I wouldn't.  At swim practice, while we were doing our abdominal exercises, when people asked me how it was going with my saxophone player, I would get all red and wish that it was time to jump in the water. 

One day we had walked home to my house for lunch. All the way there, the saxophone player kept leaning over towards my face and I kept lurching away.  His breath didn't smell that great and I felt certain that our two sets of braces would end in catastrophe.  If Michael Brown or Alex Crampton had braces and they'd wanted to kiss me, maybe it would have been different.  We'll never know.

When we got to my house,  my mother was giving a piano lesson.  There were fresh white buns on the counter.  The saxophone player put her arm around me and led me in front of the radiator, which was right next to the counter with the buns.  The saxophone player had a better strategy this time.  With both hands around my waist we stood before each other face to face.  I knew he was going to lean over soon and I knew that lurching away would have been rude and awkward.  Luckily, I had another strategy.  I had the buns.  I grabbed a fluffly white gluten-filled bun and I shoved it in the saxophone player's face. 

He seemed a little taken aback.  We sat down at the table and had lunch.

Eventually, in the backyard, I gave in and we made out briefly.  Our braces didn't get stuck and it  could have been way worse.  Still, throughout the whole 45 seconds of it, I kind of wished it was over. 

I broke up with the saxophone player over the phone the night before my birthday.  In total, our relationship lasted three weeks.  For my birthday, he'd bought me a big expensive basket of vanilla scented soaps and body sprays from the body shop. He gave it to me in band class even though we were broken up.  I thought that was nice of him even though fancy soaps usually give me rashes.

I sprayed the body spray on my neck.  At swim practice during abdominal exercises, Michael Brown made fun of the smell. 

Mike Brown, Perth Ontario's Olympic Star

Since the saxophone player, I have devised something called the KISS TEST.  The KISS TEST means you kiss me and afterwards, if I want to kiss you again, then you pass.  If I don't want to kiss you again, then you fail. Usually once you fail, you cannot take the test again.  Over the years, some people have been allowed to take the kiss test again, and pretty much every time, they kept failing.  It is a very accurate test.  I'm proud of myself for inventing it. 

Although perhaps without our braces, the saxophone player and I would have done better.  We'll never know, just like we'll never know if Michael Brown and Alex Crampton would have passed my kiss test. 

In any case, it doesn't matter anymore, since according to Facebook, Michael Brown, and Alex Crampton and the Saxophone Player are all happily kissing.  I am happily kissing too.  The Boatman passed the Kiss Test with Flying Colours. 

 The Boatman, Kiss Test Winner, 2011-2015

This confirms my belief that there is a successful kiss test out there for everyone.  Thank goodness.
Success in Kissing is available to all who seek it.  Those with braces and those without.  Be persistent, be patient, and in case of catastrophe, be sure to have some buns within reach. 

The End.
Happy Birthday to My Mother and the Saxophone Player.
Here is our friend Gluten. Always there when we need him. Or her. Or them.

Gluten, Always there for us despite everything.

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Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva

 

 

My Eternal Tits

I have no boobs or retail experience, and I just dropped off my resumé at a Bra Fitting store.  This is probably a lost cause, but it does provide an excellent segue into the excellent story about my excellent tits. 

My Small Breasts used to be my Designated Issue.  Designated Issues are large or small matters whose resolution you designate to be the cure of your existence. 

For example, I used to think that my life would be considerably more manageable if I found an effective eradication of Pubic Hair that wasn’t too expensive and didn’t leave hideous red welts in awkward places around my crotch. 

I had a similar attitude about getting bigger boobs.  By the time I was thirteen, my Small Breasts became an immense concern of mine, accompanied with considerable dangers.  The first main danger was that if you are afflicted with a tiny flat rack, your stomach could only get to be a certain size before it started to stick out further than your boobs.  My fourteen-year-old mind, feared that this would be both hideous and tragic.   Actually, I’m pretty sure this fear began as early as age nine.  I remember taking on an unreasonable regimen of  crunches and abdominal exercises and an unreasonably young age.  When I turned thirteen and started lifting weights with the swim team, I refused to do the bench press, convinced that it would stunt my growth.  Well, apparently there was not much growth to stunt.  Despite refraining from the bench press, my boobs never expanded to fill more than a junior sized bra, available at LaSenza girl.

These are not my boobs. Mine are smaller.
  

Alas.  Although my abdomen never ended up protruding beyond my tiny tits, the terror that one day it would prevailed.  So too did my terror of a second breast-related danger.  This one had to do with what I call the “bum-to-breast ratio.”  According to my pubescent theory, the size of your butt had to be intimately in harmony with the size of your boobs.  Thus, if you butt grew, then your boobs needed to grow too.  In contrast, if your boobs failed to blossom, then your butt had best remain the same size.  I think it was around my development of this theory that I began squeezing my ass compulsively and repeatedly wherever I went.  At school, in the movie theatre, and during band practice.  Figured it burned extra calories and provided damage control for my ratio.  Looking back years later, I wouldn’t recommend this.  A tight ass is hard thing to cure and I’m not sure my ratio ever benefited much from the ass-clenching...

Still, I remained faithful to my ass-clenching and abdominal crunching for a number of years. Just shy of eighteen, and armed with Baby LaSenza padded bras, I entered first-year university in Montréal.  I’d barely had a boyfriend since kindergarten, and I felt certain that my tits were the reason.  One day, at a residence party, in a moment of uncharacteristic oversharing, I bemoaned my sad fate to the girl beside me.  She was relatively well-endowed, with an excellent bum-to-breast ratio. 

“Oh don’t worry,” she reassured me.  “My boobs used to be small too.  I just went up two cup sizes.”

I looked at her dubiously.  “What’s your secret?” I asked. 

Generously, she revealed it.  Five cups of 2% milk.  Every day.  More than a bag of that shit.

Well folks, I went for it, trudging to the grocery store every two and half days to buy four litre bags of the fatty white liquid.  I guzzled a hefty glass at every meal and snack.  All the liquid was terrible for my weird rumination syndrome eating disorder, which involved stomach contents travelling up and down my esophagus for up to an hour after I ate.  Still, I rarely fully expelled anything, and so I figured all of the two-percent goodness was making it into my boobs. 

A couple months later, it still wasn’t time to throw away my Baby LaSenza Bras.  All my ratios were the same size, but for some reason, I was so tired, I could hardly function.  Although I mostly slept a solid eight hours at night, I would regularly fall asleep in the afternoon, wake two hours later and wonder what happened.  I was less active than I’d been in my whole life, and ten times more tired. 
I went to the doctor who ordered a blood test.  She called me back, surprised I was able to pick up the phone.  Minimum iron levels for women are supposedly 12.0.  14.0 is better.  My hemoglobin was at 6.  I was severely anemic.  The doctor suggested I go to a dietician.  I showed the dietician what I was eating. 

“Why so much dairy?” she asked.

“To make my boobs grow,” I replied with great conviction.

I guess that the calcium in dairy can bind with something or other and prevent your body from  absorbing iron.  And the only way I could get my boobs to grow would be to a considerable amount of weight everywhere, which would put all my ratios at risk. 

I was left with no option but to un-designate the issue.  I surrendered.   My boobs were my boobs.

For a couple more years, I continued to wear my padded Baby LaSenza Bras, and by my some miracle, I ended up with my first boyfriend.  He called my boobs “very nice”  thoroughly agreeing with his grandfather who had always claimed that what mattered was shape, and not size.  God bless grandfathers.  Plus he said that it was unlikely that my boobs would ever sag.  I would defy gravity forever. 

Essentially, my tits were eternal.

I was twenty when I left my last padded Baby LaSenza Bra at the apartment of a man named Charlie.  (Don’t worry, mom, I would never ever have sex with a stranger.)  But the bra was removed and Charlie had the chance to say, “You have beautiful breasts.”   

34 F. Not for me.

The bra I'd worn that night had cost 50 bucks.  It had “hydralife insertions,” and was a slightly paler shade of turquoise than the margueritas I’d consumed that evening at the party where Charlie and I were acquainted. 

I escaped Charlie's apartment the next morning without saying good-bye, and without the bra.  I never went back for it.  I didn’t need it anymore. Apparently all you need is a handful. 

The End.

Perhaps now my Designated Issue is my pelvis: Twitter @mypelvicfloor!

And the fact that I want one million facebook Fans:  Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook.

And that I want one million people to buy my book. 
 
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