Creative Writing: I Almost Did It

I almost kissed a girl in the prairie in Ripon, Wisconsin, but let me get back to the beginning of the story.

I know this girl from a Fiction Writing class and we are walking back to the residence halls when we get the idea to ambulate in the prairie. I think she is asking to go on a date. She denies that she was asking for anything other than a pleasant walk, and later explains that she was only concerned when she saw how quiet I was in class that day.

I am usually emotive and verbose, evening making jokes during the middle of the lecture. She saw my silence as a sign of an underlying issue.

To prevent the walk out in the prairie from feeling awkward, I invite along twelve other people with a mass text message. Half respond that they don’t want to go for a hike, and the remaining people don’t even respond. I silently growl at my friends for getting me stuck in this situation. All they would have to do is go for a little adventure.

Oh, well. What can one do in a situation like this? I am stuck with a wonderful girl, spectacular weather, and a beautiful paradise of trees and grasses and a little meandering stream.


On our way to the grassland, spotted with woods, I take note of this female presence. She has wavy, chestnut brown hairs cascading down her back, her eyes are the blue of Robin’s eggs, and she is almost jogging she is traveling so fast.

As we are striding down to the Conservatory, I note the spring growth shooting out from everywhere. Trees are budding, bushes are alive again, the grass is resurrecting, and new weeds are poking up through the ground. Birds are finally singing, and the sun has returned to warm the earth.

Interrupting my thoughts, we start up a conversation. The chit-chat continues throughout our trek, but I am going to skip ahead; I want to get to the exciting part of the story. The part where the birds start chirping and the bees start buzzing, if you know what I mean.

After long, deep contemplations shared about our personal lives, romantic and otherwise, we are sitting in a patch of crab grass on the side of a path and talking about 'couples.' I throw out a tasty bone and ask her if she would like to date me. She is not sure what to do with this lure.

Her eyebrows furrow; she is not sure if I am for real. She begs me to tell her if I am serious. I am not sure. She then considers the question for a spell.

I fiddle with dead twigs, strip grass to pieces, and throw pebbles up in the air to pass the time. A mysterious look forms in her eyes. She gets a wacky idea. She wants to kiss me to see if we have chemistry, and not the type one learns in school. I jump up, not prepared for this thought.

WOW! A girl wants to kiss me.

The world is ending or starting; I am not sure. Fizzy feelings brew within me and I feel warmth in my stomach and a tingle in my lips. I want to kiss her. I REALLY want to kiss her, but a part of me is so unsure. I have reservations about kissing.

First off, my mouth is dry. Who wants to kiss sandpaper? Second, I have some white, dry foam at the corners of my lips. Yuck. Third, I have horrendous breath. I can taste and smell the foul odor. I wouldn't even want Hitler to suffer from this stench.

I check my pockets for some tangerine gum or curiously strong mints. I consider running to my dorm room to get my bright green, soft-bristled tooth brush. Even a gargle of generic mouthwash would be helpful. I would even be content with being allowed to floss first.

I dream of scraping my tongue with that fancy little tool I bought from Walmart. I would rather gag by sticking that plastic back into my throat when cleaning my tongue, then make this girl puke out her insides to get rid of any germy, dead tongue cells that slough off from my mouth.

We dance around in a circle trying to figure out if we should really kiss. She goes up the miniscule path, and I venture down. We then switch places.

Meanwhile, we talk and flirt and reason out if we want to do this.
The girl is willing to test the waters and I am the one wavering. I go back and forth between getting close to her and walking away, backing up on the gravel path, trying not to fall over. I tell the girl I feel woozy.
She giggles.
She has never had a guy tell her that he feels woozy.

Once I had a girl peck me on the cheek, but now I crave the full experience. Romantic feelings are already in my gut and I haven't even had physical contact. I can only imagine what the sensation would be like; tender flesh folding in intimate friendship. The tongue is another question entirely.

I go in close, ready for the kill, and then she gives an utterance that makes me back off. I am giddy, ready to make my first lip to lip kiss, but she resists.

All of a sudden, the girl backs off, and the positive feelings vanish. She says she can't do this. I am most curious as to why. She has raised my hopeful heart up into the sky, only to dash all dreams to the gravel.
The look on her face is of terror. I feel that I did something wrong.

I plead with the girl to tell me why she doesn't want to kiss. She relents, and informs me that she is friends with other girls that would love to be in her place at the moment, and that she would be betraying them by kissing me.

I argue my case as to why she should still kiss me. I tell her that she is not obligated to her friends to not kiss me. I tell her I don’t even want to kiss some of her female acquaintances, and that she is her own person, and in no way limited by others as to what she can do with her lips.

The lights go back on in her eyes. I feel a flutter in my lungs. There is a chance, a little piece of heaven within grasp.

Then I backtrack, as does she.

We decide that kissing could mess up stuff that we aren't prepared to mess up.
We don't even know each other. We have only really talked for these few hours today, wandering through the woods and discussing our lives as teenagers unfamiliar with the intricacies of dating.
We both decide to leave the dreamland called the prairie and return to the realm where possibilities don't come true; and yet, the prairie is still there and the world of possibilities remains.