In December 1992, I was in eighth grade and had been picked from among 3 girls I knew to be the girlfriend of this dude we had started talking to on the phone ( we were 13, he was 18). I felt like the prize pony at a state fair. I hadn’t met the guy in person, but apparently we were going steady, and one day he phoned me and asked if I would come to a mutual friends’ house to meet. I was nervous, and really didn’t want to take our “relationship” (my first) past where it was. But I made the trek and met him.
He was not what I expected. A 6 foot 2, gangly, Nascar-hat-wearing, half-toothless, smoking stranger met me and wrapped his arm around me. I immediately felt disgusted. We talked for a minute; well, I tried to talk through my shock, and then I made up some story about how I had to get back home before my parents found out, and then, he leaned in, and gave me the slimiest, most revoltingly cigarette-smoke-laden full-on tongue French kiss. I broke it off and ran home and just reflected upon the stupidity of it all.