Her Lips Are Sealed --Sort Of

Everyone remembers the first time. The first kiss, the first prom, the first husband are milestones in modern life. Murkier, though, are the first gropes. The volcanic rocks on the road to the milestone.

Come with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Somewhere between sixth and ninth grade--subtract a year if you grew up in California--there was a time when you first confronted the physics of “opposites attract.”

Perhaps you learned this in a formal setting: a kissing game at a party. Or perhaps it was during a school assembly when Chester Snitman crossed over to your side of the armrest. Usually, the whole deal was complicated by an unknown: Was it intentional?

Today, the gropemate may be forgotten. Or there may have been several faceless partners on the road to a real first kiss.

I actually can’t remember my first kiss. But I know I will never forget Vince Cavalucchi, the dumbest boy in the eighth grade. It was Vince whose hand possibly intentionally brushed mine on an April day in 1957.

A testimony to the power of first gropes was a letter I received recently from a university professor with an academic title so awesome that it takes five lines on his stationery just to spit it out. It seems he had seen a column of mine that led him to the understandable but mistaken conclusion that I am somebody he once knew.

Just under the great embossed seal of the university (which must be paying him at least six figures), the professor explains that he is “writing to find out if I knew you under a different name in Chicago, or at the girls’ camp that we would sneak to at night, through the woods.”

Obviously, the hope of a reunion with a long-lost gropee has triggered the professor’s imagination. One can see the spark shining at the end of the dark tunnel of midlife crisis.

His letter continues: “I doubt if you’ll ever be silly enough to come through this town. But I do go elsewhere frequently. If you answer this, we might visit. At least we’d have a common talking point. . . .”

Now it is my unfortunate task to destroy a grown man’s fantasy life. How I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings.

Dear Professor Lostlust:

I regret to inform you that I am not little Alice Angel with whom you shared your first grope there in the woods near Lake Winabagel. . . .

That seems a bit too brutal. Perhaps I should leave him the thinnest ray of hope.

Lostlust Dearest:

Am I old Hotlips Horowitz, the honey of Camp Winabagel? That’s for me to know and you to find out. . . .

Too teasy. Someone must disengage the professor of this useless line of thought.

Dear Professor:

I am forwarding a copy of your letter to the president of the university and your wife. Then perhaps you’ll see the folly of trying to relive the past. . . .

Naw. Forget it. This is one of those letters I think I’ll just skip. Leave him to his dreams. I know I have mine.

And Vince, baby, if you’re out there and you’re ever on the coast, I’ve got a little bottle we could spin.