Anyone who has ever thought about immortality can see it is a curse; everyone you once knew is dead, everything you see is a repeat, and there is the question of your physical health. Fiction and imagination generally take care of all these factors, but they also depict it as a curse.

Also a curse, in its way, is an eidetic (perfect) memory, Forgetting is an essential part of being human. The luckiest remember the wonderful moments and forget the terrible moments. Terrific memory and peace of mind do not always go together.

Of course eidetic memory is great for academics. Imagine seeing the textbook page in your mind. It is hard to fail with that advantage.

My memory is not a curse, but it does regularly surprise and baffle those around me. When I describe my memory of the past to people, the most common reaction is “I don’t remember that, but it sounds like me.”

Which brings me (as everything does) to me. It is probably easy to remember your first real kiss (as in my song by that name), and other epochal kisses. Do you remember where and with whom? (vividly, as if you can still see it?)

The question came to me while reading a Curtis Sittenfeld¹ short story. She describes a woman’s 25-year marriage to a man whom she doesn’t enjoy kissing. Now that’s a tragedy.

A peck on the cheek I planted on KSI in 2nd grade introduced me to kissing. She slapped me as we stood on the north steps of Beaumont Elementary in my home town of Portland. My nose bled at night for a week, but I learned a life lesson I never forgot: always say “May I,” unless she is the initiator.

The first time a girl kissed me (rather than me kissing her) was on a front porch south of 46th and Fremont.The kiss and a peripatetic mother) seemed exotic for a girl in my middle school. The daughter attended Beaumont for a few months before moving on. I don’t recall her name, to my regret. But I recall the kiss.

My first French kiss was with BH, on the front porch of my house, in the early evening of a winter day. That was the closest we ever came to intimacy. I took her to my junior and senior prom . She took me to hers. She was fun, smart and good company, but physically our friendship peaked with that kiss.

Reciting incidents like this impresses my daughters, since I can recall the name of a woman I dated twice in 1977. Call her ML, since those aren’t her initials.

She was memorable because, when I asked her to make love, ML said, “I don’t sleep with men on the first date; I’m a Republican.” We sat together in her San Francisco apartment; the evening gloom through the windows, a grand piano feet from me. I’ve been declined several times (“No” is a complete sentence), but that exact response was both the most eccentric and classiest I ever received.

My daughters figured out I remembered ML after I wrote a blurb for her novel. “You know this woman? How?”

My memory allows me to bask in the glow of the wonderful moments of my life, and contemplate the lessons learned from the less-wonderful ones.

Footnote

1. Among her many works, my favorite is Rodham, including a description of loving someone for their brains and a blazingly accurate description of The National Press Corps. ↩︎