That first kiss . . .

The first kiss between my Vicki and me was after midnight on Sunday morning, Dec. 6, 1981.

How's that for memory? :) It was the kiss that solved all mysteries - I had found the girl for me. This December, we will have been a faithful couple for 37 years.

But, that December night was not my first kiss. My first kiss - not counting the game of spin-the-bottle in ninth grade or a stolen kiss on a porch step - was in February 1976. I was 16. It was a game-changer.

I am completing the first rewrite of my new book, Hickory Trail. This book is the last in the three-book series that chronicles the life stories of our main character, Frank Wilcox, and his boyhood in 1960s and 1970s small-town Georgia. The stories are based on my own memoirs but written as fiction.

I have had the best time writing a chapter titled, "The Long Kiss Goodnight" about Frank's first real kiss. I've written and rewritten it a dozen times, and last night I rewrote parts of it again. The girl in question will be unrecognizable to readers because in the book she is a composite of several different girls that I knew. Unlike my own life, she became Frank's girlfriend of sorts for his last 18 months of high school. I dated some, had lots of friends who were girls, but didn't have a real relationship until college.

What I've tried to capture in this story is the spontaneity of that first kiss, and how Frank prepares for this special date without ever even thinking about the possibility of a kiss. Then, it happens. Probably for you, too, the world opens up into the first glimpses of adulthood. All because of a kiss.

The chapter isn't really about the kiss. It's about what the kiss represents.

For Frank Wilcox, age 16, somewhat sheltered, somewhat shy, and a late bloomer, that kiss - along with driving and working - moved him into a life stage of independence and independent decision-making. In that first kiss, as much as a 16-year-old boy can grow up, Frank Wilcox grew up. Subsequent chapters in the book reveal that subtle change.

It's a pivotal chapter about Frank's teenage years.

The first kiss is set up by a formal dance at the Gainesville, GA Civic Center. Frank and his friend, Pete Yancey, are invited to the dance and double-date with two girls they know from school. As Frank says, "This is no pizza and movie date, this is a real date." The young people had to wear "church clothes."

The girl he takes - Mayvin Stewart - is coming off a relationship with an older boy and she's a little more mature and a little more experienced than Frank. But, she's also his friend and they have a certain chemistry that continues developing through the remainder of the book.

There's some fun in this chapter that I really loved writing.

  • Frank's employer gives him a bottle of Hai Karate cologne, but fails to give him good instructions on how to use it.
  • Frank's mama, Janet, finds a navy blue leisure suit - remember those? - at a thrift store. 
  • The boys take their dates to the Western Sizzlin before going to the dance and Frank discovers that a Rustler and an Outlaw are nicknames for steaks sold at the restaurant.

At the civic center, there's the music - Foghat and Aerosmith and ZZ Top - that creates the perfect background for an awkward slow dance that ultimately leads to the game-changing kiss of Frank Wilcox's life.

I think you are really going to like this book and its innocent accounting of all the thoughts and emotions that were part of becoming a young adult during the 1970s. It's still on track to be published in October 2018. If you haven't read the first two books in this series, Brookwood Road and Elm Street, let me encourage you to read Brookwood Road between now and October. Click here.

www.scottdvaughan.com

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