Goobers on a Date

So I was 12—already some of you are disqualifying this story as being anything close to a real date—and we were both in a production of Fiddler on the Roof (technically Fiddler on the Roof Jr. with some of the scenes written back in illegally). We would hang out a lot backstage in big groups, but never alone.

We were in our second to final dress run in a 2-month process by the time we really started flirting or even contemplating going on a date. I was on the fence about whether I wanted to date her in the first place. Not because I didn't really like her; I did. I was just so naive and afraid of rejection that I didn't want to risk it. So she texted me first.

This was when we both had flip phones so there were no Read notifications. She asked me out on a date and I left her question hanging in the air all throughout our dress run (I was on stage a good amount of the time, but it was mostly nervousness). The person who really made my decision for me was named Alaina. We'd been friends for a couple of years and I had never gotten a hint of anything more.

Apparently, she had caught wind of what my soon to be girlfriend had texted me, heard I hadn't said anything all day and decided it was now or never. Right as I was about to go on stage she came up behind me and started nuzzling my neck.

"Hey, cutie," she whispered into my sticky grey fake beard.

"Hey," I quickly said, startled. "How'd the rumor scene go?"

"Well, it's the one part you aren't on stage, so, y'know, far from perfect." I laughed nervously.

"Thanks, I gotta go on now." She kisses my neck.

"Break a leg," she said as she squeezes my left buttock. This came right out of left field. Reactionarily not trying to hurt Alaina's feelings, I finished my scene, ran backstage and texted her back "How does Friday sound? We can go see a movie." Smooth right?

So the date was on! Sort of. Friday is a 24-hour block of time, so we had to decide the movie and figure all that out: not to mention schedule it with our parents and stuff. Now I had to talk to her. Post text.

She was also in a beard and full late 1800s Russian Jewish garb, talking with one of our close mutual friends who, little did I know, basically pushed her to send me the text. We talked in the 3 minutes I had between scenes, while I was changing, about penciling in our date.

We quickly decided and two awkward, post-show, braces-filled and fake beard spirit glue sticky goodnight kisses later, it was Saturday morning. I've been up since 7 AM with nervous excitement for our date, trying to apply as much acne cream as we had in the house to get rid of my spirit glue induced breakouts and brushed my teeth like I had never brushed them before. I didn't know what we'd do while we watched the movie if anything at all, but I wanted to be squeaky clean for it.

I woke my mom up at 9:00 for breakfast and we drove to the movie theater. Mom was excited for me and not at all weird on the car ride there. It calmed me down a bit.

Mom dropped me off and I met my date inside. She had already bought my ticket—which was awesome because my dad had given me money to pay for our snacks and tickets and I FULLY intended on using it for arcade games now. We hugged the way you'd hug your sister and she kissed me on the cheek.

We had some time to kill so we both just hung out in the dining area of the theater at the high stool area. I tried not to say too much. Just short affirmations.

"Sure," "totally," and the longer but effective "whatever you're down for" made many appearances that day. Holding hands the whole "conversation" —if you could even call it that.

We got in line and for candy, about ten minutes before the movie started. Here's where I would deploy the only move I had thought of. I asked her what she was going to get, told her I'd cover it and that she could go ahead and grab seats. Simple? Yes. Finished? No way.

I've always been kinda big since I was very young, so I thought I'd throw her off by getting her a snack and coming back with nothing for myself, just water. Like it was a magic trick or something? I thought it'd be a really cool subversion of expectation. The trick is that I would buy my snack, scarf it down quickly before I got to our seats, wait outside a minute to catch my breath and then I'd join her and she'd be none the wiser.

So, I grabbed her Redvines, my Goobers, and my water, ate my snack and headed to auditorium 6. Upon entering I discovered that two of our friends that were also in Fiddler—Emmy, and Paul—just so happened to be seeing The Sorcerer's Apprentice at 10:30 on a Saturday which was a bummer. I wasn't expect anything to happen on this date and I for sure wasn't going to instigate anything, but the possibility was a long shot in my head now.

We said hi, got settled into our chairs, and to my surprise, they went back down to their seats toward the front row. I suspect now that she had said something to them, but at the time it was a miracle and my wish come true.

So when the movie starts, there was some solid hand holding for the first 30 minutes or so until her hands got too sweaty and she got embarrassed. She unclasped my hand and pretended to stretch for a moment. I noticed the armrest in between us move when she bumped it with her thigh. I moved it out of the way and she lied on my shoulder for the next hour or so. It wasn't really that awkward or anything. The movie was bad, but we were comfortable.

So around the climax of the movie she begins to shift away from my shoulder, I thought she was just repositioning herself. Shoulders are bony. After a few seconds, I notice she's looking at me, not Nicolas Cage.

"Hey," she said sheepishly.

"Hey. Do I have something—?" I said vaguely gesturing to my face.

"No, no, I just thought we could—"

"Yah?" She nods. "Kiss?" She nods with a smirk. My smile beams. I stare at her for a few seconds. "Can I kiss you?"

She leans in and attacks my mouth with hers. She was doing a lot of the work at first. She had one of the longest tongues I've ever seen and I could feel her hitting my molars with it. After a minute or so I could tell it was pretty much just me sucking her tongue. It took us awhile before we were rhythmically even matched.

After about 3 minutes of heavy, drool filled tongue fighting, I'm out of breath, but I don't want her to know that I'm winded from just sucking face so I use those singers lungs and sneak small breaths. I was relieved when I could hear her start to run out of breath. I didn't want to pull away from her sofa pillow lips. It felt like she was devouring my mouth and I was just letting it happen.

I pull away to give us a second to recoup, and I'm pretty sure the credits are about to roll based on the score of the movie.

"Everythin okay?" She mumbled. Her face was all puffy and red, her tongue seemed like it was swelling in her mouth and her lips were apparently extra cushioned for a reason. Apparently, we had never talked about her peanut allergy before.

"Uh, are you ok?" I asked, scared of the answer

"I'm a liddle hod, are you hod?"

"No," I said, much too coldly. "Your face is all red and puffy."

"Whud?" She pulled out her compact mirror and gasped. "Whud did you hab bor breakfast?!"

"I didn't eat breakfast! Why?"

"You didn't hab any peanuts today?!?!"

I thought for a second, contemplating whether to lie or not as she pulled out her eppy pen from her purse.

"Call my parents!" She threw her phone at me.

I called her parents and explained that she was having a reaction. I did not explain how she contracted said reaction. I waited with her as her parents arrived, comforting her and swearing I had no idea how she could've gotten a reaction from kissing me.

She left with her parents for the hospital. I waited for my mom to pick me up with Emmy and Paul. We all left and went back to my house to get ready for the show that night.

I was worrying all day and it didn't help that she wasn't able to do the show that night because of her reaction. I texted her and her mom texted back "She'll be ok, thank you, Patrick." I was unsettled for the remainder of the night, to say the least. She was able to do the rest of the run of the show, and we dated for the next few weeks.

She was very cautious about knowing what I had eaten for the remainder of our relationship.