I hardly dare admit it, for fear of feeling even older than I already do, but when I was a senior in high school, a movie called Never Been Kissed was released, starring Drew Barrymore and Michael Vartan. It was about an ambitious young newspaper employee who, in order to prove her chops as a reporter, accepts an assignment to go back to high school undercover. She is forced to relive her tortured high school memories and is reminded of the fact that she has �never been kissed.�
Fast forward to today, some 10 years later, and I sit here at my computer admitting to you that I have really never been kissed. Sure, I have had crazy make-out sessions, but I have never looked into the eyes of someone I cared for and had them look back into mine and kiss out of a common desire to connect intimately. I have never had anyone be �into me,� someone pursue me, someone ask me on a date. I have never been boyfriended.
Sure, it�s easy for someone to react to this statement by saying, �Look at all the wonderful things in your life. It will happen. You just can�t wait for it.� I would then naturally agree in response and shrug it off.
But in all honesty, it doesn�t work like that. I don�t want to assign my happiness to someone else, or depend on someone for fulfillment in my life, but I do want to be connected to someone. The way that our society is built leaves me feeling like I�m missing something, like I�m just a voyeur with my face pressed against the window pane, looking in on a reality that I don�t know.
Things aren�t easy for anyone, especially in a community like ours that is heavily dependent on the bar scene to maintain social connections. Our community feels as if it has advanced in tandem with the social media age, so that regardless of interpersonal connection, each person is reduced to a photo and one sentence describing themselves. This is especially troublesome to someone like me, an average person who likes to engage in conversations to find connections and who doesn�t drink. The consistency of such dependence on going to bars for weekend outings leaves me alone, stagnant in my journey.
I say all of this with brutal honesty, not with the intent to light a candle at a pity party. Yet I can�t help but ask: What�s the answer?
Is there some aging diva that can appear over my shoulder and tell me how things will, in fact, �get better?� Where are those people who aren�t old enough to be my father that have the ability to see me as a person and take the time to talk to me?
I�ve always justified the fact that I�m not overly social with the fact that my mind and my intellect are most important to me. But all I have done is proven the old saying that �the smarter you are, the lonelier you feel.� So here I am. I have experienced a lot, but feel as if I have essentially experienced so little.
I�m 29, I�ve never really been kissed, never been boyfriended, never been asked on a date, and I�m a writer. I�ll keep my fingers crossed that some editor will come along and have me go undercover, where I�ll fall in love with a sensitive English teacher, just like Drew Barrymore did. Until then, however, I�m stuck in the sandbox, just trucking along, waiting to be whisked away to never-never land.
