I Almost Had My First Queer Kiss in the Snow
I made a total ass of myself, like a typical teenage boy
I don’t know what made me drive past my childhood home on my last full day in North Carolina. Maybe it was catching sight of the farmer’s grave that had once sat on a grassy hillside, now roped off at the edge of a grocery store parking lot. My car just seemed to turn itself onto the street next to my old neighborhood without me noticing. I’d told myself I wasn’t going to do this. I was just going to turn around and go back to where we were staying that night.
The decision to make that last turn onto the street where I grew up happened so suddenly that my car bounced over the curb. I guess I was doing this trip down memory lane. I immediately regretted it. Nothing was recognizable. New trees had been planted and grown to adulthood since I had seen this place. The houses had been painted different colors and were renovated to the point of looking unrecognizably different.
I couldn’t figure out which house I had grown up in, until I recognized his old house across the street from mine. Looking at it, I could almost taste the cherry coke he’d bought me shortly after I’d moved in at age 14. I could feel the cold mint chocolate chip upside down concretes we’d eaten together at the place catty-corner to the farmer’s grave. The…
