A Kiss to Remember

BY  BRITTANY MCAULEY

It can be awkward and sloppy or romantic and natural. For 19-year-old Jonah McIntosh, it was a little bit of everything.

McIntosh is a second-year Musical Theatre student who says he wouldn’t change anything about his first kiss. “The memory’s perfect,” he says.

“I think it’s so cool how we hold things so important at a certain age and now at this age I’ve kissed so many people and it’s gotten to the point where it doesn’t mean as much. It’s nice to think back to a point in my life where something so simple was so special,” he says.

It was Grade 8 graduation and a 13-year-old McIntosh had been planning this moment for a while, admitting he even practiced on his pillow once or twice so that it would be special.

They had been dating for six or seven months before it happened. Looking back on it now, he says the kiss was “great.”

The movie A Walk to Remember was one of her favourites at the time and McIntosh wanted to recreate the scene where the male lead helps the female complete her list of things to do before she dies.

Naturally, he was unable to do all the things on the list and he decided on helping her be in two places at once, as they did in the movie.

After being nagged by their friends at the graduation party all night about having to kiss her before they go to high school, McIntosh walked his girlfriend home.

“We lived on the border of two towns, so I walked her into the middle of the road and said ‘See, you’re in two places at once.’ She started crying and stuff and she just thought it was so cute,” he recalls.

“Then I pointed to a star and said ‘Oh and I bought that star for you but I left the contract thing at home,’ then we kissed in the middle of the street,” he describes the moment with fond amusement. “And then her dad came out and yelled at me.”

It was her first kiss as well, according to McIntosh. “It was kind of awkward, plus, I had just gotten to her height and then she wore heels,” he jokes.

“I was nervous she was gonna be like ‘What the hell are you doing,’ and I was nervous we were gonna get hit by a car.”

McIntosh lets out a laugh, “And now I’m gay.” Nevertheless, his first kiss is something he can remember with no regrets and it happened just as he wanted it to. “I didn’t want to make up my mind [about his sexuality], I was like, whatever,” he says.

McIntosh says he would like to recreate that special moment with someone but is going to wait. “And I’m not gonna make it as cheesy because I’ve grown up a little,” he adds.

Your first kiss can seem scary at first, but he points out that it’s always the anticipation that’s worse.

“It’s nice nowadays to think when I kiss someone it’s never gonna be as special as that one moment.”

If there is anything you can learn from the experience of McIntosh, it’s to wear Chapstick, adding with a smirk, “No tongue, yet. Don’t go right in for it.”