Nearly 24 years to the day, my first kiss found me on Facebook

My first kiss happened in a moon bounce on the roof of a fast food restaurant in Argentina.

She had kept telling me she wanted to kiss me but I was too busy bouncing around like the hyperactive pogo stick I was. I tried to elude her until she finally tackled me, pinning my puny 9-year-old body down until I relented.

After the infantile kiss rape was over, I got back up and kept bouncing around. After all, it was my birthday.

Her name was Lorena and she was my novia in Buenos Aires. We both attended Islas Malvinas, a primary school patriotically named after those barren islands the British stole from us.

It was a beautiful private school where the boys wore suits and tiny clip-on ties, and the girls wore checkered skirts and canary-yellow V-neck sweaters. Where most kids stayed after class to learn about Jesus and I had to go home to my “boring” Jewish customs.

It was where I played “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” with all the girls. Where we pledged our love to the sky-blue-and-white Argentina flag every morning and afternoon. Where I ate lunch my first week alone after I told a girl she was pretty and she told me I was “feo” and to go away.

It was also where I met Lorena. A year younger than me, we were in the same class and bonded over childhood trivialities I wish I could still remember.

She followed me around the playground even though I was smitten with the beautiful young teachers. When I realized Señorita Adriana would never be my girlfriend, I asked Lorena and she said yes.

She liked it when I spoke English to her and I never failed to impress her. Yes, I would tell her, I had lived in the U.S. and it was amazing.

But then I moved back to the states when I was 10, nearly a year after that first — and only — kiss . And I never saw or heard from her again.

Until now.

Nearly 24 years to the day that she nailed me to the floor of that moon bounce and made me a man, Lorena wrote me a simple message by way of (what else?) Facebook.

Como estas? No se bien si sos quien creo que eres. Solias vivir en Buenos Aires e ir a un colegio que se llamaba Islas Malvinas?
Beso,
Lorena”

Yes, Lorena, I was that same boy who went to your school. And though I had written before (HERE and HERE) about the strange power of Facebook, I never knew to what extent until now.

I wrote back. We talked about our lives and who we were, trying to bridge nearly a quarter of a century of our lives through this online medium. She stayed in Buenos Aires and became a jazz and Bossa Nova singer. She now lives near my grandma in the neighborhood of Belgrano.

We recalled moments from our childhood. She remembered things I had long ago forgotten. My freckles. My family. That I moved to Los Angeles.

I told her about our first kiss.

As it turns out, that she can’t remember.

Beso indeed.