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Girls I Never Kissed—Stacey | Sep 17 2005

I met Stacey at a dance party in Penny Sue Gold’s basement. I was fourteen. We danced a slow dance and she put her leg between mine, rubbing my crouch in rhythm to the music.

At first I had no idea what she was doing. None of the girls I knew would ever do such a thing—it wouldn’t have occurred to them, nor would it have occurred to me to want them to do it; it was an act beyond our mutual conception. However all this changed as I came to realize that what Stacey appeared to be doing, incredible as it seemed, was exactly what she was doing.

Unfortunately I can’t remember how the dance ended or what we said to each other immediately after, assuming I managed to speak. Instead my next memory is of breathlessly telling my best friend David what had happened. He wasted no time asking Stacey to dance. When he returned, red-faced, he reported that she had done the same thing to him. Evidently it was how she danced.

Later, sitting on the couch with Stacey, she told me she lived in the suburbs, an impossibly far distance away. She was Penny Sue Gold’s cousin and had been driven to the party by her mother. I knew I would never see her again.

In memory she has become my ex-girlfriend, S. When I try to picture the girl in my arms that night, I see S, although I met S twenty-three years after dancing with Stacey. Because of this persistent confusion, I’ve often wondered if my “type” was imprinted that night in Penny Sue Gold’s basement, just at the moment, emblazoned now in memory, Stacey glided her leg between mine.