Kiss Chase

Do children even play this anymore? There’s a largely unexplored hinterland of human sexuality and that is the sexual awakenings of pre-pubescence. Specifically the time when boys and girls begin to notice each other as The Other and become curious about the differences, and in a way that is not entirely sexual, but then not entirely ‘pure’ either. This general and anatomical curiousness is often manifests itself in play with games such as Sardines, Doctors & Nurses, Kiss Chase, and eventually of course, Show Me Yours & I’ll Show You Mine. I clearly remember partaking in all of these as well as a great deal many other instances of exploration before I reached the age of 10; some of which I might go into at later dates, if it doesn’t make me out to be a bigger twisted sicko than I look already, that is. But I can tell you that my first ever sexual stirrings concerned a girl in my primary school class called MP.
(I’ll just refer to her as initials, just in case. But it’s a shame I can’t share with you this name, as it is without any doubt the coolest of cool girl’s names that will ever exist. Trust me on this, you will not have heard, or will have, a cooler girl’s name than MP. It has such music to it, such a flow, it immediately invokes an image of the perfect ‘60s beat-girl, swish sportscar, high-kicking, crime-fighting, cool chick. Think a combination of Emma Peel, Lady Penelope, Modesty Blaise, Barberella and the quintessential Bond girl - her name would undoubtedly be MP).
Even in primary school the kids were segregating themselves into groups of social strata. MP belonged to a bunch of kids you might call The Cool Set: the brightest, the prettiest and even with the coolest names; they were the ones going places, if they weren’t there already. Needless to say I wasn’t in The Cool Set. I was very firmly, absolutely, and permanently, on the outside. Looking in, being left out (what is it? “Give me the seven-year-old and I’ll show you the man”? Something like that).
Nevertheless I began noticing MP, and noticed myself noticing her. I can’t remember now if I had any clear idea what it was or just why I was drawn to her, but she had entered my consciousness in a way that no other person had up until that time. I even had a little regular dream about her; a kind of proto-sexual fantasy where I imagined I had a hidden room underneath the school playground where I would take her. She would be the only one I would show this secret hideaway, and it would be just me and her there. I don’t think it entered my head about doing anything sexual in particular with her, but I just enjoyed the strange, and new, frisson from just this idea of sharing something, impressing her and being alone with her.

Anyway, one day during dinner-break I ended up in a game of Kiss Chase. Now, Kiss Chase was essentially a girl’s game, organised and orchestrated by girls who would, if they could, rope in any boy who happened to be at a loose end with nothing else to do. Basically it’s a girl-centred game of Tag - or Tig or whatever variation - where, usually, a team of girls would chase whatever luckless boys who were partaking and, once captured - by use of devilish and SO UNFAIR! team-work and cornering most often - would force a kiss on their squirming prey. The fun boys derived from it was an extra incentive to NOT GET CAUGHT AT ANY COST, lest you were seen to be bettered by silly, yucky gurls and then, ignominy of ignominies, have one of the soppy things kiss you - yeacch!
So there I was. I joined the game late when the team of five girls needed to augment the paltry two-member boy team who had proved no match for the Velocaraptor-esque girls during the first round. Second round was decided to be boys chasing girls. And so there I was. And there was MP. Quite how she had managed to tail-off and become separated from her in-crowd, I don’t know, but here she was. And there I was.
We had to give the girls ten seconds to scatter before we were to come after them. Of course we did suggest amongst ourselves that it would be funny if we just ran off and left them, but once the girls started taunting us that we couldn’t catch them the game was on.
They shrieked as we gave chase. It really wasn’t my intention, in fact I kind of wanted to avoid it if anything as it might expose the fact that I liked her, but MP became my quarry when I caught her trying to double-back and get behind us. I spotted her, she then spotted me, so there was nothing else for me to do but go after her. She ducked and dived and managed to wriggle free of my grasp at every turn until I had her trapped in a narrow dead-end by the kitchens. She tried to dummy past but I caught her and wrestled her against the wall. We were now around the corner from the playground, and on our own. I had her by the wrists, pinned against the wall. Out of breath we stood facing each other, MP was panting and giggling, I imagined her heartbeat to be racing at ten to the dozen like that of a tiny mammal or bird. Here she was, the one who was mysteriously invading my thoughts at night; the prettiest girl I had ever known. I didn’t know what to do.
I just kept her there for a few seconds, my hands around her tiny wrists, holding them against the wall up by her head.
(It’s funny, but even during my teenage fumblings with girls I would unconsciously repeat this move, pinning their wrists to their bed as I snogged them. I’ve never quite known why, even when it eventually developed into tying girl’s wrists together or to the headboard, why I had this minor compulsion to render them helpless, or quite what I got from doing it. Now I begin to suspect, if it isn’t mere coincidence, that this particular kink of mine was forged during this exact moment during my developing years, or maybe it was simply the first instance of it. Is the kink inbuilt or was it made? And if it was made, was it with MP against the school wall all those years ago? And ever since have I, in a sense, been trying to recreate the moment as if to ensure that I won’t let the girl escape this time like I did the first?)
For the briefest moment I had an idea to go through with the game and kiss her, but I immediately became embarrassed and self-conscious. I let go of her and, silently, we walked back into the playground together. I was shy and didn’t know what to say to her; she looked at me warily out of the corner of her eye perhaps in readiness that I might grab her again. She skipped ahead of me, looked back once and then ran off into the crowd. I didn’t follow. I don’t have any strong memories of her after that day.

But now here’s a funny thing. This weekend I was out drinking with a couple of old friends, out at a country pub about twenty or so miles from where I grew up. As we were chatting a woman suddenly came and sat down beside me. “I bet you don’t remember me, do you?” she said to me. She was right, I didn’t. “We were in the same class together at school” she explained. Although I didn’t recognise her, there was something familiar about her. She knew my full name though, which caused me to panic as I desperately flicked through my memory bank in search of her name. “Oh!” I said, stalling “It’s, er… hello, how are you?”. I looked into her pale green eyes, at her short, neat blonde hair, her quizzical smile. I know this person, I thought.

As you will have already guessed, the person was MP, after all these years! I was quite stunned when it all dawned on me. Not only to be sitting beside her for the first time in god knows, but that she even remembered my full name. I never thought she ever knew my first name when we shared the same class, but here we are.
It turns out just as she finished primary school her family left England to live in Germany, and that’s where she grew up, married her high-school sweetheart, lived and had two children. She’s now divorced and back in the UK, in the same old town. Wowzers, my mind reeled. Am I supposed to be a grown-up now or something, then? Where’s all the time gone? So we talked for a while, caught up and chatted about our fellow class-mates from back in the day, which she has kept a better tag on than I (it seems one died from a drug overdose in an Amsterdam nightclub some years back; another was killed in a motorcycle accident only last year; and my first ever best friend who I also lost touch with after primary school, now runs a large successful company and is a millionaire). And that was about it.
Her friends were moving on so we said goodbye and she left, leaving me to stew in my memories, and the fact that someone else’s impressions of shared experiences are so often very different from our own.

Before she left she gave me her phone number, so now I really don’t know what to think.