That's lipstick, baby, and I am wearing it proudly - celebrating my crowning as Murray High School's "Mr. Make-out 1986".  Truly, truly an honor.

"How did Big Matty earn such a title," you ask? By making out with a lot of girls, little buddy. How else?

I was (enthroned? ordained? inducted?- you pick) Mr. Make-out during my 20 year reunion at Murray High School, in Murray, Utah.  It seems I did actually kiss a fair number of girls back in the day - enough to be officially recognized, anyway.

At first I was surprised to hear that I was to receive this title.  It just didn't occur to me that I would even be in the running.  But then I started to remember a few things about my younger days. For instance,

I LOVED KISSING GIRLS.  The sweet scent.  The soft skin. Warm breath on my face.  Pliant lips pressed against mine. The delicious tongue. Get out of here! Kissing girls was SO MUCH FUN!

It still is, but I am happily married and enjoy kissing one girl. Oh, and I am 38 years old, which means "girls" are out of the picture.  I kiss a woman.  But that is OK because kissing a woman now is just as fun as kissing girls was then.  Amazing how that works!

I am also remembering that I did indeed make a point of kissing certain girls.  I had a lot of female friends (I've always liked women) and every so often I would see one of them in a new light.  I would be struck by how pretty "Brenda's" mouth was, or I would notice "Rachel's" long neck -and that would be that, I would have to kiss her.  I didn't just plant one on her right then and there, but would take her out on a date, or for a walk, or something. Then, if the chemistry was right and everyone involved liked the idea, we would kiss.

I guess I did this enough to win an award.  And I guess I did it in a way that didn't hurt anybody. Several of the girls I had kissed were at the reunion and none of them slapped me in the face and told me I was a bastard or anything like that. They were all very nice as we talked about our lives over the past twenty years. It seemed my kissing them was a small, if not unpleasant, episode in their life.  For this I am glad.

I had sex too young.  It was also during high school.  I got in to one of those heavy teen relationships where everything is a matter of life and death and sex was a "manifestation of our love" and all of that crap.  I didn't know what I was doing and I very nearly became a teenage daddy.  It was one of the most stressful and painful periods of my life.  Looking back, I really think I should have just stuck with kissing my friends.  That really was a lot more fun.