12/26/11

Summer of '59
By Simay Yildiz


Jane fell in love with George on the peach-colored tile floors of her family’s ranch house on the summer of 1959. The very same day Hawaii was admitted as the 50th US State, her sister and his brother had gotten married, yet George’s entire family had moved into Jane’s house two weeks before that.

On the night of the wedding, Jane had to share her room with George’s younger sister so that the newlyweds could have some privacy. She couldn’t sleep because the sister’s snores made her butt cheeks shake beneath her silk nightgown. So Jane went into the kitchen in the middle of the night to find George on all fours, licking chocolate frosting off the floor.

He lifted his head at the sight of her bare feet and pulled her down on top of his striped pajamas, her chest resting on his. That was the day Jane fell in love with George, right there and then.

''I couldn't let such a good cake go to waste,” he said, his finger leaving chocolate dots on her nose and cheeks, ”didn’t mean to drop it.” As he licked them off with over dramatic sounds, Jane started giggling louder and louder. Just as he reached out to kiss her, they heard the sound of footsteps coming from the stairs. George quickly got up and pulled Jane’s 16-year-old body after him, motioning her to get into the huge wine cabinet before he turned the light off and got inside himself.

Through the cuts in the wood, they hid and watched his mother come in. She was a big yet elegant woman, breathing heavily and talking to herself. She opened a drawer and farted, opened another one and farted again. She kept opening drawer after drawer, farting with each pull, seeming unsure about what she was looking for.

When George realized Jane was about to burst out in laughter, he covered her mouth with the palm of his hand. Her chest pounding at his touch, Jane turned around to see he was holding his nose with his free hand. That was when George lifted his hand up from her mouth, squeezed her nostrils between his fingers and pressed his lips against hers.

That was Jane and George’s very first kiss, the kiss that was surrounded by his mother’s intestines-gone-wrong smell. Yet Jane’s nose only picked up the cheap cologne on his skin and his toothpaste-minty breath on hers.


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Simay works as a copywriter in Istanbul. She likes reading thankyous in CD booklets, bursts into song at random times and has other habits that most consider "weird."