Teenage Toothaches
Biting Back
Article and art by Katie Kamio
I was bitten once and called it a first kiss. It was the sensation of scratching teeth drowned in the illumination of strobe lights on the dance floor. It was thrilling and daring and all of the things I was not. Back then I was a gangly barely-teen, trying to decipher what cool was and how to borrow it. I desperately hoped to be seen in the silence of lunchroom corners and the back of the bus benches. And when I found myself in a large Model UN conference hall, my stomach lurched at the thought of baring myself to the fifty other high schoolers, even under the guise of Canada.
Back then, I was a shy teen who would rather talk to one person than a group, and never in front of rustling crowds. I spoke in hushed tones until I was comfortable and then my voice would upgrade into fleshed-out consonants and syllables. At the conference, I sat in my seat and bit back words; words I would’ve liked to say, words I didn’t know how to say, words that wouldn’t formulate in my head. As motion after motion was set up, words circled in my head, ballooning until I found myself in front of the room, tapping on the podium. And then they spilled out in a blur of short bursts that I was praying made sense. Years later, my words would slow and my brain would not have to race to keep up with my voice.
No one told me there would be a dance after the conference, and all I can remember is my clubmates dragging me from dinner to a dimmed conference room. The noise reached me first, the rhythm of shaking speakers gathered in my chest before making their way down my legs and out my toes. As the music came through me and took hold deep in my being, I was absorbed into the crowds of people bopping, bouncing to the beat.
In the throngs of elbows and flying hands, we let loose. Our limbs flailing and then combusting in bars of light. I was floating to the music in a chorus of movements. And then there he is, there we are, dancing in a circle of two. A first bite of something new. I can’t tell you when I forgot about the rest, the bubbling speech that followed me from the conference, the words blocked within, the babbling reel of teen angst. All I can tell you is that when he kisses me, I bite back.