Cheating & Winning a Kissing Contest
The job in D.C was fun, but my last year there I spent 362 days on the road and I was just burnt. I wasn’t making enough money to matter and decided I was done. The client site was located in central New Jersey and I was sick of hotels, airports and conference calls. I knew if I saw another minibar or had to use another tiny bottle of shampoo I’d lose it. I decided life was too short to wear a suit and tie and told my boss I was done.
My Army buddies Dirk and Karin were only a few hours north of there and when I told them I was quitting they told me to bring my ass up there. They lived right outside of Woodstock and I figured it was as good a place as anywhere to land. I packed my car and drove north into my new life.
I love Woodstock. It’s full of earthy hippies, tie dye shirts, and lots of crystals. Maybe the people there are stuck in the 60s but they’re friendly and fun and if you get a contact high walking down the street, well, there are worse things in life.
Dirk and Karin lived in neighboring Saugerties, a sleepy little town with a few antique shops, quaint diners, mom-and-pop stores and an oddly out-of-place strip club. Dimly lit and straddling the city limits, the Ace of Clubs was short on class but never entertainment. I saw a mother drinking, cutting loose and cheering on the dancers absolutely lose her mind when her daughter unexpectedly came out on the stage.
People always say “There’s no sex in the ‘Champagne Room’” and it might be true. However, at the Ace of Clubs, I can personally attest that there’s sex on the desk in the back office because I was nearly killed by that little paperweight thing with the nail that sticks up. I think it’s called a desk spindle. Long story but take my advice and clear the desk before challenging a stripper to “show me what you got” after she’s done a few rails.
I didn’t discover the charms of the Ace of Clubs until months later so as far as I knew, the only fun was to be found in Woodstock or partying with my friends. Hey, not that there was anything wrong with that. I loved my friends and was looking forward to spending time with them. We had years of catching up to do! I didn’t know it then, but that was all about to be put on hold.
About a week after I arrived, the town was all excited because the big event was happening! The Garlic Festival was coming to town! When I told people I’d never heard of it they looked at me like I’d never heard of Santa, or Jesus, or Oprah. Ok, ok, I’m a dumbass. Just tell me already.
They helpfully explained that every year, about 40,000 people show up to eat everything garlic. Garlic chocolate, garlic bread, garlic jam, etc., all are available and most are disgusting. A large part of the money in the town’s coffers comes during that one week and the entire town gets into the spirit of the event. Stores redecorate, hotels rent rooms for triple the normal rate and during that week Saugerties is the only place in the country you’re completely safe from Twilight fans.
Anyway, Dirk, Karin, and her extended family (to be described later) went every year, so they were all excited. I don’t mean any disrespect to them – hey, I said the town was sleepy. Anyway, the big day arrived and everyone trooped down to help set up. This festival is such a big money-maker for Saugerties that everyone who actually lives there is expected to helps out.
I went down because I had nothing better to do, plus it’s fun getting lit and watching people eat food that would make those crazy food channel guys vomit. Who the hell would expect garlic peanut butter?
Anyway, I got up early and drove down to the local high school where the annual event is held. Dirk, his wife and her family had already arrived and were sitting around drinking coffee and munching donuts.
Bear with me while I go through this, but it’s important and you have to know who everyone was to fully appreciate how badly I screwed up.
Dirk married Karin. Karin’s sister Leeza lived across the street. Leeza was married and has 5 kids. In addition, they lived next door to Karin’s parents. So basically, you have the grandpa, grandma, 3 daughters, 1 son, 2 sons-in-law, 9 grandchildren, living within 200 feet of each other. Every weekend they’d get together and BBQ, they watched each other’s kids, they went shopping together, etc. They were and remain a very tight clan.
Back to the Garlic Festival. The day wore on, it got warmer and warmer and the group moved from coffee to beer (in my case, Jim Beam and Coke). Everyone was having a blast and watching the crowd when this gorgeous young babe walked up. Everyone greeted her and introduced me. Turns out she was the girlfriend of Leeza’s son Chad and had just turned 18. Well ain’t that sweet. As we were hanging out watching the tourists gorge themselves on garlicky goodness, someone said they heard there was a kissing contest later that day.
Yeah, I get the humor of a kissing contest at a garlic festival, and it was put on by “Sweet Breath”, the bad-breath drops people. The prize was $500 bucks, and who doesn’t want that? In my half-lit state, an idea started to crystallize and after it formed, I started chuckling. I knew how to win. I said as much to the clan and they all wanted to know how.
I told them and said that I knew I could win, but the only problem was I didn’t have a girl to do it with, since I’d only been there a week or so. Hot, newly-turned-18-year-old High School girl said, “I’ll do it with you. I can use the money. It will be fun.” I liked her instantly. Her attitude mirrored mine. Jump through every door right? Take every opportunity that presents itself and fun will ensue!
I would like to point out that at this time NO ONE OBJECTED! No one said, “War, that’s a stupid idea, and you can’t possibly think this will end well.” Nope, everyone was all for it. Even stranger, no one seemed to think that Chad would object to my making out with his 18-year-old girlfriend. In fact, his mother gave me the prop I needed to win.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I was about to make out with a Hottie, win 250 bucks, and my newly adopted family would think I was the coolest guy ever! What could go wrong?
Hottie and I decided we should probably practice, just so we didn’t look awkward. I’m not going to lie. It was my idea. Sure, it’s important to sell the idea but I was far more interested in the insanely hot girl straddling me and making out with me. We “practiced” for about an hour, and then we went to sign up.
People gave us all sorts of strange looks, since I was in my late 20′s and this chick looked pretty young, but we were holding hands and smiling at each other so it had to be legit, right? RIGHT?
We signed up and all that was left to do was wait. There were only about 10 entries, which kind of surprised me, since 500 bucks is 500 bucks, but it just made my odds better. First couple up was a pair of geezers. Damn, damn, damn. Old people get the “awwwwwww” vote every time. The next couple up was a pair of really good looking people. The girl was stunning and the guy looked like he stepped out of the pages of GQ.
It looked like a movie kiss. The bastards were going to screw up my perfect plan! I knew we were going to have to be perfect to win and as we sat waiting for the rest of the contestants to try their best, I realized we had a fighting chance. No one else did anything special. It was finally our shot and I took a deep breath and we stepped up.
I held her and, pulled her to me and we began to kiss, slowly at first, then more passionately until all of a sudden, Hottie pulled back in shock. You could see the judges trying to figure out what had just happened. She reached up into her mouth and pulled out an engagement ring.
Yep. Genius. She looked at me, then the ring, then back at me, then her eyes lit up and I said, “From the moment I met you, I knew there was something special about you and I want to be with you forever. Will you marry me?”
Well, she was supposed to say yes and then kiss me, but she improvised and just devoured me. The judges lost their shit. The crowd lost their shit. People were cheering and for a second I forgot it was all a lie. She pulled back and one of the judges said, “Well? What did she say?”
Hottie said, “YES!!!!” Everyone cheered a bit more, patted me on the back, hugged her, and we walked away. We had a few hours to wait until the kiss-off (the judges had to select 3 finalists) and decided the best thing to do was to stay in character. Yep. More “practicing”. I would like to point out that the ring that we used was donated by Chad’s MOM! So no one had any reason to be mad at me. They were all in on it.
We went back for the kiss-off, but it was a done deal. The judges told everyone what had happened and everyone cheered us again, then they presented us with the check for $500 and told us that if we wanted to, we could get married in 1 year at the next Garlic Festival! I felt a little guilty that they were so nice, so we smiled, said thanks, and bolted.
You know how you’re watching a movie and then they start playing some minor chords to let you know that everything isn’t really ok, that something bad is about to happen, and that the world as you know it is about to change? Yeah, I didn’t hear any of those, but I should have.
That night, we all trooped over to Leeza’s house and were eating dinner when her husband, AKA Chad’s dad came home. Now he had been absent throughout the day and was a bit uptight, but tonight he was bouncing off the walls.
“Guys, you won’t believe what happened at the Festival today! This guy proposed at the kissing contest by passing an engagement ring to the girl with his mouth!”
Utter silence. No one said a word.
He looked at all of us in confusion, then at his wife, who wouldn’t meet his gaze, at her parents, who were examining the ceiling, then at me. I shrugged. You could see the wheels turning in his head. There was this look of understanding that dawned and then he said, “War?” We all continued to exercise our 5th amendment rights and finally he said, “Who was the girl?” His wife said softly, “Hottie.”
So now, all the people who had cheered me on, provided me the props, and watched the whole thing go down threw me under the bus. See, there were a few things I didn’t know.
Chad was this guy’s pride and joy. My making out with the girlfriend wasn’t cool with the father. Actually, that’s a vast understatement. It was more like an unforgivable offense worthy of beheading. At least.
He was one of the main organizers of the garlic festival and they had already promoted this with the local paper. Hey, human interest story, right? Now he knew it was bullshit, it had happened with his son’s girlfriend with some reprobate who had just arrived in town.
No one told Chad prior to this going down. I just assumed Hottie would have mentioned it to him, just to give him a heads-up, out of respect. Nope. I brought this up to her later when we were having sex and she just said she didn’t know why she never called him.
So now I was the bad guy. Everyone started to backpedal wildly and say how they’d always thought it was a bad idea, how they’d had misgivings, and they were shocked, SHOCKED that I’d even think of doing such a horrible thing.
I pointed out that I’d even borrowed the ring from the Chad’s mom, but no one wanted to hear it so I bounced. Dirk met me about 10 minutes later and said that everyone was pissed as hell at me but that he and Karin thought it was hilarious.
I knew we had to cash the check early, so Hottie met me the next morning and by 9:05 we each had our $250. The paper that day had a blurb about us, but they were working off of old info, so we were still cool.
The father went back, told everyone it was a fake, at which point everyone involved hated me. I’d obviously taken advantage of this poor girl, cheated the system, and didn’t deserve the money, but since I’d already cashed the check, it was too late. Point of note: One judge said he was so impressed by my originality that he would have given me a higher score if he’d known at the time.
I was feeling pretty unloved, so when presented with the opportunity to further “practice” with the Hottie, I threw caution to the wind and went for it. We had a ton of fun, and then the Woodstock Times called and asked if they could do an interview with us. Sure, why not? Everyone hated me now anyway, I figured. I was wrong. For about a year after the article came out (front page, giant pic of the two of us) people would stop me and ask if I were the guy that cheated with the high school girl to win the kissing contest at the Garlic Festival.
Yes. Yes I was…
Epilogue
Right after this all went down, everyone was mad at her too. See, they all knew that they’d helped me, and although they had to be mad at me for family harmony, once things cooled down a bit, they knew that she bore an equal part of the blame. There was plenty of mad to go around. Chad was mad as hell since Hottie had embarrassed him and he was taking shit from all his friends, so he wasn’t talking to her. The parents were furious, the grandparents were appalled, so who was left? That would be me…
I was sympathetic and understanding and she started coming over after work to hang with me. Remember, the whole family lived within 200′ of my house so they saw her car there and saw it stay until around 2am. This did not endear me to them, but as I mentioned earlier, they were already mad, and she was ridiculously hot, so why not take advantage of the situation?
Up until this time, Hottie and I had just talked, but one day she came to me and asked me what I would do if I found out she were pregnant. See, that’s the advantage of dating young girls. The extra years of experience help you out.
Sometimes I do things I’m not very proud of.
I said that I thought she was awesome and I could see myself with her for many years to come, that it wouldn’t matter if she were pregnant from her 16-year-old boyfriend since we’d be together anyway. Let the sex commence!
See, I figured she thought she might be pregnant and thought she could seal the deal with me by throwing me a piece. I just had to say the right words. Which I did. But she was one of those girls who needs to feel like she isn’t bad, that she kind of just fell into the situation and that it really isn’t her fault. She was the exact opposite of Betty in this way.
Anyway, we started fooling around, things got hot and heavy, but she kept telling me that we shouldn’t do it, that it was wrong, that cheating was wrong, etc. I have to tell you, this is really tiresome. At this point, my job was to provide her with some excuse, some rationale that would allow her to bang my brains out guilt-free but frankly, I was tired of playing games.
I like things to be clear and unambiguous so I told her that if she wanted to stop right now, we’d stop. I told her that if she just wanted to be friends, that was cool too. And then I told her if she wanted to fuck, that she needed to bite down on the heel of my hand and if she did, I would know that all the things she said were bullshit and that anything else she said going forward I’d ignore, no matter what.
She grabbed my hand and bit down on the heel hard. That was my answer. The rest of the night was her telling me that I was raping her as she had her legs wrapped around me pulling me in, that there was nothing she could do to stop me, and that she was a horrible person for cheating on her boyfriend. All of this happened on the front lawn, in clear view of her boyfriend’s house, my house, and her boyfriend’s grandparents’ house. It was late, so we got away with it, and it was awesome.
Dirk finally approached me and told me that my actions were causing all sorts of trouble within the clan and I needed to knock it off if I wasn’t serious about her. I denied that anything had happened, naturally, but that didn’t matter. Hottie went back to Chad and high school and I moved on to greener pastures.
A year or so later she ended up being my maid and things picked up where they’d left off, but that’s a story for another day.
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