Log Entry#431
Friday April 11, 2025
HMRodriguez
First Kiss at Kreuzberg
I still remember that evening outside the Officers Club at Kreuzberg Kassern like it was yesterday, even though more than five decades have passed. The air was crisp with the kind of chill that makes your cheeks flush and your breath visible in small, fleeting clouds. The stars were unusually bright over Zweibrücken that night, pinpricks of silver against the dark German sky.
Debbie Dechant stood next to me; her slender frame wrapped in a white winter coat that made her look like she belonged in some fancy European painting. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders, catching the dim light from the windows of the Officers Club where our fathers—both military lawyers—were finishing up whatever important business kept adults talking for hours.
At twelve years old, I didn’t fully understand the fluttering sensation in my stomach whenever Debbie was near. All I knew was that she was fifteen, seemingly worldly and sophisticated in that mysterious way that made her three years of seniority feel like ten. And tomorrow, she would be gone, returning to her village of Nugent in the south of France.
“It gets cold, no?” she asked, her English broken but melodic with that French accent that made even simple phrases sound like poetry.
“Yeah,” I replied, immediately regretting such a plain response. I wanted to say something clever or funny, something that would make her remember me after she left. “I mean, it’s colder in Germany than where you live, right?”
She nodded, hugging herself tighter in her coat. “Nugent is warm. Many sunshine.” Her smile was small and a little sad. “I will miss not this cold, but…”
She paused, and I found myself holding my breath. “…but I will miss you, I think.”
My heart jumped into my throat. Adults had a way of making international assignments and relocations sound routine, but to me, Debbie leaving felt like the end of something important that had barely begun.
“Maybe you can write to me?” I suggested, trying to sound casual even as my voice cracked slightly.
“Oui,” she said, switching briefly to French before catching herself. “Yes. Letters would be nice.”
We stood in silence for a few moments, watching our breath materialize and fade in the cold air. I wasn’t sure who moved closer first, but suddenly our shoulders were touching, and neither of us moved away.
“In France,” she said softly, “when you say goodbye to someone special, you give two kisses. One on each cheek.”
“Oh,” I said, my mind suddenly racing. “That’s… that’s interesting.”
She turned to face me fully now, her dark eyes reflecting the distant lights. “But I think, for you, maybe just one kiss is better. A real one.”
Before I could process what was happening, she leaned forward. Her lips were soft and warm against mine, a stark contrast to the cold air around us. It lasted only a moment—innocent and sweet—but in that moment, everything changed. The world seemed to tilt slightly on its axis.
When she pulled away, her cheeks were flushed, though whether from the cold or from what had just happened, I couldn’t tell.
“Now you will not forget Debbie,” she said with a small, confident smile.
As if I ever could.
“My father is coming,” she whispered suddenly, glancing toward the entrance of the Officers Club where figures were emerging. “À bientôt.”
See you soon—though we both knew “soon” might mean never.
The next day, she was gone, back to a sun-drenched village in southern France that I tried countless times to find on my maps. We exchanged a few letters in the months that followed—hers in careful, measured English, mine probably too eager and clumsy—before life and distance gradually pulled us in different directions.
But that kiss outside the Officers Club at Kreuzberg Kassern has stayed with me through all these years—a perfect moment of innocence and discovery, of saying hello to new feelings just as we were saying goodbye to each other.
Sometimes, on particularly crisp evenings when the stars are bright, I find myself wondering if Debbie ever thinks about that night too, and about the boy in Germany who carried the memory of her—and that first kiss—for more than fifty years.