I really didn’t know what my deal was. My attempts to understand my behavior were all math-based—looking for underlying patterns—but Euclidean geometry and algebraic topology and combinatorics never seemed to get me very far when I applied them to the human heart.
Mine, in particular.
Luckily for me, the humanities had plenty of theories about what might cause intimacy issues, and Ashley had studied them all.
Her reigning theory for years—and we tweaked it and reworked it a lot in these conversations—was that I’d imprinted on our parents’ unsatisfying relationship, and now I was endlessly seeking a neglectful mate to take the place of my neglectful father.
I mean: Yeah, okay.
My dad was the problem. That wasn’t news.
Ashley had been a college freshman taking Psych 101 when she’d busted out this theory for the first time. “It’s calledsexual imprinting,” she’d explained one night at this very same kitchen table.
“Please don’t say that word,” I’d said, and then I lowered my voice to a whisper for the benefit of my mother, sitting right next to me, “in front of Grandma Dodie.”
“What word?” Ashley asked. Then, louder, just to mess with me: “Sexual?”
“Ashley!” I said, likeHush!
“It’s a medical term,” Ashley went on, totally unimpressed with my squeamishness. “Don’t be weird about it.”
Before I could declare my natural-born right to be weird about anything I chose, my mother took an interest in this new theory. “Is it like how ducklings imprint on their mothers?”
“Yes,” Ashley said, “except that’s for a maternal figure, and this is for a mate.”
“You think JoJo imprinted on your disinterested father and now only wants a disinterested mate of her own?”
They both turned to regard me.
“I mean,” Ashley said, “it tracks.”
It didn’tnottrack. I’d give her that.
Or maybe I was just cursed.
“But what about you?” I protested to Ashley. “You grew up with the same absentee dad, and you’ve had one nice boyfriend after another since the seventh grade.”
“People are complicated,” Ashley said with an apologetic shrug. “I probably imprinted on the good stuff.”
All to say: This theory had gone unchallenged for so long that we all just accepted it now as a simple fact about who I was.
Even me.
But then tonight, very casually, almost as an aside, Ashley took that unchangeable fact and just… changed it.
“I just read a new study on imprinting, by the way,” she said.
This topic needed no introduction. My mom and I looked up and waited.
“Apparently,” Ashley went on, “you can imprint on a first kiss.”
Well, that was news.
Ashley kept going. “It’s because first kisses are so emotionally charged. In certain cases, they can become more.”
“What does ‘more’ mean?”
“More than just memories,” Ashley said. “They can become pivot points in our lives.”
