Our First Kiss Was Technically a Fight

**Memoir Excerpt: First Kiss**

 *From the upcoming memoir by Nam Won-Sik*

Our first kiss story is finally here, since so many of you voted for it. Side note: it's incredibly windy today, and for those on my close friends list, you know exactly what this kind of weather reminds me of. For everyone else, let's just say it involves Seunghoon, my prostate, and some very x-rated memories that still make me shiver when the trees start bending like this.

 

Twelve years old and already a mess—scraped knees and dirty fingernails. Summer had us by the throat, days stretched out so long you forgot morning even existed. We were doing what we always did: racing our bikes until our legs burned, climbing fences we weren't supposed to, challenging each other to increasingly dangerous dares, and ending sticky-faced from ice creams that melted faster than we could lick them.

 

Even then, Seunghoon had this gravity about him. Hair falling over his forehead when he was thinking, eyes flashing when he laughed, standing like he was already a man. I'd been obsessing over his mouth for years—waking up with the phantom taste of something I'd never actually had.

That day, the universe handed me the perfect excuse. We had exactly one lemon chewy candy left between us (the super sour ones that made your whole face pucker). Seunghoon's absolute favorite. We'd wasted every cent at the arcade, leaving us with just this one precious piece of candy.

 

"I'll rock you for it," he said, already forming his fist.

 

But I had other plans. Before he could throw, I popped the entire candy into my mouth, letting my cheeks bulge like a hamster. "Try and take it if you want it," I challenged, my voice muffled by sugar and sour coating.

 

Something flashed in his eyes! Boy was he competitive. He lunged, grabbing my shirt and pushing me back against the rough bark of an old oak tree. My glasses almost fell off. The impact knocked the air out of me, but I didn't care.

 

His dirty fingers tried to pry my mouth open first, but I clenched my jaw tight, grabbing his wrists to stop him. I deliberately let him glimpse the candy under my tongue—a yellow treasure he couldn't resist.

 

That's when he changed tactics.

 

His mouth smashed against mine, all teeth and raw need. I played keep-away with that candy, sliding it around my mouth, forcing him to fight for every inch of it. His tongue was forceful, searching, and I was in heaven. The sour-sweet taste mixed with the unique flavor of him—something like summer and Seunghoon. His sweat was my favorite smell in the world, my private paradise, and we were both drenched in sweat.

 

Time stretched and compressed. It could have been seconds or hours. The rough tree bark against my back, his fingers digging into my fists, the surprising softness of his lips contrasted with the aggressive way he was trying to claim that lemon candy. My heart wasn't pounding from the struggle anymore—it was thrumming with something much more dangerous. I was drifting into my fantasy world.

 

Finally, I let my guard down just enough. With a victorious sound, he captured the candy, pulling back with it between his teeth like a trophy. He was breathing hard, eyes bright with triumph, completely oblivious to the shudders he'd just sent through my body.

 

He chewed that candy with such satisfaction while I stood there trying to remember how to breathe normally. My lips tingled. My whole body tingled. I'd dreamed about kissing him, but reality was so much messier and more wonderful than any fantasy.

 

"Best candy ever," he declared, already moving toward his bike like nothing extraordinary had happened.

 

We continued playing like nothing had changed, but everything had changed. For me, anyway.

 

So that was the very first time our mouths met. Sure, as we grew older we kissed normally, more aware, more romantic and all, but that was the first time.

 

We still argue about whether this counts as our first official kiss. I maintain it does—it was mouth-to-mouth contact with tongue, after all. He claims it doesn't count because the intent was theft, not romance. I've finally worn him down though—he's admitted recently that yeah, it probably counts.

 

In a way, that candy-stealing kiss set the pattern for our relationship: me wanting something from him, him taking what he thinks he wants, both of us getting something different than we expected, but somehow it turns out exactly right.

 

Speaking of which, I wrote a song for Seunghoon on our new "Monsters" album called "No Middle Ground." It's about this very dynamic—how he meets me in my extremes, how there's no halfway with us, and how his love has been the constant through all my difficulties. I love this man more than anything in the world and have loved him ever since the first day I met him. 

Link to the Song: https://open.spotify.com/track/3WnQQR6F299tpDU2mgcp0q

The Monsters Are Out

 

Our first music video is out! Our first mini album is out! There is a physical CD that people can actually hold in their hands!

I am really happy, very proud, and still not completely convinced that any of this is real.

One moment, everything was hidden inside our computers: scattered notes, unfinished lyrics, demos, rehearsal recordings, phone videos, sketches, discussions and files sent back and forth between different countries. Then suddenly it was on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram and everywhere else. People outside the band could see it. They could hear it. They could have opinions about it.

That still feels surreal.

I am also still nervous. I keep noticing tiny things and wondering whether we could have done something better. I think that is probably something I will always do. But beneath the anxiety, I am proud that we actually made it. There were many reasons this project could have remained an idea. It did not.

It became Monsters.

The first warning

Choosing the first song was difficult because every song on the album carries part of us. After days of trying to decide, we eventually asked my boyfriend to choose. He is not a member of the band, which meant he could hear the songs from outside the little world we had built around them.

He chose “The Ones You Warned Them About.”

He said it was dark and frightening, but that it also felt like a first meeting. It introduced us.

I trusted him, and I think he was right.

The ones in the title are us. Gay men who do not want to hide, make themselves smaller or perform a polite and harmless version of themselves in exchange for conditional acceptance.

I was fortunate. My own father is gay and has always supported me, so I was never raised to fear gay men. I was taught to fear hypocrites, homophobes and people who cause actual harm.

But boys have often been warned about men like us. Gay men have been portrayed as corrupting, contagious or dangerous—as if we could somehow pass our gayness to other people simply by existing near them. Religion, propaganda and popular culture have all contributed to this image of the gay man as a threat: a sinner, a predator, a disruption of the righteous world.

Perhaps we are a disruption.

We disrupt the idea that there is only one respectable way to live. We interfere with rigid gender roles. We choose desire over obedience. We have continued to exist even when laws, families, institutions and entire cultures told us not to.

“The Ones You Warned Them About” is not an attempt to convince anyone that we are actually nice, innocent and non-threatening.

It is a declaration.

They did not manage to kill us off. They did not manage to erase us. Now they still have to see us and face the fact that we are here.

We are not ashamed. We are not hiding.

Aggressively proud

Sticky Shorts are gay indie music [Here, I use “gay” in the old, traditional, sex-based sense: a male homosexual—someone of the male sex who is attracted to others of the male sex.]

We are gay post-punk. Not music that happens to be made by gay men while carefully avoiding the subject so that it can reach the widest possible audience

It is really gay.

It is rude, horny, dirty, unstable, affectionate and sometimes ugly. We are not interested in sanding those parts away so that we can become an acceptable version of gay representation.

There is often pressure on gay people to appear especially polite, restrained and respectable. We are supposed to prove that we are harmless before we are allowed into the room. We are expected to ask nicely to be tolerated.

We are not asking to be liked.

For the people who recognise themselves in us—or who understand and support what we are doing—I want the band to feel warm and intimate. I want Sticky Shorts to feel like friends, family, or perhaps their own monsters.

For everyone else, we can be confrontational.

People have called gay men monsters, freaks, sinners and scandals for a very long time. Once you claim the image that was projected onto you, it begins to feel like your own skin. The insult loses its original function and turns back towards the people who tried to use it against you.

I do not mean that we are kindly proud of ourselves.

I mean we are aggressively proud.

A home video you were not invited into

The music video was never supposed to look polished or overly serious.

Most of it was created from simple phone footage we had already recorded in different places and at different times. We wanted it to feel like an old home video—something private, casual and slightly stupid that the audience had somehow gained access to.

Visually, we were drawn to a vintage Super 8 feeling and an atmosphere somewhere between home movies and the 1980s. Some of the footage is darker, but much of that darkness happened naturally. These were not carefully staged symbols. They were fragments of our lives that began to reveal something once they were placed beside the song.

A few moments were filmed specifically for the video, including the scenes with the posters and papers. Those were probably the most difficult because it was windy and we kept having to wait for the weather to cooperate.

Most of the enjoyable moments were not really “filming” at all. They happened while we were already together and having fun.

Two of the most important moments for me are when I kiss Alexander and when I kiss Johnny. We included both intentionally. The kisses are mild enough to survive social-media rules, but they still make several things very clear.

We are gay. We are not monogamous in the neat way people often expect. We are affectionate and sexual with each other. And these kisses happen outside, in public, where other people can see us.

They are not presented as tragic, shocking or symbolic.

They are simply part of us.

The finished video feels like a Sticky Shorts home movie. It does not explain everything. It allows people to look into our world without pretending that the world was created for them.

Made everywhere, recorded in chaos

The album was created across several countries because the band members do not all live in the same place. Different parts of the writing, rehearsing, filming and planning happened in Korea, Germany, the United Kingdom, Greece, the United States and Japan.

Sometimes we even rehearsed through Zoom. I know that sounds strange. It was strange.

Distance delayed things. Timing was often difficult. Everyone has their own way of working, and trying to bring those different rhythms together was not always easy.

Eventually, we came together in Lefkada, where we recorded. My father had bought me a villa there, everyone wanted to visit, and honestly, who says no to spending time on a Greek island in a villa?

The recording process was pure chaos.

Seo-jun and Jin-ho understand the technical side far better than I do. Equipment malfunctioned. I accidentally pushed buttons and muted myself. Sometimes we drank too much and played badly—or, in my case, sang badly. Sometimes someone became distracted by the weather and disappeared for a walk by the sea. Sometimes I had panic attacks and we could not record.

Sometimes we were simply too distracted by one another.

After rehearsals, everything often turned into unofficial parties. We ordered food and drinks, watched things together, talked and created the kind of messy intimacy that eventually found its way back into the music. Even the bonus song “Boys in the Bathroom” grew out of that atmosphere.

Considering everything, I think it is a miracle that the recordings worked.

But the chaos was also part of what made the project ours.

The other members understand my problems. They do not turn every difficult moment into a conflict. We disagree over musical details, of course. I do not have the same formal musical knowledge as some of them, but I often know exactly what I want something to sound like, so I insist until we find it. I am impatient. I become tired when they want to play something repeatedly. I nag.

Somehow, we still hold together.

These guys have become family to me. I would not have wanted to make this record with anyone else.

Becoming Monsters

My boyfriend also chose the album title.

He was reading a book about monsters and noticed that the idea already appeared throughout our lyrics and the world we were creating. He asked why we did not simply call the album Monsters.

It fit immediately.

The monsters in these songs are us—the people called wrong, unacceptable or dangerous by the regular world. But the album does not reject the word. It claims it.

We want to be monsters. Monsters are our tribe.

The songs are connected by the feeling of being told that something about you is fundamentally unacceptable and deciding to become proud of it anyway. They move through desire, scandal, memory, shame, danger and survival. These are not separate subjects. They grow like branches from the same tree.

Most of the songs are autobiographical, drawn from the lives of different band members. We all brought different histories into the writing. I grew up with a supportive father and financial security. Other members experienced rejection, scarcity or being thrown out by their families. We do not have one universal gay story, but our experiences began to speak to one another.

Different kinds of gay men appear throughout the album: mentors, lovers, outsiders, proud men, loud men, horny men, unstable men, men carrying scars and men who became scars themselves.

Older gay men and complicated mentors are especially important in this world. When a culture tries to hide or sanitise gay history, the people who lived through it become lanterns. They pass on knowledge about how our world really works—not the polished version that can be made acceptable for mainstream media, but the one that existed in clubs, bedrooms, friendships, chosen families and nights nobody was supposed to remember.

Monsters is about what hurt us and what helped us survive.

They pushed us towards the edge and into the night because they wanted us to disappear.

But the night took us under its wings, fed us, and spat us back out as monsters.

Something you can hold

It was important to us that Monsters existed as a physical CD and not only as a collection of files on a streaming platform.

I love CDs. When my boyfriend Seunghoon and I were children, we used to read the lyrics together from album booklets. CDs were important to him, and because he was important to me, they became a major part of my life too.

There is an intimacy in touching something you love.

The physical edition includes the lyrics and personal sketches made by me and Johnny. The rehearsal version is also included. It is rougher, less polished and not perfect in quality, but that is why it matters. It feels as though the listener is there with us—and may even hear me nagging a little.

The cover artwork created by Elina could never have been replaced by a conventional band photograph.

The band members are connected through red threads that are both strings of fate and veins. They lead back towards the horned figure on the reverse: a monster, an origin, a kind of mental ancestor from whom we emerge.

The images, lyrics, sketches and music all came from the same universe. The physical release allows that universe to exist as one complete object.

I see the CD less as merchandise and more as an artwork and an archive. Even if nobody bought it, I would still be proud that it exists.

But knowing that someone may hold it, keep it or place it somewhere in their home makes me very happy.

A collaborative monster

Sticky Shorts could not have been created by one person.

Every band member brought personal experiences, musical instincts and different abilities into the project. The songs became heavier once we began playing them together. They became more than the notes and ideas we started with.

Elina was part of the project from very early on. I had read her poems, stories and other writing and often recognised myself in them. I liked that she was not afraid to say things directly. Her poem “Red Blood,” for example, became something Johnny and I discussed because we strongly identified with the figure inside it.

We sent her our ideas, notes and stories, and through long conversations and constant exchanges, the lyrics and concepts developed. Because she knew my history, the writing could become more specific and honest. The artwork, video, lyrics and music then began affecting one another until they felt like different parts of the same creature.

Amanda also helped us judge and select parts of the visual material. My father kept encouraging and supporting me. My boyfriend helped choose both the first song and the album title.

This is a large collaborative project made by people who placed real parts of themselves inside it.

For the people looking for their monsters

We are not claiming to speak for every gay person. We are speaking from our own lives.

But I hope that some people recognise themselves.

I hope young gay men feel empowered by it. I hope older gay men recognise parts of their own histories. I hope the rest of the listeners understand what they hear—or care enough to find out when they do not.

More than anything, I hope the album gives people something music rarely gave me fully: belonging.

There were individual songs that gave me that feeling when I was younger, but very few. I do not remember finding an entire album that felt as though it had been made simply for people like me, for the sake of our lives themselves, without first asking how those lives could be translated for everyone else.

I hope some listeners feel that Sticky Shorts are their friends or their family.

Or at least their monsters.

The beginning

Releasing Monsters does not feel like the end of a long project.

It feels like the beginning of a band.

Before this, we were friends making songs together. Now I understand that we are bigger than I thought. We held together through distance, delays, panic attacks, arguments, chaos and all the different lives we were trying to fit around the music.

We are actually Sticky Shorts.

I am proudest that we did it despite everything that made it difficult. The band has become better and stranger than I imagined, and I love the guys very much.

Now we want to make more songs, more albums and more chaos. There may even be a private live show somewhere ahead of us.

For the moment, though, Monsters is no longer hidden inside our files. It is outside, where other people can listen to it, watch it, hold it and decide what it means to them.

That feels good and bad at the same time.

But then, almost everything does.

Watch “The Ones You Warned Them About”:
on Youtube 

Listen to Monsters:
on Spotify

Get the digital or physical CD:
HERE

One Sentence Became My Reality

Last night our electricity went out.

My boyfriend and I went outside to switch the power back on. He was trying to

show me how the safety switch worked.

I wasn't paying attention.

I was too busy trying to kiss him.

I know that sounds stupid, but I love watching him fix things. I love it when he knows what to do. I love that calm, capable side of him. It makes me want him more.

Then he looked at me and said,

"You should learn this too. What if one day I'm not here?"

That was all it took.

One sentence.

He wasn't talking about leaving me.

He wasn't talking about dying.

He wasn't talking about our relationship at all.

He meant something practical.

What if he was at work one day?

What if I was home alone?

What if the power went out again and I had to do it myself?

That was what he meant.

Unfortunately, that wasn't what I heard.

The moment he said it, reality split.

There were only two possibilities.

Either he was going to die.

Or he was preparing to leave me.

There wasn't a third option.

I wasn't sitting there wondering whether those things were true.

I believed them.

Completely.

My mind didn't go somewhere logical.

It didn't imagine practical things.

It skipped straight to the end.

If he dies, I die too.

If he leaves me, I die too.

There is no future.

No morning.

No tomorrow.

No world.

Nothing.

Just blackness.

A black hole.

Chaos.

The end of everything.

And I don't mean that as a metaphor.

That was my reality.

I completely lost control.

I couldn't breathe properly.

I was shaking.

I couldn't sit still.

I kept pacing back and forth because my body didn't know where to put the panic.

I cried loudly.

Not pretty crying.

Real crying.

The kind where your whole body becomes painful.

At some point I threw the flashlight onto the ground and broke it.

He kept trying to explain.

"I didn't mean that."

"I wasn't talking about leaving you."

"I meant if I was at work."

"I meant if you were home alone."

I heard him.

But I wasn't listening.

That is the strange thing.

The words entered my ears, but they didn't reach me.

It wasn't that I thought he was lying.

It was that my thoughts had become louder than his voice.

Then another thought appeared.

What if he was only saying this because he didn't want to upset me?

What if he had already decided to leave?

What if he was preparing me slowly?

That became real too.

I wanted to check his phone.

Because my mind was desperately looking for proof.

Proof that he wasn't leaving.

Proof that my reality wasn't real.

He let me check.

There was nothing.

Of course there was nothing.

But it didn't help.

That is one of the hardest things to explain about borderline personality disorder.

People think reassurance always helps.

Sometimes it doesn't even get in.

Sometimes my mind builds another reality and locks me inside it.

Then the man I love is standing right there, speaking to me, touching me, trying to bring me back, and still I can't reach him.

Or maybe he can't reach me.

I don't know which one it is.

All I know is that I was gone.

Then he did something unexpected.

He pricked his finger.

Then he pricked mine.

He made a blood promise with me.

He promised that we would never leave each other.

I know some people will think that sounds ridiculous.

Maybe it does.

I don't care.

I believe in rituals.

I believe in magic.

I believe some actions carry a weight that words don't.

Words had not reached me.

Logic had not reached me.

Reassurance had not reached me.

But that did.

In that moment, the ritual was stronger than my thoughts.

It felt like it erased the reality my mind had created and made another one.

A better one.

A reality where he stayed.

A reality where I could breathe again.

A reality where the world did not end because of one sentence about an electrical switch.

That was when I believed him.

Not when he explained.

Not when he reassured me.

When he made the promise.

It felt like waking up.

Like coming back from somewhere very dark and realizing the room was still there.

He was still there.

I was still there.

This morning I understood what had happened.

I had catastrophized.

He had never been leaving me.

He had never been preparing me for anything.

He had simply been trying to teach me how to turn the electricity back on.

That's all.

Nothing around me had changed.

Only my mind had.

And honestly, even writing this now makes me feel like crying again.

I still feel that blackness open up.

If I think about him leaving, my chest still hurts.

I don't think my heart works separately from him.

Sometimes it feels like my heart only beats properly when he looks at me.

I know that sounds too much.

Maybe it is too much.

But that's how love feels inside me.

Looking back now, I also think about him.

He is autistic.

Situations like that are difficult for him too.

And somehow he stayed calm while I completely fell apart.

I don't know how he managed it.

I really don't.

But he did.

He stayed.

He handled me.

He brought me back.

And today he has been sweet to me all day, as if I didn't break a flashlight and cry for hours because of one sentence.

People often ask me what borderline personality disorder feels like.

For me, it isn't simply feeling emotions more intensely.

It's that my thoughts stop feeling like thoughts.

They become reality.

And reality is a very difficult thing to argue with.

Last night, logic didn't bring me back.

A promise did.

And somehow, for one night, that promise became stronger than the reality my mind had created.