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Now, dear reader, you may be thinking: this is rather perplexing! Did the author not, in his prologue, recently espouse a desire to find #6 as soon as possible? Certainly, upon being granted the opportunity, would he not, therefore, be happy with this turn of events? Would not his purpose be consummated? And, less than four hours after arriving that is rather laudable, wouldn’t you say? Shouldn’t there be cake and ice cream and candles and soft songs of victory and a few cleverly crafted paragraphs describing the encounter and the post-kiss victory dance? Why in the world would he be questioning the very nature of the act he was destined to perform?

And these are valid questions. You are right to ask them. You see: this is the problem with writing a prologue to a book that has not been written; with writing the introduction to a trip that has not yet happened. And: it is the problem with trying to be someone who I am not. I cannot run around kissing people. That is just not me. I kiss someone because I am in love — that is as simple as it has ever been. I don’t know why I thought I could just go around from campsite to campsite looking for some tongue because it would never happen. I had found #6 and I had fallen for #6 and all at the same time and all at the beginning of our adventure. What I didn’t realize then was that kissing someone on a trip such as this amounted to waiting the first sixteen years of your life to get your driver’s license and then moving into a tree house in Tanzania with a group of displaced Pandas from New York.

But I digress. This is, after all, about a trip that Ben and I took and, I suppose, about a kiss. So it should be made clear that I had my kiss and that Ben and I had our trip.

It started June 19th, Sunday. Ben and I rendezvoused at his father’s house, we collected his belongings, he got a kiss from his girlfriend (I did not — though I wouldn’t have complained had one been offered), we brought his stuff back to my place and spread it out on my floor and then we went to sleep.

My first entry in our audio log is as follows (and this is the ACTUAL GOD’S HONEST TRUTH, you can hear it yourself, if you like):

DAMON: It is Monday, June 20th the day before our departure. About 6:15a. I woke up at six o’clock wide awake and ready to pack. We currently have way too much stuff and by “way too much stuff” I mean: barely enough to survive. Which is still unacceptable. We plan to pare it down to a mere eight or ten ounces if possible. Today: do a little bike ride, do a little packing — it’s a good thing Ben and I are usually on the same page with packing: we both don’t want to bring anything whatsoever. And every time one of us — one or the other — wants to bring something that the other is not necessarily keen on bringing we give each other this very hurt, disturbed, emotionally wrought look that says: “you know what: you can bring it only if it means so much to you that you can cause me this much pain.”

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