FirstKiss

“What first kiss?” Yannick Schumacher asks me, his eyes wide. I would almost have been surprised if it hadn’t been the case. With such a colorful character, you never stop being surprised—much to our delight, of course. His laughter echoes through the courtyard of the Théâtre des Capucins, where we’ve settled on the terrace. “I’ve never looked forward to kissing someone. I swear! For me, things like this only happened in movies. It was as if it were something out of my reach. I was convinced it could never happen to me.”

The buildings surrounding us were home to a Capuchin convent in the 17th and 18th centuries, but don’t go thinking he’s a saint. He prefers to compare himself, with a mocking air, to Drew Barrymore in the movie Never Been Kissed. “I see myself in that character. I wasn’t popular in high school—or anywhere else, for that matter!” Like the movie’s heroine, Yannick long suffered from the way others looked at him. “Everyone suspected I was gay and had their own comments to make. And I didn’t want to be who people thought I was. So I didn’t want to be gay. In a way, I was robbed of the chance to discover my sexuality on my own, and I suffered because of it,” he recalls.

An almost Hollywood-style kiss?!

Surely, somewhere back in his childhood, there must be a memory of a little stolen kiss?! “It was a classmate in kindergarten,” he confides, gently annoyed. “We were playing house, and I think I was just imitating what I’d seen my parents do. It didn’t mean anything.” But without even realizing it, he was already a step ahead of Drew Barrymore. And he wasn’t about to stop there. “My first love at first sight happened at the Deep, an old gay bar! I was 17.” A mix of emotion and amusement crosses his face. “I’d completely forgotten about that story, and yet I’d fallen head over heels in love,” he marvels.

“He was dancing. He was tall, he was handsome! I told myself: ‘you’ve got to take a chance’. We kissed! My heart was racing, and I had butterflies in my stomach.” And the magic happened, just like in the movies Yannick loved to watch so much. “Still, I kept asking myself: ‘What on earth does he see in me?’ I was so clueless that he really loved me that I probably missed out on a true love story. It’s something that, even today, can cross my mind. What could anyone possibly see in me? At 39, I still find myself asking that question.”