Kissing

There are all kinds of kissing, everyone knows that.  There's the social kiss that brushes a cheek and means, " Hi," or "Why the fuck are you here," or "Leave before I call the police," all highly context-dependent.  There's the forehead kiss for children you want to cuddle for hours but they're wiggly and want to get down, there's the slow squeeze and nuzzle for babies and their sweet talc smell before they sleep.  There's the forbidden kiss for a babysitter, who is too cute and young and you're married and she's too silly to know the middle-aged yearning behind it. 

There's grandma false teeth kissing and the First Kiss from an elementary school Valentine, and the horny, too spitty kissing around the back of the gym at the high school dance.  There's the revelatory kiss between two young women who suddenly realize that they've been wasting their time dating men until now.  There's the "practice kiss" between two "tweens", spinning fantasies and arguing about who plays the boy, neither admitting the thrill, even to themselves; there's the tired long-married kiss that serves as the thirty-second preface to tired, long-married sex.  There's the angry kiss, the get-the-fuck-out-of-here-Uncle-Leo-you-pervert kiss, the kiss with a tongue like a slug in your mouth at the first spin-the-bottle party, the muffed kiss that lands on the chin.

And then.  And then there's the kiss that lights you up like a Christmas tree, the kiss like slow honey, the kiss that bubbles like Champagne and knows to move, to come up for air, the kiss that moves the blood to one almost painful pulsing point.  There are artists of kisses, the biters of lips and Puccinis of tongues, the kisses that melt wedding vows and Rules and let hips go loose and liquid.  Mobile kisses that have soft "oh's" in the middle.  These kisses are all the sweeter, like wild blackberries or the thick tropical air, if unexpected, if served on a white plate without garnish, if not offered up with drama, simply given and yet inescapable, kisses without end. 

To these kisses and those who provide them, I say thank you.  I say, thank you for offering belief in kissing again, that simple pleasure, beyond all else, the kiss that offers hope to the lonely widow, the mother of orphans, the salt splash of the surf and open mouths and the refuge of the sand.   

Let's all kiss someone today.

Comments

[Phantom Scribbler]

I did. And gave him my cold. Ooops.