Published in Issue
1 of This Elegant Chaos magazine, 2001.
by Barbara
Welton
I don't know
exactly why, but I was wanting to write something about kissing. And not kissing.
* * * * *
There I am. Seven years old, imagining that I'm kissing
Han Solo. Not Harrison Ford, the actor,
you notice - but Han Solo, the spice smuggler, the gun-slinger. And again later, ten years old, fantasising
about kissing Ace Frehley from (funnily enough) KISS. Not Paul Frehley of course.
Not the guitarist behind the makeup.
But Ace Frehley, spacedude and black-lipsticked axe-god. I didn't know for sure that there was
anything more incredible than kissing to think about. I knew, intellectually, that there was a thing called sex but
surely whatever _that_ was couldn't possibly be more tantalising than the
thought of Han Solo mistaking me for Princess Leia in a darkened garbage
compactor?
* * * * *
There I am. Seventeen years old. I can still put myself fully into that
moment, if I put my mind back. I can be
a seventeen-year-old me sitting next to Scott Jackman again. I can recall the wonder I felt when mouth
met mouth. How hot his lips felt, how
supernaturally warm the soft skin of his throat felt against my face, how...
surprising, an extra tongue in my mouth was.
If I was to choose one word for the entire experience, it would be
"warmth".
There was that time
in life - that pre-sex time of adolescence - when kissing and cuddling were a
sexual act in and of themselves. They
weren't foreplay. They weren't a means
to an end. Fulfilment came from the
meeting of mouths, not other body parts. And those kisses, in retrospect, almost seem to have been bigger
and more important kisses than practically any that have come since; for those
kisses were capable of sustaining us for days or weeks or sometimes even months
on end. In the same way that I would
later laze around in bed, luxuriating in the memories and recalled sensations
of a recent wondrous fuck, so too, back in my pre-sex days, I would take my
brain into the very guts of a perfect kiss, examining its wonder, memorising
every sensation, giving in to its all-encompassing majesty and satisfaction.
In times to come,
once the initial hurdle of sex had been dealt with, kisses would only ever seem
_that_ important again when they were the first with a new person. Particularly if there had been a protracted
course of flirtation and frustration and sexual tension preceding it. But even then, during those precious
moments, the brain was more likely screaming "Oh my god, he's kissing
me!" than "Oh my god, I'm being kissed!".
* * * * *
There I was. Back at the beginning of just getting to
know somebody better. Building a solid
friendship out of nothing more than acquaintance. And suddenly there's all that wonder and surprise again, and I
could almost convince myself I've regressed to seventeen once more. All that warmth and tantalisation, all those
senses alive and fulfilled - majesty and satisfaction. A single kiss, even six whole months after
the fact, can still find me having to close my eyes in the middle of a
television show while the memory washes over me and I can't resume regular
viewing until the sensory recall has played itself out, extracted its requisite
sighs from me in payment and leaves me feeling warm and pliant in its
wake. It's even become my favoured
sleep-seeking method of nighttime meditation.
* * * * *
There I was. Where I would never be without trouble. Being in love with someone you can't have
sucks. We all know this. And we know how much self control it takes
to not make such feelings obvious when the object of our desires is around;
when everything they do makes you sigh and everything they say sounds like an
invitation to elope and every time they look in your eyes it feels like your
soul is being fellated by angels.... I
had to kiss him with my mouth closed. Standing
there in front of so many people who knew us both, standing under the curious
gaze of a dozen pairs of inquisitive eyes, inhaling the aphrodisiac scent of
his lovely long hair, having to convey everything I would like him to know with
nothing more intense than a slightly elongated peck. Like having to mail a love letter that never got beyond "My
Dearest...".
* * * * *
There I was. Not kissing. Passionately not kissing.
Not kissing so splendidly that I'm as taken with it as with any of the
others. But what else can I say about
that, that could make anyone who wasn't there understand how not kissing
someone can feel so sweet, so concrete?
"You're a wordsmith," they say, "You should be able to
convey it". And truthfully? Yes, I could. But it will have to be years down the track, hugged between the
shiny covers of a novel. It doesn't
deserve any less.
* * * * *
Here I am. There's nothing like an extended period of
being single to get one back in touch with one's inner teenager. Approaching four years as a single person,
I'm not only finding myself more self-reliant and less compromising and,
despite the absence of regular servicing, maybe even less desperate. I'm also finding myself increasingly
satisfied with crushes and kisses. My
crushes are many and varied. A friend
asked incredulously "How can you possibly find crushes satisfying?!".
Well, that's not an easy thing to
explain, either. But it's almost as
though, in the total absence of A Love Of My Life, the love in my life is
instead shared around amongst my friends.
My friends have
become the people I want to dress up and look my best for, the people I look
forward to seeing at the end of a shitful week, the people who make me feel
warm and fuzzy and special with an email or a phone call, the people I look at
and think "How lucky am I that someone that gorgeous wants to hang around
with me??", the people from whom one hug can make me want to sing from
rooftops - and one kiss can become the stuff of months' worth of erotic fantasies.
* * * * *
I suppose I'm
trying to say "Thank you".
the end.