how i fell in love with a kiss in new york city
The Kiss
Zoe Speas
October 13, 2009
La Guardia Airport, NYC
When he kissed me, our noses touched gently against one another in a way I haven’t experienced before. How funny it is that we all fit together so inimitably, one complex puzzle comprising billions of unique pieces that all find a way to solve one another.
There’s nothing quite like experiencing the most intimate, exhilarating kiss of your life while surrounded by one and a half million people. Three million eyes observing as a man sweeps you into oblivion, obliterating your prior expectations of what a kiss should be. Credit must be given when briefly you are made to forget the noise of cars and pedestrians, the avenues and street numbers, because he has pulled you close unexpectedly at a crosswalk, when the light isn’t yours, and kissed you as though he had all the time in the world to explore the contours of your lips.
Thinking back on it, I’m troubled by the possibility that he might have been lonely for company and I happened to be the nearest, most convenient source of contact. But, if this were the case, how am I to understand that someone with intentions so crude and unparticular would be able to make my body respond like that? It was as if someone had compiled a list of all my previous dissatisfying encounters with men and handed it to him with the instructions, “Whatever you read here, do the EXACT opposite.”
He’s an upper lip man; he likes to be on top. He has a way of being in control-not for the purposes of controlling, but to gently ease away the stress of worrying about a next move. “Trust me,” he seems to say as he so carefully closes his teeth around my bottom lip. He maneuvers my arm over his and drapes it across his shoulder so that I can massage my fingers through his scalp; this he likes.
When I break the kiss but remain close to his face, his forehead presses against mine and his lips part, not gaping like someone searching for a mouth to suck the life out of, but relaxed and half-smiling. He has a small, carved mouth and red lips in the blustery weather: a perfect fit against mine.
For no other purpose than to be in closer contact with my skin, he reaches up and strokes the sensitive skin along my jaw and neckline. He touches and holds only particularly significant areas of my body, not groping blindly, as so many have, across my back and chest and legs. My left knee is bent, boot propped cowboy-style against the park railing behind me, and he straddles my thigh with his splayed fingers. When not resting on my neck, his other hand cups the roundness of my upper hip, just below my waist. We both don heavy pea coats, so a strange intimacy develops out of the many layers of wool and cotton that separate our bodies and the smooth skin-to-skin contact of our cold cheeks and lips.
I’m hungry, hungrier than he it seems because he kisses me so unhurriedly, even though he has less than twenty minutes before an audition and I have a bus to catch. I send out waves of urgency through the next reunion of our mouths, praying to radiate to him my overeager desire to absorb as much of him as I can before we both part indefinitely. I slide my fingers into his coat pockets and tug him against me; one of my legs has shifted so that we intertwine together, my hips pressing against his thigh. I turn my head to glance away and he dips below my ear to kiss my neck softly, as if kissing a rose petal made of thinnest sugar, which might shatter at the added pressure of a sigh.
I suddenly realize what quality of this moment has so thoroughly bewitched me: I feel delicate and prized, as if each kiss were a blessing and a tribute. He kisses me as though I were goddess-like, queenly. I’m not being taken, bitten, shoved, consumed, or ravished. My purpose is not to satisfy or to arouse. Though I respond to him as openly as I can-I so desperately want him to feel an ounce of what I am experiencing-this moment he has chosen to devote to me, because he wants me to feel my worth.
I’ll never live this down. I’ll never forget what I learned, leaning against the balustrade of a park or in the few seconds before the crosswalk light turns, even if the lesson was unwittingly given. I know the memory of his skin, of his smell, and of his touch will fade. Eventually I will forget the flutter of flaming tongues that licked across my skin when he first kissed me. But an impression has been made, and I have changed irreversibly because of him.
Zoe Speas
October 13, 2009
La Guardia Airport, NYC
When he kissed me, our noses touched gently against one another in a way I haven’t experienced before. How funny it is that we all fit together so inimitably, one complex puzzle comprising billions of unique pieces that all find a way to solve one another.
There’s nothing quite like experiencing the most intimate, exhilarating kiss of your life while surrounded by one and a half million people. Three million eyes observing as a man sweeps you into oblivion, obliterating your prior expectations of what a kiss should be. Credit must be given when briefly you are made to forget the noise of cars and pedestrians, the avenues and street numbers, because he has pulled you close unexpectedly at a crosswalk, when the light isn’t yours, and kissed you as though he had all the time in the world to explore the contours of your lips.
Thinking back on it, I’m troubled by the possibility that he might have been lonely for company and I happened to be the nearest, most convenient source of contact. But, if this were the case, how am I to understand that someone with intentions so crude and unparticular would be able to make my body respond like that? It was as if someone had compiled a list of all my previous dissatisfying encounters with men and handed it to him with the instructions, “Whatever you read here, do the EXACT opposite.”
He’s an upper lip man; he likes to be on top. He has a way of being in control-not for the purposes of controlling, but to gently ease away the stress of worrying about a next move. “Trust me,” he seems to say as he so carefully closes his teeth around my bottom lip. He maneuvers my arm over his and drapes it across his shoulder so that I can massage my fingers through his scalp; this he likes.
When I break the kiss but remain close to his face, his forehead presses against mine and his lips part, not gaping like someone searching for a mouth to suck the life out of, but relaxed and half-smiling. He has a small, carved mouth and red lips in the blustery weather: a perfect fit against mine.
For no other purpose than to be in closer contact with my skin, he reaches up and strokes the sensitive skin along my jaw and neckline. He touches and holds only particularly significant areas of my body, not groping blindly, as so many have, across my back and chest and legs. My left knee is bent, boot propped cowboy-style against the park railing behind me, and he straddles my thigh with his splayed fingers. When not resting on my neck, his other hand cups the roundness of my upper hip, just below my waist. We both don heavy pea coats, so a strange intimacy develops out of the many layers of wool and cotton that separate our bodies and the smooth skin-to-skin contact of our cold cheeks and lips.
I’m hungry, hungrier than he it seems because he kisses me so unhurriedly, even though he has less than twenty minutes before an audition and I have a bus to catch. I send out waves of urgency through the next reunion of our mouths, praying to radiate to him my overeager desire to absorb as much of him as I can before we both part indefinitely. I slide my fingers into his coat pockets and tug him against me; one of my legs has shifted so that we intertwine together, my hips pressing against his thigh. I turn my head to glance away and he dips below my ear to kiss my neck softly, as if kissing a rose petal made of thinnest sugar, which might shatter at the added pressure of a sigh.
I suddenly realize what quality of this moment has so thoroughly bewitched me: I feel delicate and prized, as if each kiss were a blessing and a tribute. He kisses me as though I were goddess-like, queenly. I’m not being taken, bitten, shoved, consumed, or ravished. My purpose is not to satisfy or to arouse. Though I respond to him as openly as I can-I so desperately want him to feel an ounce of what I am experiencing-this moment he has chosen to devote to me, because he wants me to feel my worth.
I’ll never live this down. I’ll never forget what I learned, leaning against the balustrade of a park or in the few seconds before the crosswalk light turns, even if the lesson was unwittingly given. I know the memory of his skin, of his smell, and of his touch will fade. Eventually I will forget the flutter of flaming tongues that licked across my skin when he first kissed me. But an impression has been made, and I have changed irreversibly because of him.