This kiss...
Cinderella said to Snow White
"How does love get so off course
All I wanted was a white knight
With a good heart, soft touch, fast horse
Ride me off into the sunset
Baby I'm forever yours"
Faith Hill
I can still feel his arms around my legs.
They grip right above my kneecaps and with very little effort he could squeeze and bring me down. It turns out he will do it with less effort than that. There is an odd taste in my mouth, I don’t associate it with the adrenaline that was pumping through our bodies minutes ago as we ran away from First Street, a crowd of drunken cruisers behind us. I am 15 and he just turned 16. He is bleeding from a cut in his scalp and like all head wounds it looks worse than it is. His hair is wet and slick with an odd combination of hair gel, blood and sweat, all which make a smell I will never forget. He is looking up to me with fear and wonder in his eyes. I have rubbing alcohol I my hand and we both know it will indeed sting like a bitch. We are moments away from kissing for the first time, the anticipation that had hovered around us for the past weeks had hardened like some karmic Jell-O, capturing us tight and forcing us to our destiny.
We are 15 and we do not wish to surrender to anything.
For those of you who know me you know the scene, for those who don’t, don’t worry. This is my first love and boyfriend and this is the first night of romantic passion we will share. We have had a horrible night that started with racing hearts and half hidden smiles. It ended with racing hearts and barely hidden terror. We have fled to my empty house and I am attempting to clean the wound on his head. I know he is in pain but he doesn’t feel it, he wonders if I want to kiss him as bad as he wants to kiss me. I know I am in shock at seeing an open wound bleed from his scalp, but I don’t notice it as I wonder if he wants to kiss me as bad as I want to kiss him. We hover there, mere inches between our lips and the world stops spinning for a few moments as we pause before the rest of our lives.
We know that on the other side of this kiss lies so many things we aren’t ready for. Romance. Sex. Homosexuality. Responsibility. Monogamy. Honesty. And above all else, sex. We know that these things are rushing up on us fast, and though we want them so bad, we are not dumb enough to realize we might not be ready for this. We also know we can no longer live on this side of our life. We are moving past the time of skinned knees and endless nights. We are Lost Boys no longer and only happy thoughts will no longer keep us afloat. We are boys on the path to becoming men, and we are terrified what we might lose on that path.
Ironic that the answer was each other.
But that kiss, that first kiss. Our hearts going like two kettle drums, audible for miles around if you listen with the ears of our soul instead of your head. Our stomachs contained two very small Chinese acrobats that thought right NOW was the perfect time to practice their floor routine that involved lots of running and only a few thousand flips. Our palms were sweaty and our breaths held. And there was that tingle, that tingle you get when you are about to kiss someone you truly love. For two teenage boys all these symptoms are the very same as stark, white terror. And like any animal trapped, our instinct is to flee, not fight. But fight we do and in a few moments we are going to kiss, and our world will never be the same.
I carry that kiss around with me.
I have it folded neatly in my pocket, close to my heart. It is always there, ragged and slightly torn but still good, still very good. It has the taste of his skin, salty and very warm, the smell of his hair, tangy and sweet form some shampoo his mother bought. I remember the sound of the small moan that is passed from his mouth to mine, never once it touching fresh air. Like a note passed under your desk, the thrill and danger of being found out was far greater than anything written in ink. I remember every little thing about that kiss and all the things it brought with it. I carry that kiss around with me to this day. And I wonder.
I have spent a lot of time chasing things. I chased a career in the military. I chased my friends across country. I chased guys all over Houston. I chased my soul from Hawaii and back. I chased my sanity until it finally collapsed at the grave of my grandfather and very night I chase that kiss in my mind and wonder if I will ever catch it again.
I have kissed a lot of guys in my life. And wow don’t I sound the tramp with that. But its true. I once stood in a Starbucks in Montrose and kissed the guy behind me without ever knowing his name because he was so damn cute and the way he smiled could break glass it was so damn nice. I have stood in the middle of an empty dance floor and kissed the guy I had been slow dancing with, he was dipped back almost until his head touched the floor. And in fact the kiss was so heavy that we did indeed fall moments after my tongue left his mouth. I have kissed two guys once at a bar in Norfolk, one Marine and one Navy we were asked if the three of us were brothers since we all did look very alike. Our answer was to turn to each other, kiss the living shit out of the ourselves turn to them and answer, Yes. I have stood on the rooftop of a Wakaii, looked deeply into this Australian’s eyes and asked him if they had a name for the kind of romance we shared for the past two weeks in his country. When he looked at me with the most perfect crystal blue eyes and said, No we call it love too and kissed me, I felt like I was if not in Heaven at least in a reasonably priced suburb of it. I have kissed a lot of guys…but that one kiss.
All over kisses get judged against it, which I am sure you will say isn’t fair. I mean I was 15 and there was nothing to compare it to and since it was fresh and new it got by on a pass or something. You can say that I look back at that time with a longing for simpler and less complicated times. You can say I am romancing a memory until it isn’t a memory but a fable. You can say all this.
But not to my face I assure you.
That kiss was magical. That kiss was special. That kiss my friends was real. It wasn’t a kiss of lust or of future promises. It wasn’t a kiss born out of a desire of where it would lead. It wasn’t a kiss that was a pretext for something else. That kiss, was a kiss. That kiss was simply put, a kiss for kiss sake. It was the purest expression of a kiss. It was a leap of faith off a cliff that we couldn’t see the bottom of. That kiss was just pure love. And over the years I have had many a kiss, but never a kiss for just a kiss. I have kissed in passion, I have kissed in lust, I have kissed in envy and I have even kissed in furious anger, but never just to kiss. Except maybe that guy in the Starbucks but his boyfriend made WAY too much of a scene for it to be pure.
I chase that kiss around even today. I look at the image in my pocket and hold it up to the kisses I see around me, and they just don’t match. There is forethought or intent or sometimes just dull longing but never, never the intensity that my brown eyed boy brought me that night, looking up with his arms around my knees. Both of us knowing that the after this kiss, everything changed.
I don’t see many kisses like that any more. All the kisses I see are tame and safe. They are predictable and worst of all, just plain boring. I miss that kiss madly some days. I wonder if I will ever catch it. I wonder if I have to go back to the source and kiss him again. I wonder if I am imaging it and that this is all for naught. And then I look at the kiss and sigh. They don’t make kisses like that any more.
Though the guy in the Starbucks, wasn’t half bad.