The Only Kiss That Matters
So much talk lately about the kiss, the intimacy of the kiss, that feeling of euphoria that comes with that kiss that is right and real, that kiss that swallows you up, starting from the curl in your toes to the hair on the back of your neck, that kiss that leaves you panting for air, that makes each part of your body quiver as you melt against him, that makes you suck his bottom lip into your mouth with the overwhelming urge to bite it.. Sometimes hard. That. That kind of kiss.
I had THAT kind of kiss for the first time with my first true love, not until sophomore year of high school. And that was the end for me. For to find a good kisser is to find yourself lost, at the mercy of another, at their seductive whims and charms like a magician with his hat and rabbit. I have also found it’s not all that common.
My first French kiss was in 7th grade. I was young. I was naïve. And I had never even pecked a boy, let alone French kiss. Quite frankly, I had no idea what the French kiss was, though I had heard about it, like an Arthurian legend, like some secret sorority hears about hazing, like some mystical experience that only then will allow you to enter “womanhood.” For without the French kiss, it was argued, you had never been truly kissed.
We stood dancing under a 7th-grade decorated gym of hideous reds and greens only middle-schoolers can concoct, around Christmas time, to a slow song like the timid children we were, out of Catholic uniform and separated by the imaginary Holy Ghost. A spunky 8th grader thought it fun to put some mistletoe above our heads and order us to do the unthinkable: French kiss in front of a gym of overly-horny tweeners, set free of the rules of everyday school desks and teachers and rows and homework and raising hands and rulers.
What could we do? So…we kissed. I thrust my tongue into his mouth and he did likewise, and we stood there, tongue-locked and embarrassed, eyes wide, transfixed on one another in horror. The sadist who held the mistletoe laughed, skipped off, and carried on as if he didn’t just initiate us into some ungodly communion. And I? I ran to the bathroom, washed off my numb tongue, which I was convinced would never feel the same, and never looked that boy in the face again until many years later at a party where we could finally laugh at the absurdity of it.
It was several years before I delved into “French-dom” again. And what a difference it makes when you feel, when you feel him in every blood vessel of your body, when it is unrehearsed and spontaneous but alive with the electricity, when being in tune with each other is as natural as breathing, when you can’t control a thing your mouth and lips are doing, when your body reacts without a care or thought but to be there in that one moment, blood coursing, pulse beating extravagantly fast, limbs and mind gone to the nothingness but emotion. The only way to describe it is the meeting of two souls in one instance.
Why settle for any other kind of kiss? That is the only kiss that matters.
I had THAT kind of kiss for the first time with my first true love, not until sophomore year of high school. And that was the end for me. For to find a good kisser is to find yourself lost, at the mercy of another, at their seductive whims and charms like a magician with his hat and rabbit. I have also found it’s not all that common.
My first French kiss was in 7th grade. I was young. I was naïve. And I had never even pecked a boy, let alone French kiss. Quite frankly, I had no idea what the French kiss was, though I had heard about it, like an Arthurian legend, like some secret sorority hears about hazing, like some mystical experience that only then will allow you to enter “womanhood.” For without the French kiss, it was argued, you had never been truly kissed.
We stood dancing under a 7th-grade decorated gym of hideous reds and greens only middle-schoolers can concoct, around Christmas time, to a slow song like the timid children we were, out of Catholic uniform and separated by the imaginary Holy Ghost. A spunky 8th grader thought it fun to put some mistletoe above our heads and order us to do the unthinkable: French kiss in front of a gym of overly-horny tweeners, set free of the rules of everyday school desks and teachers and rows and homework and raising hands and rulers.
What could we do? So…we kissed. I thrust my tongue into his mouth and he did likewise, and we stood there, tongue-locked and embarrassed, eyes wide, transfixed on one another in horror. The sadist who held the mistletoe laughed, skipped off, and carried on as if he didn’t just initiate us into some ungodly communion. And I? I ran to the bathroom, washed off my numb tongue, which I was convinced would never feel the same, and never looked that boy in the face again until many years later at a party where we could finally laugh at the absurdity of it.
It was several years before I delved into “French-dom” again. And what a difference it makes when you feel, when you feel him in every blood vessel of your body, when it is unrehearsed and spontaneous but alive with the electricity, when being in tune with each other is as natural as breathing, when you can’t control a thing your mouth and lips are doing, when your body reacts without a care or thought but to be there in that one moment, blood coursing, pulse beating extravagantly fast, limbs and mind gone to the nothingness but emotion. The only way to describe it is the meeting of two souls in one instance.
Why settle for any other kind of kiss? That is the only kiss that matters.
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