kissing

I have never thought too much about kissing. I have never kissed anyone I have not slept with. A kiss is a perfunctory thing, like unclasping your bra or flinging your socks into the corner of the room. A kiss can be a playful little nuzzle. It has never been an end in itself.

I have photographs of me kissing my friends, all of them girls, all of them beautiful as girls so often are. Soft lips, pressed against mine, but this is nothing. Someone has a camera, I say we should kiss, and we are kissing. I feel nothing. it is an ongoing project. I have these photographs which make it seem more than it is.

I have never enjoyed kissing very much. Perhaps it is because of the intimacy. My face so close to someone elses, the intimacy of this, the idea that they could see me through their lips. I kiss through the hard shell, my defensive carapace. I kiss without engaging, and yet, still I tremble when I think about the possibilities inherent in a simple kiss.

One kiss that I remember, with her. All this on camera with a film crew watching. Perhaps the crowd added to the thrill of the moment. It was a kiss for a band film clip. Apparently it is still shown occasionally, late night on Rage.

I could not stop myself from trembling. We had touched before. I had buried my head between her legs and feasted on her breasts till my back teeth ached but I had never kissed her. This most simple of acts that everyone can perform so easily. People I know have kissed just for the sake of it, open mouthed, breathless. They kiss and it is nothing. For me the kiss was more and because of this I came at her too quickly, too urgently. It was to be an open-mouthed thing, full of passion, full of want. I wanted like you might want water when it has been so long between drinks. I wanted with my mouth open to consume her. I might have eaten her, gulped her down and saved nothing for tomorrow. I wanted her with the kind of hunger that can lead to gluttony. All this, and the camera an annoyance and the director, a friend of ours yelling 'cut now, stop' and me never wanting to stop.

It wasn't what he wanted. He wanted teasing. He wanted a playful glance at the camera. He wanted this kiss to be about him and the audience and I didn't operate that way. 'stay still' he told me. 'don't move, and she will kiss you'.

I became stone. I waited and she moved towards me and I was not meant to respond. Her lips soft and fragrant with lipstick. Her breath on me and inside me and me trembling with the pain of not engaging with it.

It was our first kiss. The kiss that I remember more than any.

I am still impatient to be done with it, this chaste lip to lip, this gentle, meaningless pressing of faces one against the other. A kiss is certainly not the thing of the flesh I crave, and yet I have been thinking about kissing lately. The sweet naivety of the act. I have been feeling the idea of it as something that sweeps through my body, a flush colouring my skin. Perhaps I have underestimated the power of such a gentle nudge of flesh on flesh. I am too impatient. I must learn to kiss. I need to learn to wait and all good things will come with gentle ease. As you say, it is inevitable.