Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction (35 page)

From my mouth to yours: Number of women I’ve kissed: 6. Number of total kisses: 54,978. Excluding Lulu from the second grade: 54,977. Number of hickeys received: 37. Given: 62. Number of times my lips have bled: 33. Hers: 33. Number of goodbye/hello/goodnight kisses excluding mothers, daughters, sons, yada yada: 10,617. You are wondering how many women I’ve slept with. The answer is 3. Really, I should say two and a half. But I’ll just say 3. Three.

But I don’t want to talk about that.

Danny Joe told me that kissing was more intimate than fucking. That’s why, he told me, you weren’t supposed to kiss a whore. They don’t like it. He said this as though he really knew. I think we were twelve or thirteen years old. To be fair, he also told me to never date a woman who played the trumpet. Their lips turn funny, he said. I just nodded. Frankly, he was always talking big. Kissing has a lot to do with bravado.

 

Favorite aphorism:
Kissing a girl is like opening a jar of olives — hard to get the first one, but the rest come easy.
⁷

 

In my hometown in southeast Iowa, most of my friends’ first kisses took place during the fourth quarter of the local high school football games — under the bleachers or behind the rows of evenly parked, moonlit cars. The talk was bigger than the kisses. I think it was only kisses. But you know how boys talk.

Carolyn’s mouth was soft, April’s hard. The one was inviting, the other eager. One talked trash, the other whispered sweet nothings.

 

There is nothing wrong about a brief, affectionate goodnight kiss which will not arouse passion. Do not feel, however, that he won’t ask you out again unless you kiss him the first night or that you must repay him for the coke and hamburger he bought you. This is too high a price to pay, even if you had a large coke.
⁸

 

The third time my wife left me for good, April and I talked late into the night. She knew Jenny was gone. And I think, maybe, April was bored. We both should have known better. Because we both fell in love hard.

We were so drunk. April was the fifth.
Like this
, she said. And — god bless her — she showed me.

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is called
the kiss of life
. A drop of sealing-wax accidentally fallen beside the seal on a letter is also a
kiss
. There are chocolate kisses. Blown kisses. Air kisses. Continental kisses — which are kisses on both cheeks. A parting kiss is always singular, as in the kiss of death.
Judas came to
Jesus. And kissed him.
⁹
My father, whistling appreciatively across the green felt of a pool table — a cue-stick in hand — would say the obvious: “Nice kiss,” when one ball gently pushed another into a pocket.

 

Q:
How do I get my boyfriend to
kiss
me?

A:
Take off something you’re wearing. I mean like an earring. And toss your hair back and rub your earlobe. Describe the lovely feeling of not having pinched ears any more. Or take off your wristwatch or bracelet and rub your wrist and mention how good that feels.

Tell him his shoulders look tense…. And that it’s important to have relaxed shoulders. And to relax his shoulders he should move them in a circle — forward, then up, then back, then down. You demonstrate this, of course, because when your shoulders are back, your chest looks good.

He, of course, isn’t doing it quite right, so you can put your hands on his shoulders to show him how. Then you can tell him his shoulders are not only tense, they’re muscular.

How else physical contact?

Touch fingers when he hands you a drink. You shouldn’t be smoking, because research says you can die from it, but if you are, hold his hand when he lights your cigarette.

When you laugh at something he says, laugh from the torso as you bend over and touch his arm. Or if he’s said something serious, you can, wide-eyed, touch his arm as you say, ‘You don’t mean it!’…

Stand very close. Sit very close. (Not right against him; that’s being too obvious.) Look very intensely at him.

This is known, in popular parlance, as giving a guy the come-on.

And he nearly always does.
¹⁰

 

A kiss is just a kiss. But a kiss can also be a smack, a peck, or a buss. Kissing can be smooching, Frenching, or making-out. Kiss me, you fool. Swap slobber. Suck face. Tickle her tonsils. I’m actually quite fond of the
dancing
tongue: the tongue polka and the tongue tango. Here’s some advice: Avoid the tongue stranglers but encourage the tongue twisters. Kiss the Blarney Stone. Kiss the ground. Kiss the rod. I’ve played kiss and tell. And I’ve certainly kissed ass. If you don’t like it, kiss off. Wait. Let’s kiss and make up. Both of my children have asked me to, please, kiss it and make it better. But they’re too big for that now.

Best kiss:
It began with “Truth or Dare” and really began with “Are you going to do it or what?”

Other best kiss:
My first real kiss was with Deanne. We were alone and watching
The Muppet Show.
She must have been frustrated with me. We had been dating for months, and I hadn’t nerve enough to kiss her yet. I was seventeen, and what did I know? So she finally took matters into her own hands. She started kissing my neck. And it was good. I hardly knew what Kermit was saying. And Deanne’s lips were getting closer to my mouth….
Whoa,
I was thinking. This is
it.
And that’s when her father and mother pulled into the driveway.

Like she was shocked, Deanne shot to the other end of the couch and didn’t look at me. I remember that the credits for the end of the show were rolling up and beyond the known universe. Deanne was sulking and mad at me for some reason. I really didn’t understand why. Honest. Eventually, she stood up and left the room. I think she was crying.

I looked for her everywhere outside — under the big oak, in the hayloft, in her yellow car. I called her name. Finally, I found her in the machine shed. It was cold outside and she didn’t have a coat on like I did. I went to her, and she was crying. I touched her face, her tears, and she began kissing me. Her arms went inside my jacket. She was crawling inside of me for warmth. She was shaking and kissing me. Her cheeks were cold, but her mouth was so warm and her face so wet. She would stop and smile at me — our noses almost touching — and then we would kiss again. I don’t really recall how long we stayed in the cold. I remember that there was a dirt floor and that there were sparrows fluttering in the rafters.

 

When her lose gowne from her shoulders did fall and she me caught in her armes long and small there with all swetely did me kysse and softely said dere hert howe like you this.
¹¹

 

Worst kiss:
When Jenny left me for the last time — the real last time — we both knew it. After twelve years, this was it. Jenny left and stopped and left and stopped and came back again and again into the room. I knew what she wanted. But she had to ask first. She asked if she could kiss me goodbye.

For our honeymoon, Jenny and I went to Door County, Wisconsin. I booked a cabin on Lake Michigan for a full week. And, right off, Jenny acted as though she had made a mistake. She had made a mistake marrying me. The first night, she wouldn’t kiss me. And she wouldn’t let me kiss her either. I couldn’t hold still. So I went down to the shore where it was all new to me: the waves, the
sound
of the waves, the two black islands in the distance, several lights winking so far away. The sun was setting, nearly gone. And I didn’t know if the lights were from ships or from the other shore. I was raised amid cornfields. I had never seen so much water before. And it was cold; the wind was even and strong, going through my jacket.

 

What is a kiss? Why this, as some approve: The sure, sweet cement, glue, and lime of love.
¹²

 

Jenny must have followed me because she was suddenly there, behind me, still upset. She kept saying
I know
, softly — rubbing my shoulders with her hands.
I know. I know
. And I was lost. I had never seen anything so beautiful.

In the failing light — on the pebbled beach — my new wife wrapped her arms around my waist from behind. She put her head against the center of my back. I think she loved me then. I really do. But I don’t know why she stayed there — just holding me so I couldn’t hold her — until there was only the dark and the sounds of the waves, and there was nothing to do eventually but go on up the hill home.

It surprises me each time: a woman’s hands on my back, on my face, in my hair — encouraging me — as though this is a good thing, this kiss.

And the parting of the lips. The tilt of the head. A type of forerunning gasp as though, “Buddy, I ain’t coming up for air this time.” And those hard kisses that go from the mouth to the neck back to the mouth. Those kisses that go lightly from the mouth to the cheek to the eyes to the mouth.

Do you want me to stop
? April said.

No, I was thinking. God no.

Do you want me to stop?

This is fuzzy, because I was so drunk, but I think of it again and again — the fiercest desire I’ve ever seen. Out of the mouth. On the floor. Against the wall. God, this could have gone on forever.

But I stopped.

 

[Advice to the girl:]
Just when to stop [making out] differs among couples and individuals. In general, it’s just before the boy begins to be insistent and urgent in his caresses. Up to that point a couple are enjoying their closeness; then suddenly the boy begins to perspire, his heart quickens its beat, his breathing becomes more rapid, and his fondling gets rougher and more intimate. At that time, the responsible girl must push him away…

Or the boy, recognizing that what started as an expression of fondness now has become heightened sexual stimulation, can break the spell of the moment by rising to his feet, getting them both a drink of water, and suggesting a less intimate activity.
¹³

 

When I first started kissing April, I thought no way was this going to work. She kissed too hard. Together, we watched entire movies, the ends of which I can’t recall.

After our prom, Robin, who kissed me fourth, stayed in my car all night. I can still hear her laugh. I can still smell her perfume. She’s the only one whose perfume I remember. She filled my whole mind.

That summer, Robin and I watched movies together, ate pizza; I gave her roses, other gifts. And every night I took her home, we kissed. Lightly. Like friends.

 

We have kiss’d away Kingdoms and provinces.
¹⁴

 

Everyone said she was beautiful. But, to be honest, I never thought of her as beautiful until it hit me one day in the face. We grew up together, and that makes you blind sometimes. She was my mom’s favorite.

When she worked at Hardees — a few months later — Danny Joe would tell me she came to work with hickeys on her neck — “Big old honking things,” he said. And I wondered how I fit into the world. But I know it was my own fault. I knew it even then. If there was ever a chance with Robin, I let it get away.

Rule of life #1:
Always kiss your mother goodbye.

Rule of life #2:
Kiss often. And remember that KISS is an acronym for “Keep It Simple Stupid.”

Rule of life #3:
While kissing, keep your eyes closed. Hold your breath. Lose yourself.

 

The mouth is the most beautiful, the most sensitive, the most active organ you can reach while she’s still dressed. The kiss is probably the single most important move toward the bedroom. It’s the key! It turns her on — or off — and, since life is a lot better when you turn her on, you can hardly do too much homework in this lesson of love.