Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

You never know when, how or why 'it' appears. The 'experts' will talk about puberty, adolescence, maturity. But you will still be confused. You want someone to explain to you how 'it' got there. And why it's ranging your body, making you feel... so awkward towards this girl/boy that until yesterday you hated. You want exegeses, but at the same time you want 'it' to materialise. Ardently. Touch, press, join, you collect words, you play with them. You crave union. You want 'it'. If only to find out what 'it' tastes like.

The love kiss. Once we succumb to its might, are we ever the same?

No.


It lies dormant for many years, this kiss, this rebel, this harbinger of bliss and misery. It finds shelter in your relatively cool interior until it's time to come out and hunt and feed.

The love kiss. The process. The eyes, pleadingly searching for a sign, any sign. Will it be a yes or a no? The palpitations. The pulse racing. The date in the park, after school. The song in your head: 'espera a un muchacho de secundaria/en casa no dejan que vea a nadie' (waits for a secondary school boy/back home she's not allowed to see anyone). And now here he/she comes. And you both laugh, and relax. And laugh and relax. And laugh. And relax. And you look in each other's eyes. And you know, everybody knows, even the Martians know. The pincers come out, the heads will tilt (clumsily at first, and you both giggle). And then, the exploration, you two in your own world, guided only by Christopher Columbus. Have we arrived yet? Is this the route to India? No, but who cares, there's only one ship, one crew, you're it. You are the love kiss. Lips first, rubbing, seeking. Eyes. Are they open? Are they closed? Can your remember? Does anyone give two hoots? Let's go back to the lips. Fleshy folds which you clumsily press against your human replica. The abracadabra that will make the drawbridge fall down. And then you enter the castle.

Fellow male bloggers will agree or disagree with me vehemently on the following assertion. Probably cyber-shoes will be hurled at this transgressor for stating the bleeding obvious: from the minute we enter the kissing game we (men), most of us, I hasten to add, are playing catch-up. We focus more on the prize at the end of the contest and not the journey there. We think more of the forbidden fruit and less of the time it takes for it to ripen. 'Wordplay is the best foreplay', someone famous said once and in those wise words the term 'kiss' should be inserted somewhere conspicuosly.

But catching up we do and depending on how open-minded with and willing to learn from our other half we are, the results are all the more enjoyable: 'A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh/The fundamental things apply/As time goes by '. Note the word 'fundamental'. Bergman's Ilsa fell for Bogart's Rick not just because he was handsome but also because the guy could kiss.

For Klimt it wasn't just the act of kissing but the before and after, the liberation of the id. Look at the couple's contours: they dissolve. Can you sit there at your computer and tell me that you have never ever dissolved as a result of a kiss? That you have never melted utterly to the point of liquidness, only to be scooped up, rushed to hospital and put in a freezer until you recover your solid form again? It happened to me. And reader, I married her.

I can't end this post today without acknowledging one of the most romantic songs ever written about the love kiss. In the space of three stanzas - plus a refrain - the Spanish singer songwriter Victor Manuel describes the beauty and contretemps, the desire and wrath caused by this act. There's a nostalgic undertone in 'A Dónde Irán los Besos' (Where Will Kisses Go?) in lines such as this one: 'A dónde irán los besos que guardamos, que no damos/donde se va ese abrazo si no llegas nunca a darlo' (Where will our ungiven kisses go/What about that hug if your answer's also no). Have you ever wondered if the love kiss you were meant to give, fell into a big void and it went

down

down

down

until it was rescued by your new lover? And then you probably sang: 'te vi, te vi, te vi/yo no buscaba a nadie y te vi' (I saw you, you, you/ I was not looking for anyone and yet I saw you)

Copyright 2010



Next Post: 'The Trouble with Islam' by Irshad Manji (Review), to be published on Tuesday 16th February at 11:59pm (GMT)