Besos

I can't remember the first man I kissed.  And I'm not talking about a peck on the cheek here, but kissing with real abandoned passion.  I was a bit of a prude when I was a kid, and also unfailingly macho in outlook.  Not that I was macho in the least, but that I expected men to act like men, even when the attraction was romantic.  No, no, I'm lying; call it rather the appearance of masculinity, more than the expectation of it.  Soft hearts were for sissies.  I could be distant, cold, and aloof like my father.

Oh, how things have changed.

Nothing, aside from the earth-shattering connection when bodies are one, beats kissing.  And kissing while riding a man's dick is the ultimate mind-blowing, send-me-over-the-top, the-wave-is-crashing-down-on-me feeling.

My father, bless his heart, was a man who was seen, and almost never heard.  We didn't carry on a full-blown conversation until my mother had died when I was sixteen.  Up to that point I was essentially afraid of the fellow.  He was more a brooding presence in my life who assigned chores rather angrily, than anywhere near a conventional father - whatever that means.

And this, at least for me, is the crux of the thesis: to explode the desertification of my childhood and youth, as I yearned for affection - and couldn't find it as I wanted it to be.  An old school friend once told me that I had acted like an idiot as a kid, by turns pretentious and silly.  I replied honestly, saying I didn't really know who I was at the time.  I was a cipher - and a liar.  I knew that well enough.  I recall always being jealous of friends who knew exactly what they wanted.  I had no idea.

The only time my father ever showed me true affection (aside from being with him as he was dying) was in the aftermath of a farming accident.  I lay on the ground, stunned, semi-conscious.  I was probably about twelve years old.  All of a sudden he had picked me up into his arms and hugged me, almost squeezing the breath out of me.  It made me extremely uncomfortable, and it wasn't that I couldn't breathe, but up to that point it was the first time in my life that his face had been so close to mine.  Unnerving.

Arthur, my childhood crush and father of my best friend, was a world apart from the gravity of my father's presence.  Men were landing on the moon, so I'd have to say this was the early seventies.  One day he was leaving the house for some reason and demanded a kiss from Josh.  He grabbed his son's face in his two hands, brought it to his and with unabashed affection kissed his son ON THE LIPS.  He even made smacking sounds.  The innocence and shamelessness of it was almost obscene.  I could barely watch, in fact didn't know where to look, although I was probably blankly staring without even knowing it.  The idea of doing anything even remotely resembling what I had just witnessed was absolutely unthinkable with my father.

The Levantine warmth - that is the emotional warmth - that exists in the sunnier climes of more southern cultures is absent, starkly absent, with Nordics.

I've come to be amused by public displays of affection between anyone these days.  It wasn't so earlier.  I was once much more critical of them - and recall being made extremely uncomfortable by two drunken lesbians in my lift one Pride Day weekend.  I think they assumed me a straight man, and did their best to lock their sticky tongues together in sweaty passion.  "Let's show the bastard," I believe they were both thinking.

And that's the thing.  Kissing is an art, not a weapon, although it has been harnessed by the gay community for such purposes and that's understandable.  It creates impact when it's done between men.  But it has become overlooked in the city these days, especially downtown.  That's not a bad thing; it has become just another thing, in a very multicultural space. Le baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville - except with hairy faces.

There's a movie called The Blockhouse (1973) set during the war.  I was watching it with my dad as a kid.  He liked war movies.  A group of men has taken shelter in an underground supply depot that gets sealed off in a bombing.  It's based on a true story.  They're trapped for years.  All the food and oxygen they need, but they can't escape.  Finally their candles run out and they are plunged into total darkness.  At one point in the film two of these men meet secretly and, after some preliminaries, they kiss.  It is a very arresting scene because of course one doesn't expect sex to be part of a struggle for survival.  I think my father said, "Ohh! .." not at all expecting it.  I squirmed, inwardly.

I suppose I've come to realise that my father succeeded in making me as mute as he was.  Just keep your mouth shut, he'd tell me.  But I can't.  I just love kissing; it's the height of eroticism, and heavily featured lately in Heated Rivalry.  Kissing is the silent antidote to being silenced.

When I was older and of drinking age, my father one day driving asked me if I'd like to share a beer.  Just that, at some nameless bar.  It was as honest and naked a request for the companionship of father and son that my dad was capable of.  I said no.  I knew then, and haven't forgotten the awkward terror that such a request would have entailed.  I'd expect we'd have both been sitting there, without a word.  It was an unbearable thought to me at the time.  These days I'd move heaven and earth if given that chance again, and I'll regret saying no to the day I die.

So go out there and kiss someone. And mean it.