kissing: v. To touch or caress with the lips as an expression of affection, greeting, respect, or amorousness.




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Nowadays, there is no such thing as kissing. Not in the defined, meaning of life kind of way. Nobody "touches" or "caresses" their lips to another person's. It's simply not done. Again, not in the defined, this is how it has to be kind of way. There is the kissing that breaks meaning. That hovers around your head like a bee, even after you've "kissed."


It's the kind of kissing where you find yourself pushed so far up against the buttons of an elevator that you might as well get the floor numbers tattooed along your spine and shoulder blades. This is me. This is me with my Journey t-shirt and the three-quarter sleeves sticking to my arms. I'm sweating that much. This kissing is me. With the same Journey shirt's hem riding up to about mid-rib cage. My mouth is open, maybe from instinct, maybe because I wouldn't be breathing if it wasn't. (Is that still instinct?) The kind of kissing where your knees are being pushed apart and you move your own feet to help the other person out. You feel your shoelace isn't tied. That kissing is me. That kissing where you hear the ding above your head, your back hit another button. Your tongue running across somebody's else's neck. That kissing is me.


That kind of kissing is Pete.


Believe it or not, this is how I met Pete. On the elevator. Two days later, Pete calls me and says he wants to hang out. If ever anybody were to rewrite the definition of kissing, Pete would be that person. It's like watching God pretend to not care about His children. Pete doesn't care. And he never once flattered me enough to tell me he was kissing me.


The thing is, though. I kind of really like Pete.


Those two days he left me alone to think about what happened in the elevator, I had that bee swarming above my head. Like that ding and my sore back. I didn't think I'd ever see Pete again. I was certain my scribbling my phone number on the palm of his hand was a hallucination; it didn't really happen. Like kissing never happens to anybody. But I must have. Because forty eight hours later, I picked my phone up and Pete said:


"I'm starving. Other than bruising my neck, can your teeth do anything else?"


Nobody kisses anybody anymore. Lips don't meet lips, at least not all the way. Tongues don't meet. It's never romantic. It's the kind of kissing where Pete's testing out a camera from a friend. And he clicks a picture of me. In my room, at my turntable, with my headphones on. It's the kind of kissing where you've known each other more than twenty seconds and the other person knows where you like to be touched when you're "kissing." It's the kind of impromptu photo shoot where I'm standing there mixing The Beatles into something disastrous and Pete's behind me, over my shoulder, whispering things in my ear. The soundtrack to my soundtrack of his click-fire camera. It's the kind of kissing that makes you hold your breath, where lips meet that floor numbered tattooed place on your spine, halfway down your back. Where you're holding yourself up on the edge of the turntable, bending Sgt. Pepper's case.


Sitting on top of an unused washing machine in the basement of Pete's apartment building, he tells me things. Me with my lips holding more and more flavor from my Red Bull. With my heels bumping the front of the machine. Kicking the OUT OF ORDER sign. Pete would tell me all about his ex-girlfriend.


"She was a fucking slut."


"Accosting a young boy in the elevator isn't slutty?"


It's the kind of kissing where all you smell is laundry detergent and dryer sheets. Like you're in somebody else's house and my name shouldn't be Brendon. Pete's shouldn't be Pete. The corner of his mouth meets mine in the strangest of ways. I can feel his fingers tracing the stitch part of the denim on my jeans. Right around mid-thigh. (There's that, too. This is the kind of kissing where everything is met halfway. Mid-rib cage. Mid-thigh. Three-quarter sleeves. Half-lidded eyes.) The kind of kissing where you're breathing so heavily through your nose, you're practically begging for it to start bleeding with all the stale, dry air in the room. The idea of just about anybody coming in to do their laundry, your tongue tracing the other person's bottom lip. This kind of kissing is me. With my heart pounding so hard against my neck, Pete bites it in an attempt to make it stop. This kind of kissing is Pete.


Most kissing isn't to show respect. But there are the exceptions. The ones where you're standing in front of Pete's full length mirror in just a pair of jeans. Poking each protruding bone in your skeleton body. This kind of kissing is me. Me, standing there. With no expression on my face. And Pete tells me:


"There's only enough of you for one of us to stare at."


The kind of kissing that starts to sting if it doesn't happen. Because you're meeting the other person's friends and this is getting pretty official, all kissing aside. Pete's dressed. Dark denim, ironic-platonic t-shirt, jacket and hat. I'm standing there in a pair of his jeans. And he knows what to say. And what to do. He knows how to redefine the word "kissing" so that it isn't really kissing. And it's not really anything else either. The kind of kissing where all I feel all over my skin are his clothes. The cuff of his jacket on my arm, my back, my stomach. The kind of kissing where his lips claim every little part of me that they like. My stomach, my neck, my shoulders, my spine, my jaw.


Oh yeah, and even my lips. Not cutting corners of mouths. Nothing just shy of a kiss. But one of those kisses that has been dead for a long time. The kind of lip-on-lip locking that nobody even reads about anymore. He's done circling and tip-toeing around the idea of cementing in a really good kiss. Right on the lips.


"If you don't get dressed, we'll never make it to the party. Which means we'll never get to show slut-face how much better I am without her. You'll never get to hear me tell you how good you look in that jacket I got for you."


It's the kind of kissing that makes you blush. The kind that doesn't exist anymore. Not nowadays, not unless you're not looking for it.