Someone I Wanted to Kiss But Didn’t (freewrite)

Someone I Wanted to  Kiss But Didn’t  (10-minute freewrite for Brighde Mullins)  3/12/2002

There must‘ve been someone I wanted to kiss but didn’t and I can’t think of anyone. Is it because I’ve always kissed the ones I wanted to kiss, or is it because I didn’t allow myself to dream. I’ve been living with someone for so long who doesn’t seem to like kissing so I guess I could wish to kiss him, but that doesn’t count, does it? Something memorable, like First Kiss is easier. I have imagined kissing a stranger’s lips, where they haunted me and I looked but to look was to get too close. Like getting burned in the fire. They say when the Gods kiss a woman, she dies, pfft! Consumed by flame. I learned that from The Man Who Would Be Kink. Now I would like to kiss Sean Connery’s lips but I assume we’re talking about real people. Not that Sean isn’t real, he isn’t available. I like the idea of a kiss being so hot that it consumes. Feed the flame.

Yes. Arthur. There was a man I wanted to kiss and that desire lasted for years. I never kissed him because he was happily married (ah, the guilt and secret deliciousness of  repressed desire. Arthur Dawson was a co-worker, a poet in the schools like me. He and I often went to conferences together. There was one conference in particular in southern California at Happy Valley where we shared a room and it was one of those magical times where we couldn’t stop talking to each other...I mean we downloaded lives that night. and only twin beds separating us. .

I couldn’t deal with the close proximity of it all, I was climbing the walls. literally. The next night, I had to distract myself by way of sublimation, several of us broke into the resort bar and got very loaded. Poets behind the bar, poets everywhere being bad poets. It was a scream. Hilarious. But that’s our job to be naughty. My sublimation was rowing out on the pond with a girlfriend till dawn, talking of everything under the sun—except it was the moon— we really were drunk out of our minds...that was my escape ’cause all I wanted to do was to jump Arthur’s bones.  He was safely sleeping back in the room while I was freezing my ass off on the pond with Kim but she wasn’t my type either and I certainly didn’t want to kiss her.

I never know if Arthur even sensed it but the attraction was so great that I’m sure he couldn’t help but notice.  But then again, he could have been as preoccupied as me. I knew something was up when he’s had a real Freudian slip saying that we could have a meeting at his house, instead of asking his wile Jill, he said, “I’ll KILL Jill..” There’s a long road between Tell and Kill. Right?  I said that kind of loyalty to the organization wasn’t necessary. But that’s where it all began, where I knew our connection was more than skin deep. But not only was he married, I was the older woman. I couldn’t explain it . Why I couldn’t shake the attraction. Forbidden love and all that was part of it. Yes, I was alone, and no Tryggve, my sometimes lover, didn’t exactly  do it for me. Besides, he had a girlfriend.

See, I was really on the rebound after the disastrous break-up with John Oliver Simon, I went very anorexic and all that, and had a few interesting relationships while on the rebound. Bruce Isaacson was one. See, I kissed him and all hell broke loose. I t was April Fools Day and the moon was full at Fort Mason. We were at a poet’s dance after the festival, and I had tuberoses in my hair and the moon was full and we couldn’t help ourselves. Well, I wrote him a poem and read it over the phone to him and his girlfriend found out and she sent me threatening letters and hostile phone calls...sometimes nothing on the other line. It went on for years. I think she cracked up after Bruce left her. Barbara was her name, the barbarian, and she really banked on it. Riding on Bruce’s leopard skins. I mean we were not in the same standing poetically or anything. Bruce was a suburban bad boy playing at the stud, busy kicking off the Babaarians—great new blood poets after all that Language School crap—new blood was sorely needed in the poetry scene, but  sometimes kissing is like that, it has no logic, no boundaries. It takes you out of your world, makes you risk everything. Whole kingdoms have been lost because of it. Look at Helen of Troy. I was no Helen (even if it was my mom’s middle name—there are some storys there, I tell you!)  but I didn’t fancy destroying a kingdom for a kiss.

Arthur? Well, there was always a buzz there between us. Christmas parties were always the hardest with little angels on the tree. Angel lips. See, he had these pouty Greek or Roman statue lips. Full, curved, like David’s statue. In fact his body was smooth and white as marble. He and Jill finally settled in and had a baby, and then another one after that, and that just about took care of it. After all those babies, I was no longer interested in kissing him. But sometimes I still dream of those Greek statue lips!