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The world is full of divas. I haven't the patience for the drama these days. Yet I wonder if I am one of them.
How do people see me? What would be the words they use to describe me?
Do I really want to know?
Yes, sometimes I do. I do wish I could live inside their heads and feel their feelings when they experience me. I worry about what I am putting out there to the universe. There is a definite chance I'm nowhere near as awesome as I wish I was. Oh yeah, there's a certain chance!
There are things playing on my lips I wish I could put out there but alas, I must off-the-record my very own mental contents, snaps, synapses, happenings and foibles. And believe me, for a communicator, it sucks to no end. I have one confessional vessel only, and he is creaking under his own burdens. I am restless to primal scream from mountaintops. Instead I squeak. I make things squeak. Squeaksqueaksqueak.
One lobotomy plz. Can I have a cosmo on the side?
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| I hate to bury things
I have to bury things
because you won't deal
you won't let me feel
and when you won't let me feel
it makes me feel
feelings I have to bury
but they won't stop surfacing
and I just don't know
if I can go
any deeper
and the dirt I'm using
shovel by meagre shovel
keeps blowing away
I add to that pile
a little every day
k.e.r. | | |
| Visitors from Austria, Iran, and France, oh my! It is only the French visitor with whom I am utterly unfamiliar and I wonder who is peeking with such baguette-buttering frequency from beneath la Tour Eiffel.
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The year is chugging along and I can hardly believe it is already October. Nearly Halloween, just about November, so close to Christmas. Time keeps on ticking. I am trying to become suspended in moments in time, floating like a snowflake in a glycerine globe. Each week, a moment. It is working to make me feel a little less distressed and a whole lot less dead.
__________
Work has gone from zero to sixty. I'm swamped but the swamping is usually temporary. I say yes to everything that comes my way and I hope to alleviate financial anxiety soon. Will that ever happen? I doubt it.
__________
Say, what's with getting old, see? And I don't mean that in the I-have-liver-spots sense, but the sense that I appear to be homing ever more into everything about my body. It's partially a garment-renting thing, but the other half is that I am paying way more attention to shit that I never even bothered with in my 20s. I guess when you're in your 20s and so omnivorous of life's buffet, what do you care about your toenails or your skin's moisture level? This is probably why so much expenso advertising is geared toward those of us over *kaf* 40. We fall for the $100 face creams, decide a $50 (or more) mani/pedi each month is worthwhile, slather on anti-oxidant loaded body lotion in a bid to soften the edges, forget the deepening lines in our collective glabella (glabellas? glabelli?), slam back a variety of vitamin supplements, read up on proper running technique or best bang-for-your-buck glute exercises. I just find it funny how much I've started to care about what (most) people don't even see.
__________
It was our 15th anniversary yesterday. I always go to type "my" anniversary, which is partly true but just sounds wrong. I think I've mentioned before that we married twice in the same year and celebrate two anniversaries. The officially wed one was Feb 12 — we had a JP in a nice historic hotel and had a small friends and family dinner at an upscale Thai joint. Then we had a church wedding with the big reception Oct 15 of the same year. My foolish head wanted so much to alleviate my beloved grandmother's anxiety over her unwed, pregnant granddaughter, that's why the first wedding happened. The second one was the one I'd envisioned for myself. Sort of. If you squinted really hard past all the things that made it so not the one I'd envisioned for myself.
Anyway, our October anniversary has become a more low-key affair over the years. No gifts (although he broke the rule and gave me a Flight of the Conchords CD), just going out someplace. We went out for some great pasta — something we so rarely eat, and then we perused Indigo, the big bookstore near home. In running into an old acquaintance there, we mentioned our anniversary. I thought our simultaneous responses to her "how long" inquiry were telling.
Him: We're on our first 15 years.
Me: We've managed not to kill each other for 15 years. 
_____________
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| That's not the translation I remember for "kiss my ass" in French, but my wee translator widget insists. I recall something like "baiser mon cou." Lord knows what that meant. It's probably a colloquialism. And I know I spelled the last word wrong. This morning's out-loud laugh? Plugged a search term for this into Google and was taken aback by some of the results. Then I realized how I'd worded my search: "French kiss my ass."  Oops.
But I digress. Actually, I didn't really egress all that well. I am here to talk about kissing. This topic came up in speaking to a girlfriend recently. She said she didn't think that guys think kissing is interesting or important. I told her she's been seeing the wrong guys. And then we got into a discussion about kissing techniques and pet peeves. We ended up in hysterics by the end of the discussion — trust me, you don't want to know why. But maybe it's close to my accidental search term up there.
To me, kissing is an incredibly important aspect of an intimate relationship. Hell, even a fling ("intimate" in this case meaning "here I am starkers."). As my rock god penned: every passion started with an act of love/ and every act of love started with a single kiss. More than anything, it's the quality of kissing that gets me into the mood. And when it's good, it's very very good, and when it's bad, it's killer. A mood-killer, that is.
Certainly some leeway has to be made for newcomers. Sometimes it's just awkward. Maybe they were never good at kissing before. Maybe they don't like it. They're nervous. Their current squeeze does it differently, or not at all. My friend observed that she would almost rather she and a potential kissee be raging drunk before they first try it because if it doesn't remove the awkwardness, at least you don't give a rat's ass if it is.
The worst, she said — and I have to agree — is when the kiss takes no form. You're expecting, in Annie Potts's inimitable Pretty in Pink voice, "strong lips." And then when your lips touch his, it's like kissing quivering jello. Insubstantial, no resistance. I once shut down any further exploration of a physical or romantic relationship and turned a man instantly into a "let's be friends" based on his kiss. He kissed like a fish. A soft, spongy, too-wet fish. I seriously wanted to laugh and cry after that kiss because I'd found him so charming, handsome, goofy and funny. He was devastated for awhile by my refusal to date him. But we are friends to this day. That was well over 20 years ago. I know I didn't give him that leeway I spoke about earlier — sometimes you just need to adjust into each other — but hey, I wasn't even 20 yet. It was what it was. I was only patient about certain things, and kissing tutorials or peck-improvement wait times were not those things.
You may have the timid, peck-smacking jello lips, but then there is the nefarious face-eater. Hello, if my cheekbones are wet, you're doing something wrong! Ugh, I just cringed remembering more than one army guy (why is it always army guys??) that tried to swab my uvula with his tongue. Is that sexy? Is that supposed to be your penile doppelganger? And the sheer amount of saliva ingested during these operations is quease-inducing! Meanwhile they've got their tongues so far down your hatch that their lips have stretched like a dilated cervix. Are they firm anymore? No! It's like having a squid loosely suctioned to your face. Hot.
Now, my friend and I both agreed: nothing wrong with tongue. But it should be like a dance. A little play in which you are both participating. A very hot play. And there should be some mix of the soft-but-firm, soap-opera-style, slightly-parted lip kissing, and a little tease of tongue now and then. A little heavier on the tongue action of course if you're aiming for horizontia. What? It is too a word.
What about the rules of labial engagement? What? You didn't know that the lips on your face are technically termed labia? Get your mind out of the gutter. So what we've got so far, more or less, is decisive, firm-yet-yielding, and involved in the dance. And of course, trying to fit together and match rhythms. Sometimes you just find that partner that it's like breathing with. That's the absolute best. No thinking involved, no disappointment. I have had some really great kissers in my life. And when you're a really great kisser, it's possible to get me to do almost anything, and transport me almost anywhere. It's like a power, guys! But -- the really great kissers are outnumbered by the just-OK ones, and the utterly appalling types. 
So where were we? Oh yes... other rules. We just goofily started reeling off our list as we drove, shouting them out.
"No coffee breath! Coffee breath is like ass!"
"No bad breath period! Brush your teeth! Chew gum! Eat a mint! But not a chalky mint!"
"No smoking!"
"No chapped lips!"
"No bits of that white shit in the corners of your mouth!"
"No visible nose hairs!"
"None of that thick saliva that strings up when he talks. I will not kiss that man!"
"No eye crusties!"
"Close your damn eyes, are you a fish?"
"If you're eating garlic or onion, make him do it too!"
So most of this pretty much translates into being well groomed, cognizant and just considerate. Is that so hard? And hey, I'm not saying that women are always good at kissing. I would only know about me. I rock at it. But you don't do it alone, and so hats off to all those who participated in such a worthwhile moment.
Iona: Does he have... strong lips?
Andie: How can you tell?
Iona: Did you feel it in your knees?
Andie: I felt it everywhere.
Iona: Strong lips.
[laughs]
Iona: I know I'm old enough to be his mother, but when the Duck laid that kiss on me last night, I swear my thighs just went up in flames! He must practice on melons or something.
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Things that made me cringe-laugh this morning:
#1: Got a concert call from Atlantic City at home last night when I was out on the town. So it was left as a voice mail. So much Rick Springfield crammed into my phone that it nearly exploded till I put it on speaker, then sat drinking morning coffee and rocking out. Cat wandered into the room, a guitar note screamed out of the phone, and the cat leaped 3 feet. Awesome.
#2: Looking at Facebook this morning, I see my daughter's status update from 11 hours ago. It says "Oh. Mah. GAWD." I am briefly horrified counting back the hours, wondering if that's when the rollicking sex was underway behind our closed door. 
You know if I'm using smilies in my blogs, I've just about hit rock bottom, right?
So what else? I continue to treat my world like it's made of pipe cleaners. Instead of thinking "I am so sick of..." I have decided to tackle each of those things with a solution. Just because the way something is around here is the way we've always done it, or fallen into doing it, doesn't mean it's right or good. Facing the 16 billionth Friday night with a 90% chance of pizza, a void of time in which everybody does their thing and I feel completely lost like a little atom buzzing around waiting for the time (usually about 10:30 p.m. for fucksake) when we sit down, open up some wine, and watch a couple episodes of True Blood or Entourage or a movie, I thought: FUCK NO. I informed the spousal unit he was taking me out for dinner and that was that. A couple of blueberry lagers and some decent food, things were OK till I got pissed off that he was watching one of the too-many TVs hanging from the ceiling. What do I need to do to get some goddamn attention and appreciation?
I'd tell you what I do, but then I'd have to kill you. 
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