There’s nothing quite like a kiss, a simple act of sweet yet erotic coupling, a fusion if only for a mere moment. It’s an act that is polarized by interpretation, exposing the complexity of the potential of the physical to bring into being an experience beyond the act itself; or the rejection of the aforementioned potential, an ignorance of something more in exchange for casualty. The seeming simplicity of brushing lips brings into question the very gravity that we give a physical act, either dragging us to a world in which passion means more, or removing us from a world of seriousness, where locking lips ends when two souls part. For some, the darkness of night shrouds physical acts whose meaning stops when the act itself begins. Yet, for some of us, like myself, touch ignites a flame of connection. While an albeit often one-sided intimacy that fuses us to an individual more stranger than friend, it transforms the unfamiliar seemingly into the familiar. For those of us of which the physical brings more than mere sensation, it brings greater illusion than reality, created by the confusing cadence of lips, so sweet yet so tortured by the prospect of something always existing— a sentient opportunity waiting in the arms of a stranger all too soon.Â
It all starts the same, a cycle of end-of-evening tensions, hope, and a sense of newfound connection all stemming from the simple touch and go of lips. His deep brown eyes shine and pull me, a silent beg answered by my silent desire and belief. His strong hands gently dance around my waist, intoxicating me with his dancing fingertips and a possessiveness that feels more intimate than toxic. His flannel brushes the edge of my wrist, soft and scratchy, a rugged revelation. As he leans in I inhale the scent of him, a mix of chemicals and perfumed spices, a masculine potion that I know will mark me for hours. His lips land on mine and it all seems so perfect, his passionate grip on my hips, the soothing seduction he performs on the small of my back, the lights of the trendy Denver restaurant a fluorescent flirty foody backdrop. He tastes, subtly, like Mediterranean spices, the bitterness of negroni a slight subsidiary piquancy. His lips perform a masterful delicate dance with mine, prompting me to remember the way his Spanish flowed out with a lusty liquidity over dinner, sentences of seduction. Yet, it’s not the way his lips match mine with a sense of ease that makes the depth apparent out of the physical act. It’s the way that, as he pulls back, he surveys me, leaving me as naked and stripped as I feel when I write what others cannot know in my diary. I feel hope radiating. I feel I know him as well as anything, although naivety flitters like a fairy around me. Two days later he ghosts me, and just like that the depth of an act becomes a haunting.Â
For as many kisses that I’ve experienced, there are just as many false hope-turned-illusioned interpretations of kisses themselves. Perhaps it’s because a kiss perpetuates a passion that fosters a belief in an instant strong connection the modern world proves increasingly endangered. What I often hope for in a kiss is a sense of connection that is perpetually unsatiated in modernity’s havoc-wrecking ways. My desire for connection means physical acts appear as opportunities for that connection and sustained intimacy. Thus, physical acts can never be less than what they are to me; something more exists because of my desire to settle into the substantial. It’s unsettling to consider physical intimacy removed of meaning and emotional substance, because casualty’s lack of connotation means there’s nothing more than what already is. I cannot thrust myself into the casual, for my gut instinct is to penetrate deeper and reside within, not on the surface. Separating an act from a chasmic meaning is ignoring the comfort I find in sensing physicality as sacred. Never can they be separated from the emotional complexities that foster connective growth and fundamentally sound relationships. More significantly, for me, physical acts always exist as a deed situated within mutual exclusivity and possibility. Instead, the physical is always connotated with the hope in my heart; an association of seriousness and solemnity, rather than accepting a casualty that permits me to act where instantaneousness and recklessness are revered, but a meaning to hold onto, beneath which the act’s exterior is naturally abandoned.
Yet, for all my seriousness with the physical, I often struggle to feel that it fits into the background of my life and the variety of young adult environments I eb and flow out of. Many individuals choose the path of casualty, where kisses come and go and hookups hook up and then hook off, a path where lack of meaning is presented as an enviable excitement, a thrill chased with an exceptional reward as if the instant trumps longevity. Often, I find that my natural instinct to equate physical acts with meaning demotes me from fun to the unfun, and eventually the sexual snail. Yet, in these environments where casualty is a subunit of the environment’s larger “life in the fast lane” lifestyle, for those of us who don’t care about catching up, society attempts to communicate our isolation, curating a narrative of slow and fast, bad and good. More specifically, the pressure I feel is the presence of a patriarchal permeation, making women feel worth less if less sexual, but also less so than if more, stuck in between a constant state of wrong choice syndrome. It’s as if associating the physical with something deeper means that we are unwilling to let loose, and thus we don’t exist within the sphere where speed is an unspoken, so-called need. Yet, when we do let loose we are still judged. Women will always be judged in a scrutiny that positions us within the impossible, an unattainable objective whose very essence is an ambiguity we will never be able to guess and act on. Our current actions and decisions are wrong, but the alternatives do position us differently; we are always put purposefully and found in a compromising position. Instead of consistently cherishing my ability to treat engagement in physical acts as sacred, also attached to a withheld intimacy, I’m often left wondering from these conniving outside forces if physically engaging exclusively when there is a presence of precursing substance, impedes my ability to find connection. I struggle, oscillating between fear and pride—fear that what I connect between the emotional and physical realms annihilates the connection I both yearn and search for. It’s an anxiety that permeates as I kiss and don’t kiss.Â
Still, holding onto my prerequisites for intimacy never feels like a chore, an unwavering rotting pungent pact solidified in solidarity in the years of braces and braids. While I experience a sensation of social pressure and presence that my equation of physical acts with a deeper meaning exists as an impediment— that’s who I am. I am uncomfortable with a kiss merely being a dance of two lips, an inevitable parting that I must accept. I feel myself experiencing a sense of dreadful unease when I consider the abandonment of clothes for a night with a “nobody”, nudity with nothing more. I’m a serious individual who values and thrives on more than what meets the eye. Although I recognize that for some their satiation might derive from midnight strangers and kisses that are nothing more than a lean-in and sensual pucker, I know I’m not satisfied with focusing on exalting all my most precious energy into the transient. To attach something more to an act, or to attach to someone more after an act, is not a drag nor a limitation, but a satisfying expansion. To feel the attachment that physical acts bring is the ambrosia of my heaven. I’m let into a world where the simplest moments fill and sustain me beyond any chase of the excitement of an instant. My association has built into me a gratitude that gives me sustenance to joyously pervade through the adoption of emotions felt in the most easily forgettable moments. Finding something deeper, more profound within the physical pervades past an unfulfilling gratification destined to make everyone it touches anemic. Satisfaction of the instant deprives us more than provides, and although the pressure feels paramount, I’m lucky to have the gift of advancing with belief. Still, to feel intimacy appear from the act of the physical is to attempt to get to know all people, and get closer to beauty in all sources whilst dispeling myself from the toxicity wherever it arises. I see the beauty and the madness in equal measure in all, without using judgment to achieve my insight. Still, it’s hard feeling that I’m constantly making the wrong choice when it feels so right to me. Yet, it’s crucial that whatever our physical choices are, we remember society positions us according to patriarchy, wherein we, the women, are never in the right no matter if we choose right or wrong. We are always made to appear compromising, caught in the act. We must fight against this and establish ourselves in positions of power and acceptance in deeming how we navigate our physical spheres correct, ourselves. Perhaps when I am in ignorance of the rightness, deemed on a macro-scale, of my choices, and focus on what is right in the eyes of myself, I will no longer question the choices I am empowered to engage in. While for others a kiss is just a kiss, a kiss isn’t just a kiss for me— it hints at more. Perhaps, then, a kiss simply is. We all fill in our own blank, and this is mine.