Kiss and Tell

Lord, I'm good.

John from the comments, in response to some careful flattery and outright deceit, now has a blog that you can visit. He's funny. Go see him. Go on. I'll wait.

In the meantime, I'll tell you a story about John from college.

The college we went was a small, Catholic, liberal arts school in New Hampshire. It was pretty as a picture. The dorms were firetraps, but the rest of the campus was an old farm with quaint buildings. The cafeteria was in the old barn, as was the chapel (where I finally stopped going to Confession).

John and I have somewhat similar pasts. I'd even go so far as to say that of all the people (black, white, Gentile, Jew, male, female, potent, impotent) I've ever met, he is the most like me. But I think our respective histories had made us both somewhat prone to dramatic expression. Mine was more fragile and internal, while his was flamboyant and occasionally spectacular.

Case-in-point. We did Secret Santas around Christmas. I had drawn the girl who was to eventually be John's wife. Part of the Secret Santa game was to make your victim perform various humiliating acts in the week leading up to the big reveal in order to receive the final present. Not being particularly imaginative in this department, I bought a tube of hideous orange lipstick with a note telling her she must wear the lipstick for the entire evening or forego the riches in store for her. She was a good sport.

The tube of lipstick was lying on the table next to her when a tall, dark, slovenly handsome young man picked it up and wordlessly enveloped his mouth in it. His name is changed, but we'll call him Declan. And as I now recall, he kind of had a thing for facial artistry. A year later when we were in Rome, he decided to don The Crow make-up when he found out his girl had cheated on him. But in a slight miscalculation on his part, he ended up in The Crow make-up plus some bright-red lipstick. I think he accidentally threw in some John Wayne Gacy (a simple mistake that could happen to anyone).

Declan was sitting placidly next to John's now-wife, when John came bolting down. He took one look at him, promptly grabbed his face, and planted a big one right on the mouth for maybe 2 or 3 seconds longer than The Scene in The Godfather II. I don't think I saw tongue, but if I did, I know I blocked it.

Now Declan was a homeschooled lad who had at one time been fairly overweight. Before coming to college, he started running and lost a significant amount. Since he was rather good-looking, no one had any idea of his lack of experience with regards to romance. (One's prospects are limited if you are an overweight homeschooler. I know of what I speak).

He played off John's kiss rather well, but couldn't hide a small, shy smile before he arranged his features into a blasé expression. Come to find out some time later, that was his first kiss ever.