A Kiss to Build a Dream On

6/21/06

written beneath a solstice darkening sky
under the fading light, with fireflies

My favorite episode of Super Friends was when Superman walked into the Hall of Justice with a giant orange (bigger than him; must’ve been a fruit-engianting bad-guy day) and answered something Wonder Woman had just said with: “Your wish is my command!”

(Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that was my “most hopeful Super Friends moment.” Really, there must’ve been better epsiodes.)

That was as close as they ever came to what I waited and waited and wished for: the hook-up – nay, the romance, the surface-nudging love that had to blossom between those two Saturday morning super-heroes.

Then there was Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. Yes, the teenagers, but also the crawling babies. Later came Batman and Batgirl; Aquagirl and Aquaman (or maybe it was Tadpole); the Professor and Mary Ann; everyone in Archie comics (at least there I got some small satisfaction); Ned Nickerson and Nancy Drew, girl detective -- you name a show or story with lithe young males and females, and I was there, waiting and hoping. As young as age 3, I swear I yearned for romance more than anything, and it only got stronger as I grew.

The gods have a real sense of humor, let me tell you. Or maybe it’s irony.

So I searched and watched and waited and sifted through the trappings of a child’s daily media. I remember the first actual boy in my real life whom I liked and who kissed me, both: Michael Mahoney. He had brown eyes and brown hair in a bowl cut and very red lips. He kissed me on the cheek one day in kindergarten, surprising me since I knew he liked someone else (my good friend Nancy Coppola? Shut up, I was not a hussy; remember, he surprised me).

Unless Kevin Kelly kissed me first. He lived across the street. I know he gave me an engagement ring when I was 3. Saved up all his preschool money.

Sounds promising, no?

HA HA HA HA HAAA

Somewhere up there, they’re laughing their divine asses off.

And sometime around then, Brenda and Basil appeared.

I know the timing because I was in our old house, lying on the braided carpet in the family room reading the comics. 69 Candy Lane. How’s THAT for an address that’s not a themed whorehouse in lower Amsterdam?

(Is there a lower Amsterdam? It sounds good, don’t it? For the purposes of this treatise, let’s agree that there is.)

Oh yes, I remember that first panel of kissing I ever saw. I think it was even in the Courier-Express. I could swear it was a Saturday night. I stared at it, drank it in, couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was rapt. I swear I can still see it. I think I felt like I was getting this magical stolen moment. Somehow my parents did a good job of making me feel like it was wrong for me to see physical affection. I know I never wanted them to see how much my dolls made out.

This might be because whenever people were kissing on TV, my Dad acted like he thought it was awful, rolling his head around and squeezing his eyes shut and saying things like “Ew! Yuck! Ugh! Is it over yet?!”

Real funny, Dad. Ever notice that your wee daughter was the most impressionable waif ever to walk the earth? Couldn’t you hear the crushing, crippling shyness ticking away inside her little heart?

Imagine how things went after my Mom overheard, from the other end of the phone, my friend Julie and me discussing the correct name for breasts. I think it was breasts. I can’t recall saying, or hearing Julie say, anything like “vagina” or whatever might have passed for little kids’ words for it. Oh, HA HA HA, I called it a tinkly back then! HA HA HA HA HAAA

(I’d forgotten that. And of course it wasn’t the vajayjay I called a tinkly, but we all know that.)

Yes, anyway. That was fun, wasn’t it? I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody that, at least not in about 15 years. So we were in Julie’s mom’s bedroom, and Mrs. Bement was on the phone with my Mom. Julie and I were talking about what you call whatever female body part. She was two years younger than me, so I must’ve been what, 7? Cos a 4-year-old wouldn’t be talking about that stuff, would she? Julie was saying that Tara, another neighbor friend, had said It’s called this, and I was vehemently saying No it’s called that.

Later my Mom told me she’d heard the conversation and that “We don’t talk about things like that.”

Well, there you go. There’s about 6 months’ worth of therapy right there.

I have never since used a euphemism to talk about women’s body parts. (Men’s, sure; who cares? Apparently my Mom didn’t!)

Boy, where I go with these things is never where I intend.

So back to the kissing. (Did you realize that’s where we were?) My Barbie dolls were made for nothing else, IMYO. I had a couple of Kens, but better still, down the road, were Shaun Cassidy/Joe Hardy (complete with code-reading electric guitar!) and--da-da-daaa!—my 12-inch Luke Skywalker (insert lightsabre joke of your choice here, gutterbrains). Wherever Luke is now (and that’s still in the house somewhere), he’s got pink kisses all over his face (the marker had always wiped off Ken, dammit), the telltale signs of a failed secretarial seduction.

He was hot. He was irresitible to lesser dolls. But he was always faithful to Barbie.

Luke was the best because (a) he was Luke Skywalker, (b) he was Luke Skywalker, (c) his arms were very bendy and could therefore really hold her Barbitude, and (d) he was Luke Skywalker.

They kissed a LOT.

I didn’t know how sex worked then (hell, do I now?), despite having learned about, er, seeing stars at about age 2 or 3, so there was none of that. Just lots and lots and lots of kissing, and groping, and then some more kissing, and then there was also all the kissing.

[But they were in love. For life. OH, I just remembered a whole big long Tarzan-type thing I had going for them. And the tinfoil dresses I made for Barbie. Wow, I tell ya. My imagination has been so wasted.]

Like I said, one hell of a sense of humor.

Listen, this is important.

For now it has been 6 years since I was even kissed. I can barely remember what it feels like. Seriously. I don’t even get to dream about real kissing, much less anything more – if I dream about it, I’m dreaming about imagining it. I don’t even get the good dream.

Again. With the humor. Funny, guys.

Except until, oddly enough, last night. It was a guy my brain invented. I thought him not the sort of look I liked. But something that made his face not particularly attractive to me also somehow made him a good kisser.

So here I sit on the solstice night, six long years dry, desperately needing to be kissed, no idea in hell how I ever will be again. (Also wondering a little why I put it that way: be kissed, not just KISS. What are Cree’s obvious issues with meeting men? Discuss.)

Not even sure how to want it, at the same time. Pretty sure my life has rewritten itself so that I never was kissed. Never gave one. Certainly no kisses were ever exchanged.

Would someone maybe just lend me her husband for a few minutes, at least, so I might just remember? Tested and approved and guaranteed not to rust? You wouldn’t mind, would you, Del? I bet Julia would hand Billy over quicker than you can say “stomach acid.” Oooo, how about Mick; he’s Irish!

Sigh.

Oh well.

At least I’m in New York on the solstice, and at least I get fireflies.