I have been all three of these kisses to women throughout my life. I liked being the exclamation point the best, and disliked being the question mark the most. Being a comma didn’t matter much, unless I thought I was an exclamation point, then it was a bummer. In general that is when you are hurt, when you think you are one type of punctuation, but the woman decides you are another.
I was a comma in 2002 when a woman I started to date had me in between some other guys she was dating. I could tell she was not going to stop her sentence with me.
I was a question mark many times. The thing about being a question mark is you don’t usually stay that way. The question is answered pretty quickly and you are either going to become an exclamation point, a period or a comma in short order.
And my ego would like to say I have been an exclamation point more than a few times, but I can at least say I have held that punctuation title twice, to the two women I married. Of course I turned into a very long comma to my first wife, but I was exclamation point for a while at least.
_________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who has given all 3 types in his life.
Quote by Mistinguett, 1875-1956, French singer and actress.
Take a look and listen to this, her only sound movie, from 1936.
I might be a man but I remember very well my first kiss.
I had gone to my very first dance. I was 12 years old and was going to be entering 7th grade. I went to a thing called ‘Sports Night’ at the Jr. High I was going to attend in Los Angeles. I suppose somebody somewhere was in a gym playing sports, but I was in the room with the band, the girls and the dancing. And then I saw the girl. My first over the top, heart beating fast, crazy puppy love girl. Her name was Lisa Millward and I was smitten the moment I saw her. I don’t remember how we met but I found out she was 1/2 grade ahead of me so she knew the ropes of the dances having gone before. She was my first ‘older woman’ as well as my first love.
We danced the night away and I fell in love with her in the course of those few short hours. It wouldn’t be the last time I fell in love with someone on the dance floor, but it was my first. Far too quickly it was time to go. We both went outside to wait for our parents to come pick us up. We talked for just a bit, then the moment came. She leaned in, I figured out what she was doing so I leaned in and we kissed. It was pretty unexpected on my part so I didn’t have enough time to really get nervous about it. It was just a smidgen longer than a peck but it was on the lips and that made it count. My heart was beating crazy fast, I remember that much.
Here is the kicker. My father and sister had just driven up in the car to pick me up and witnessed the whole thing. Of course, my sister made merciless fun of me, saying I was leaning in at some ridiculously awkward angle and looked completely dorky. I think my dad enjoyed the moment of his son taking that leap.
My Second Kiss
Back in those days you used the phone book to look everyone up. The listings usually just had the mom and dad’s names so I probably called every Millward in the book until I found her. We made arrangements to go bowling with a group of friends. It was a lot of fun but I was distracted the whole time because I wanted to have a real kiss with her, not in public view this time. I kept trying to think about how I could make that happen.
After bowling the two of us took a walk down to this 3 story office building at the end of the strip mall. There was an elevator that was all by itself, outside the building, connected by outdoor walkways to each floor. I decided it would be the perfect place to have a real kiss. We got in the elevator and went up. Then we went down. Then up again. Then down again. The whole time I was a nervous wreck, completely frozen in my inability to make the move. Finally, after probably about 5 trips up and down I did what any crazy in love 12 year old would do, I pulled the stop button on the elevator between floors and kissed her. It was glorious and wonderful and the highlight of my life up until that moment (and for quite a while after that).
The Aftermath
The first part of the summer was the best ever. I went to the beach or went swimming or did something else with her almost every day. We kissed a lot. But alas the fates were cruel. My father took a job 3,000 miles away in New York and before the summer was out we were gone to live in Connecticut. I pined away for her all the rest of the summer and well into the next school year. We sent love letters and I even got a Valentines letter with a big heart on the front that she had drawn with lipstick.
The letters started to dwindle off over the course of the spring, from my side as well as hers, but I still was madly in love with her. We drove across the country to visit California that next summer and I was crazy with anticipation about seeing her again. It didn’t turn out all that great. I found out my friends back in Calif had sent the Valentine’s letter as a joke to me (how I missed that it wasn’t from her I have no idea) and she really just wasn’t all that interested in me anymore. I was hurt but not terribly so. I had already started to realize this wasn’t going to be a lasting thing while back in Connecticut, having found other girls who peaked my interest in kissing.
What that relationship really taught me was how easy it was for me to fall in love with the idea of being in love! I have moderated that some over the years, but I don’t really ever want to leave it completely behind. After all, being in love is a feeling worth being in love with.
_________________
Drawing and revealing biographical sketch by Marty Coleman, who has yet to find Lisa on Facebook.
Quote by Remy de Gourmont, 1858-1915, French Symbolist poet
_________________
Trivia Question of the Day
If you were going to give a ‘nachkussen’, what sort kiss would you be giving?
Today is Day Two of How to Kiss week! You know what you can do if you don’t like it.
Kissing Ass
Way back when, in the last century, I worked at a restaurant called Eulipia in San Jose, California. I worked there for 13 years, most of those years with the same people. We were a very close crew and did some pretty funny things with each other after being together for so long.
One day a waitress/manager, who I had been working with for many years, was standing on a step stool, reaching up to turn on the stereo system for the day. I am not sure why that day I did this but I walked by and without thinking twice hugged her around the legs and kissed her jeans covered butt, which was just perfectly situated at my eye level. She turned around and screamed, ‘MARTY!’ with a bit of astonishment but also with a smile and a laugh. I looked up at her and said, “You always want me to kiss your ass, so now I have!” and walked on. We had a good laugh about it for many years after that.
Most of the time kissing ass is really not nearly that much fun. Do you have a kick ass kiss ass story, good or bad?
_________________
Drawing and revealing biographical sketch by Marty Coleman, who, after all, does have a reputation to uphold.
I am in the minority here, but one of my favorite Super Bowl ads this year was the Go Daddy commercial featuring the supermodel Bar Rafaeli and the actor Jesse Heiman (playing a computer geek) kissing. The ad pretty much has become the most hated ad of this year’s crop but I love it and here is why.
Hidden and Exposed
I love it because it exposes people’s prejudices and they don’t even know it. Here is an easy question to ask yourself if you hated the ad. Would you have hated it if it was the supermodel Bar Rafaeli kissing the model from the Calvin Klein commercial that aired around the same time? Would you have hated it if it were Ms. Rafaeli kissing Ryan Gosling? Or any other very handsome, sexy, and otherwise attractive man? I am going to take a guess that you would not have hated it. If you say you still would have hated it, then I suggest you wouldn’t have hated it nearly as much. If you say you hated it, then do you also hate watching the Bachelor kiss 10 girls per episode with hot, wet kisses?
Taboo
I know there are all sorts of ‘reasons’ people have said it was disgusting. But what I think is the number one reason is that people made an unconscious judgment while watching that ad. The judgment came because the visual image had broken a taboo, a taboo of status, beauty and class.
Without knowing it, you just knew it was wrong. Why? Because hot supermodels are not suppose to like or be attracted to dorky, overweight, nerdy and unattractive geeks, that’s why. They do not belong to the same class. They are breaking as big a taboo as almost any other one. It’s disrupts and upsets how the world is suppose to be. And when that is thrown in your face, the result is anger and disgust.
Truth
But the truth is it’s your problem, not theirs. They are actors in an ad, yes. but I will take a guess that if they had been real lovers you saw on a park bench doing that, you would have had the same reaction. And in the park or watching it on TV, It is not they that need to change, it’s you. You are the one with the unspoken prejudice, not them.
________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who kissed his first girl when he was 12 at a dance. Man, did I fall hard for her.
Quote by Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963, American poet and writer
