My relationship with the Hollywood kiss has progressed through three distinct stages: Development, Disappointment, and Enlightenment.
Development. I had just reached that point, somewhere in my mid-teen years, where my interest in on-screen romance went from bland ignorance to cautious curiosity. Boy meets girl. Girl gets into trouble. Boy saves girl. Girl rewards boy with kiss (ok, ok, nowadays it’s more – boy meets girl, boy gets girl into trouble, girl gets herself (and the boy) out of trouble, girl uses boy for some quick and dirty sex, and then turns out to be a psychotic murderer in the requisite plot-twist). I watched the on-screen kisses with a mixture of awe and nervousness. They were a lot to live up to. This was how kisses were done. Every kiss must be like that. Right?
Disappointment. Wrong – so wrong. From my late teens to early adulthood, kissing never even came close to what I had seen in the movies. It was either too fast, too slow, or too wet – too little or too much. Noses bumped. Teeth clanked. The first woman (I was sixteen, she was thirty) I ever kissed tasted like the butt-end of a used cigarette (she must have had a three-pack a day habit). It was like kissing an ash-tray. This was kissing? The only people who kissed like what I saw in the movies were the actors and actresses making them. Under the guidance of a director. With perfect lighting. And breath mints.
Enlightenment. I was twenty-two the first time it happened. I actually thought, ‘So this is it.’. It started tentative – a small bite, teeth grazing her lower lip. Her lips parting for me, her hands tightening along my sides, pulling me a bit closer. She tasted like vanilla and peppermint. We were moving in synch, her tongue brushing mine almost shyly as we found each other; the kiss deepened, became harder, more forceful, the natural progression as we wanted more and more and…a pause, a shuddering breath as we found ourselves practically clinging to each other.
So what is the moral of all this? Not all kisses are Hollywood kisses. I don’t even want them all to be. The thing about Hollywood kisses isn’t their caliber – some of the best kisses I’ve ever shared were sloppy and frenzied, or slow and so subtle they were almost imagined. Hollywood kisses are just those kisses where all the pieces seem to fall together. They surprise you. They have magic.
Class dismissed. Except for you – the pretty brunette in the back. I need you to stay after for some more practice. Because practice makes…well, in this case, broken hearts, Jerry Springer shows, and sometimes, just sometimes, the perfect kiss.