Poor crippled and ugly little WIP

Heh. I wanted you to be so perfect. Instead, you're a twisted and misshapen little thing. Gimping along, dragging your damaged and malformed little self along as best you can. Oddly, you're all dressed up in your Sunday-best words, which only emphasizes your inadequate and slow moving story.

Dunno if I should try to fix you, or send you to the shredder to spare any innocent bystanders from accidentally reading you.

"Kiss me..."

I heard a Bonnie Raitt song, yesterday. I've heard it before, but this time the phrase "...and you haven't even kissed me, yet" stuck in my mind.

Something about the word "yet"...So very loaded, such implications of inevitability.

Just because I'm an etymology weirdo, there is this:

kiss (v.)
O.E. cyssan "to kiss," from P.Gmc. *kussijanan (cf. O.S. kussian, O.N. kyssa, O.Fris. kessa, Ger. küssen), from *kuss-, probably ultimately imitative of the sound. The O.E. noun was coss, which became M.E. cuss, but this yielded to kiss, from the verb.
For vowel evolution, see bury. There appears to be no common I.E. root word for "kiss," though suggestions of a common ku- sound may be found in the Gmc. root and Gk. kynein "to kiss," Hittite kuwash-anzi "they kiss," Skt. cumbati "he kisses."

Kissing seems such a weird thing to do; and the emotions a kiss evokes, all out of proportion to the mechanics of the behavior, itself. We write songs about it, we fantasize about that first kiss, we hang all kinds of expectations and conditions and idealizations around the very idea of that kiss.

I'm not talking about the other kinds of kisses: the frosting-smeared toddler kiss; the papery, little-old-lady, grandmother kiss; the soothing kiss your mother planted on your forehead when you were small, and didn't feel well. Not the kiss from your long-time lover, partner, and friend. Although those are all lovely kisses, too.

I have it on good authority that the generation just after mine indulges in make-out sessions as sort of a recreational pastime. I'm not even talking about those kisses. Although I think that's great. And I'm sort of jealous. And I think the behavior signals a fairly radical cultural change--but that's an entry for another day.

It's a kiss related to the cathartic movie-kiss, when it finally happens; when you've known throughout the whole movie that it would happen, it should happen, these people need to just kiss, for chrissakes, and all those plot complications will magically resolve so nicely...

It's also related to the off-limits kiss: The kiss from that married-or-otherwise-unavailable-friend, the one you're crazy about, but haven't let yourself wonder about kissing. The kiss that you never anticipated, because you couldn't imagine where or how it would ever happen, but then it's New Year's Eve, and you zoom in for the quick, friendly smooch, and suddenly the paradigm shifts--drops out from beneath your feet--and the kiss is over, and you're staring at each other, and someone's spouse is pissed...

I'm talking about that kiss--the kiss in your mind, when you're starting to think about what it might be like to kiss someone specific. Someone you've never kissed before. Someone who hasn't kissed you, yet.

That kiss, when you wonder about someone you know, when you imagine their lips and tongue, and you wonder if they're any good at kissing, anyway.

That kiss we write songs about. The kiss we remember, years later.

I was talking to a friend about the whole kissing thing, this morning. I said that I thought the kiss in your mind was much more powerful than the actuality. She asked me who the hell can hold out that long? "If I sense it's coming, I just go for it," she said.

She also observed that's why the first few seconds before the first kiss are so sexy.

That "kiss me" instant...