I was twenty-five the first time I kissed another man. It wasn't a playful peck or some proto-ironic beso, this was an open-mouthed salivary exchange. It was during a game of spin the bottle so it wasn't exactly arousing, but I still remember it very clearly. I had thought kissing a male mouth would feel like a cross between a garbage disposal and beef jerky. In the world of the sports-consuming, beer guzzling straight man, the concept of sexualizing another man is a revolting threat to the status quo. ESPN fans talk about women with the same fixated affection that they reserve for fine cuts of steak. The tales of their sexual exploits sound like a pre-historic hunting yarn that culminates in some blushing attempt at bravura. "Let's just say she had a good time," you might overhear from the next table at a Hooters on game day. As I was moving in for the final approach to kiss this man, I felt apprehension and a flickering revolt. "This is going to be gross," I thought.
I was in high school when I started wondering what it was that separated men and women on a chemical level. I was convinced that the molecular composition of a man's mouth had to be entirely different from that of a woman's. It seemed like an inherent certainty, but I couldn't understand how or why. I imagined doing a kissing test, taking ten mouths and pushing them through some scientifically approved glory hole and testing how accurately someone could guess the gender based on taste alone. I remember pulling out my lower lip and looking at the shiny inner edge in the bathroom mirror one day. How can this be any different from a woman's inner lip?
When I finally kissed R it was a giant anti-climax. His mouth was wet, warm, and smooth to the touch, just like anyone else's. His saliva tasted entirely neutral, almost flavorless. It wasn't putrid, nauseating, or filthy. It was just boring. My tongue swished around inside his mouth in disbelief. I thought I was missing something. I thought there must be some oral g-spot in there that releases a flood of musky pheromones. I couldn't believe there wasn't some physical trigger that made the process nauseating. Shouldn't this taste at least as bad as when my old dog would come around and slobber all over my face?
It made me think of a night a few years earlier, when I had gone skinny dipping with a few friends. After running around in the middle of the night, naked, breaking into a public pool, and baiting some hapless security guard on a wild goose chase, my friend and I tried to convince the two women we were with to kiss each other. The woman I had been seeing relented and they shared a short, closed-mouth kiss. This was just enough to draw cruel jeers from my friend and me. There should be no half-measures. We demanded a full-on lesbian exchange.
I felt bad about putting so much pressure on them. I didn't really care whether or not they kissed. I was pretty sure that watching them kiss wouldn't turn me on at all, and I didn't want to push the woman I was seeing into doing something she didn't want to do.
I've never understood the way straight men fetishize lesbianism while turning a scornful eye to man-on-man expressions of affection. When it's born of genuine attraction it just adds a layer of distance. I can't imagine there being a place for me in between two women already engaged in having sex. When it's the product of social pressure to show off, or comes from the impulse perform for the hooting hordes of Green Bay fans licking hot wings sauce from their fingers, it's even more dispiriting. It gives me the same wonderment and melancholy I got from looking at an exhibition of carnival freaks in a museum once. It's never possible to underestimate what people will put themselves through for attention and a sense of acceptance.
I used to torture my male friends with the fact that I had kissed other men before. I would needle them with it over and over again, watching their faces turn from unresponsive to antagonistic in a few quick seconds. I enjoyed the act because it was vulgar, separating the action of a kiss from its deeper purpose of attraction and expression. It was as much fun as telling a handjob joke at a black tie function. Last new year's eve I was in Texas and gave one of my friends a short little lip licking in a bar to celebrate the ball drop. I heard a woman who had been watching us say, "That was so hot." I immediately felt feminized and attractive, like some insecure nineteen year-old on a beach in front of a sea of men hooting and cheering. "If that's the reaction I get, then bombs away," I thought. All while the person I would have really wanted to kiss stood idly by with a beer in her hand, watching the show.
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