The Kissing List

D
uring that year, the year after the kissing list, I kissed a lot of people on the lips, unrelated to the usual factors such as gender, familiarity, or even sexual attraction. I traded spit on the corner of Houston and Mott with my out-of-town friend Dale, even though he was several inches shorter than me. I accidentally planted one on my college roommate and my best friend and running partner, Frances, too.

“You can’t kiss me there,” Frances said, playfully socking my bicep. “With this rock, I could mess you up.” She pumped
her fist, the almond-size diamond that she’d recently received glittering grotesquely. Then she gave me a quick, flirtatious lip brush back. “Don’t tell my financier.”

I smooched a coworker in the middle of his going-away party. We’d never exchanged more than two sentences, but that afternoon, I discovered his well-moisturized lips tasted of chocolate. I got mouthy with a man named Peter, who would later become my boyfriend. He teased me relentlessly about not inviting him up that night, but it was past the witching hour, and I knew our kissing would be merely a prelude to more serious activities. I kissed countless other people, people I’ve forgotten now, they were so insignificant. The only people I didn’t kiss were those I actually wanted to: Lance and Laurie. But I’d lost Lance after that weekend in Santa Fe, and Laurie’s immune system was so delicate I donned a surgical mask whenever I visited. Sometimes kissing doesn’t count. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

T
ake what happened with Anna. She and I had narrowly avoided a friend breakup during our graduate school days at Oxford over a certain incident in which Anna had kissed someone I was kissing and more than kissing, and I had kissed someone who was kissing (and perhaps more than kissing) someone else. Back then, Anna, Dixon, Vita, and I regularly got wasted at parties, standing underneath gloomy portraits of British aristocrats and drinking three-quid bottles of Portuguese wine. Vita, whom we called the tagalong, was a junior-year-abroader who lived in my house and sweetened our friendship with
homemade pies. Dixon was my boyfriend and kissing partner, a black-haired, blue-eyed southerner whose greatest passions were arguing, college football, and antique marbles. And Anna, she was the voice of reason when Dixon got under my skin.

One evening, as we weave-walked home through the streets, I saw Dixon and Anna exchange a sideways glance and knew, as one only can after too much to drink, that there was something in the way they avoided each other’s eyes.

“Are you …?” I asked.

“What?” Vita giggled. “Yes, I freely admit it. I’m drunk.” She started doing jumping jacks in the street.

“I’m not talking to you.” I squared myself toward Dixon and Anna, but before I could ask my question, Anna opened her mouth, shook her head, clamped her mouth shut again, then spun around and zigzagged away down the sidewalk.

“Come on, Sylvie,” Dixon said. “I’m sorry, but I swear it was just a stupid dare. We missed the bus back from London and shacked up in a hotel for the night. We were so drunk though …”

For effect he said, “It wasn’t nothing, nothing at all. Just some fumbling and kissing.”

He tried to put his arm around me, which would have been a victory at another time, but I fled, leaving him standing in front of a window full of chocolate shortbread and caramel-covered oatmeal bars. I ducked into the gardens of New College, stumbled through the rosebushes, and collapsed against a brick wall that had been built in the Middle Ages to fortress the town against marauding Luddites.

“Sylvie?” Vita’s voice found me from across the quad.

“Go away!” I shouted back.

I watched in horror as a dark figure sprinted across the perfectly manicured lawn.

“Vita, stop.”

Now she was next to me, petting my back: “Oh, Sylvie, Sylvie, Sylvie, poor Sylvie.”

I shrugged her away. “Go home, Vita. You could get sent down for walking on the grass.”

“But this is an emergency,” she wailed.

“No,” I said, “it’s just a stupid thing.” I dug a ten-pound note out of my pocket. “Now go to the High Street and get a cab.”

“I can’t leave you,” she sniffled.

“You can,” I said, unwrapping her arm from my shoulder. She wore a green tweed jacket that was big enough for two of her and a silly college scarf that she’d splurged on. She favored words like
splurge
and called this outfit her “intellectual getup,” which was why, among other reasons, I felt protective of her. “I’ll get you a cab,” I said, pulling her to her feet and linking my arm through hers to keep her moving in a straight line.

A kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss. Gertrude Stein claimed she reinvented the rose through repetition. I thought about how kisses burgeoned, blossomed—dry lip pecks into moist tangled tongues, repetition into habit. A kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss. But a kiss was never just a kiss, even when it didn’t convey affection. It wasn’t that I loved Dixon; in fact, I despised him in a way that made his unfaithfulness more painful because he
gained power in our already lopsided relationship. Dixon could argue anything, including the mutually exclusive positions that, on the one hand, fidelity signified nothing about your true affection for another person, and on the other, I should want him and no one else. When I tried to point out that his argument was a bunch of shit, he assaulted me with paragraph-long explanations and tender nuzzles. I don’t want to admit it, but when Dixon wanted to kiss persuasively, wow!

I didn’t love Anna either, but she was the closest thing I had to a best friend, the person who liked big Indian meals and running the muddy river paths, who was wicked smart but modest and shared my skepticism about the other Americans on our fellowship, most notably the Harvard grads who complained about being in exile and a small clutch of ironic men who turned themselves into zombies by refusing to budge from East Coast time. As the wind blew, damping out the moon like sand thrown on a fire, I hiccupped and wiped my nose across the sleeve of my black jacket. It was getting late, and I needed comfort or at least another drink.

T
odd was at Maureen’s. He was a friend, and Maureen was an intimidating enigma. She lived in a fourth-floor turret with a fireplace that she kept stoked with stolen books; her dissertation was on the antivivisection movement, and to support the cause, she shoplifted cookbooks with glossy pictures of mouthwatering steaks and rich, oily stew. “Cows, not cuts” was her motto. She favored short dresses, patterned tights, vegan boots, and bright red lipstick. I knocked on the door.

“Sylvie.” Todd tucked a strand of honeyed hair behind his ear, looking happy to see me. His shoulder-length locks also fed my affection. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” Maureen said, drawing out the word.

They were both tipsy, but in those days we were always under the influence of something.

“Is monogamy old-fashioned?” I asked. “Does it count when you’re drunk?”

“Bastard,” Todd said, bandaging me in his arms. From the beginning, he’d opposed my dalliance with Dixon, but I wasn’t sure whether it was because he liked me, or whether it was just an alpha-male kind of thing. He kissed me, and without thinking, I kissed him back.

“Sparks are flying.” Maureen tossed a book on the fire. “I don’t like this.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” I said, suddenly mortified.

“Not technically.” She forced a smile to her face. “Whatever.”

“You said you couldn’t seriously date a carnivore,” Todd told Maureen. “How was I supposed to interpret that?”

The rhythm was less than satisfying: kiss, talk, kiss, talk.

“We should stop,” I said, though my lips contradicted my words.

Maureen suddenly leapt from the bed and kissed us both on the cheek. She reeked of gin and lime. “My blessing.”

Todd’s lips got dry. “Really?”

“Be free. Like animals,” she added.

“Really?” Todd repeated.

She exhaled wearily. I knew I was doing something I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t stop myself. Kiss, kiss. Kiss, kiss. It was like a reflex. Todd kissed me, and I kissed back. Maureen was standing on her tiptoes next to us, and we were standing in front of the fire, and I kissed Maureen once or twice, as did Todd, and she returned our kisses before screaming, “Enough!”