Kiss and Tell

Faces mere inches apart. Something incredible is about to happen.

For that moment, the cars honking in angry bellows, people scurrying in haste to their daily routines, even the wind so ethereal and certain has somehow been turned on mute. Nothing within earshot makes a peep. Every thing and every one freezes in time.

For that moment, it’s just about me and him. Nothing else.

He leans forward, erasing the distance between us until we’re breathing the same air. This moment has been anticipated for a time, the scene played out in my mind even nights before it occurs. It’s entirely new yet peculiarly familiar. This is really happening, I shout giddily in my head as the rest of the world disappears.

An ache in my bones seizes over during those crucial seconds. This is it, it tells me --- as our lips touch for the first time.

Right then, I knew...

It might not be all that incredible after all.


***

First kisses are the most honest.

I have been dating for half of my life, and during that time, I’ve had my share of first kisses. Some magical. Some lousy. Some from princes. And some from frogs. From experience, I can now tell a lot about how a relationship is going to turn out from that kiss alone.

I kiss and tell.

A kiss that comes naturally, like you know what the other wants without even saying a word, is just surreal. The kiss is so in sync that you wonder why you haven’t been kissing eons ago. This kind of kiss does not come very often. In fact, I believe I’ve only experienced this twice in this lifetime. And the relationships which followed those kisses, although they ended, were the ones I valued the most. They were the ones which made me feel so alive. They touched my life in ways the others couldn’t.

The others weren’t bad kissers, so to say. They were uh, an interesting bunch. They were the ones who kept their mouth sealed shut, as if swapping saliva would be the death of them. While others, the polar opposite, would open their mouths so wide, I’d be afraid they’d swallow me whole. They were the ones who had breath so rank I’d have to breathe through my mouth praying I wouldn’t die from the germs inhabiting in their traps. The ones who think massaging my every molar and my tonsils with their tongues is sexy. The ones who drool and foam at the mouth like rabid dogs... I could go on but I won't.

Well, every time, I tell myself, I’m not one to judge a person by their kiss so I stick around thinking it can’t be that bad. But it usually is. Fix the kiss, save the relationship? Our preferences, values, priorities don't mix. Even when I already know that, the stubborn brat that I am would insist on staying because of my stupid notion that I can fix things even if it's quite obvious that we are beyond repairable. From experience, I guess when kisses are wacked, so is the relationship.

Time and heartache, I could've saved a lot of, if only this came to me much earlier. But oh well. When it’s just not there, it’s just not there.

Bad kisses. Good kisses.

I do look forward to that incredible moment when time freezes over, when the rest of the world disappears --- to when my next first kiss happens.

I'm sure I'll run into a lot of bad ones. When that happens, if he doesn't want to take smooching lessons or even take the mints I've offered, I may move to Zimbabwe, join a pretend-nunnery, fake my own death, or all of the above. I just ain't staying.

For this time around, I won’t settle for just any kiss. This time, I'll only stick around when it's GOOD.

And that's when something incredible happens.

Goat In The Act

How did I ever learn how to write, I've been asked a few times. It was a question I never could answer. I can't even say I write well. I always assumed every one who went to school knew how to write. Or maybe how one grew up had something to do with it. And where.

I have lived most of my life in a village where frogs hiding in tall grass stalks would routinely croak everytime in chorus after a rainfall, as if chanting for more rain to fill up their muddy puddles. Our streets, which had only experienced the solid feel of concrete just a few years back, had always been just bumpy dirt roads. The kind of road that could mercilessly puncture your wheels if you drove over 10kph, and the kind that left you covered in reddish brown soil dust. Farm animals would be seen loitering along the streets, probably discussing who's unfortunate neck is next to get axed.

Yes, I am the provincial girl, the one who grew up complaining most of her life, asking why we had to live so far away from civilization. Well, not really civilization. Just city life, that is. I hated that we lived so far away from good drainage. I was tired of riding on makeshift-rafts every morning just to get out of the village during the months of June, July, and August. The village bathes neck-deep in reddish brown water. We become water world when it rains.

It would've been bearable if only I was connected to the rest of the world, via telephone, cable television, internet, etc. But no. Our area lives in a different time zone. Advancements get to us years delayed. We had a party line on our landlines until the late nineties, when the rest of the world have already moved on to cellphones. I only discovered around the millenium that you can watch movies all day long on tv. And only last year, that it doesn't take as long as a meal and a shower to access my email.

Yet living provincial has its perks I've also discovered. A few months ago, my dad who is always chatty with complete strangers comes in and says our next door neighbor has a goat tied up in a tree on the grassy lot where he usually parks his car. (My dad parks outside because age has made it hard for him to manuever cars thru our gate.) Every day I would pass by the goat as i go in and out of our house. I practically saw it grow from being just a little kid. It wasn't the kind of animal which pulled at my interest for far too long. The goat just stood there every day crapping, chomping on grass, and crapping some more. Weeks go by, I soon forgot about it as the grass on that empty lot grew taller.

One night I came home famished and pregnant. Our cook wasn't much of a cook so I was prepared for food which tasted more like cardboard than food. But much to my surprise, dinner was some sort of spicy beef stew which I remarkably loved! It was GOOD! I asked the cook how she managed to concoct something that tasty. She answers, "Uh ate, uwi ni sir yan kanina." I finished the stew until there was nothing left but bones, then went on looking for my dad. I wanted to know which restaurant he got it from since I was crazy about spicy food since I got pregnant.

Well, I didn't know what to feel when I finally got the answer from my dad. Turns out, my dad wasn't just hard at getting the cars thru our gate but he also had trouble parking. He accidentally ran over the goat. He knocked on our neighbor's door to admit his blunder. Being a man of PR, lets him charm his way around people. After hours of chatting, he left their house as new found friends. And they even sent my dad home with newly cooked stew.

So here in the boondoks, your food is prepared fresh. :) Yum roadkill.

Which reminds me of another story...

When women meet, girl talk and gossip would most likely come up. Not this strange news my sister wanted to share with me and my mom one afternoon last week. My sister asks us if we have seen the news this morning. My mom and I pause in silence, a cue for my sister to continue with her story. She goes, in a province an hour away from here, a man was arrested for killing a goat. Me and my mom laughed thinking that my sister was about to say the punchline to a joke. It wasn't a joke. Apparently, the man was found that early morning porking his next door neighbor's goat. And killing it in the process. What is it with neighbors and their goats. Before I had the chance to comment dryly that it must have been a wild night, my mom beams and says, "Goat (caught) in the act sya." Cute mo, mom.

I guess to fight the quiet and the monotony of rural life, no matter how trivial, strange or stupid, we live on stories.

I can't say that I write well. Just that I got stories to tell.



MEEEEEH...

Pillow Talk

It's 3 am and I lie wide-eyed. Someone has placed a pea under the mattress to plague this princess with sleeplessness. I look over absently to the opposite half of my bed.



Two pillows rest on that side. They have acquired residency on the right side of my bed for months now. I don't use those pillows. I already have one for resting my head on. Another for embracing through the lonely nights with. And a pillow on both sides of my body for my bad aching back to lean on. Those two pillows just occupy the right half of the bed, as if a real person was resting on it.



It occurs to me that it's been awhile since I've slept in the middle. It's been awhile since I felt I had the entire bed all to myself. I guess by force of habit, I've stayed on the left, always wrapped in a cocoon of blanket because it happens to be the coldest part of the room. Not that I like the cold that much. Just that I let the two extra pillows that I share the bed with, have their own space on the right. They're not there for decorative purposes. They're just there, unused for months.



Recently I've been inching my way back to the middle of the bed. Each night I'm that much closer to the middle but not quite. And in time, I'll know what to do with the two pillows on the right half of the bed. For now, I'll leave them be. For it's half past 3, I should try to sleep first, on my side of the bed.