Day 20 -- kissyface!

Day 20 – Favorite kiss

I've read my share of erotica and other scenes in various books that left me, uh, hungry. If you catch my drift.

But two kisses stand out for me from classic literature that are simply wonderful.

First is the scene from Romeo and Juliet where they first kiss.

Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?
Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo: Well, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
Romeo: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Romeo: [They kiss] Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.
Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took?
Romeo: Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.
Juliet: [they kiss again] You kiss by the book.

So wonderfully flirtatious. With its references to Christianity, it sets up their love, their passion, as being true and pure -- and as we know, doomed.

The other, and I'm probably remembering more of the movie than the book, is Rhett's initial refusal to kiss Scarlett in Gone with the Wind: "I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."

And eventually, of course, he does kiss her, their on-off passion is almost palpable, and she, spoiled brat that she is, only finally realizes how well they are matched at the very end of the book.

For a young teenager loaded with raging hormones, as I was when I first read the book and then saw the movie, it was the quintessential romance. I remember longing for someone to adore me the way he did her, to kiss me with that degree of passion and wanting.**

I happen to think that kissing is an incredible skill that can, done correctly, practically bring a person to the big O without ever touching any other part of the body. It is the most intimate and delicate of touches between people.

**I found him. Took me a long time. It was worth the wait and all the frogs I kissed looking.