Scintilla#13, Day 11

1. Write about an experience you had that was so strange or incredible, it sounds like it could have been made up.

I am sure I've told the story of how Tony and I met somewhere in these posts, and I can find references to that magical day, but not the whole thing. Here's the snapshot version;

I'd recently moved to the Bay Area after leaving a 27-year marriage and was living alone for the first time in my adult life. New job, new life, little apartment in Pacifica looking out on my beloved ocean.

A work colleague had talked about how much fun she was having meeting people through Yahoo personals, then a fairly new way to connect. Practically on the eve of my 50th birthday, I decided to try it and put out an ad mentioning a variety of authors, saying "If you know these, we might have something in common."

Got several responses and spent the next week e-mailing back and forth with a couple of them. Met one guy the day after Thanksgiving at a museum in Golden Gate Park -- the day was gorgeous and sunny -- the guy was nice enough but clearly not a match. We parted ways after spending a couple of hours in the museum.

Back home, I checked email: A note from a guy I'd been corresponding with, had already established that we both lived in Pacifica and that he knew most of my authors, but this time he told me where he lived (three blocks) and his phone number, saying he'd love to get together for a coffee.

I didn't dither long -- it was too pretty a day. Called him. "I live three blocks from you. Want to go for a walk on the beach?" I asked. He said yes. "Meet me at the stairs in 20 minutes."

He did. I did. We walked. Talked. Kissed. Talked more. Came back up the stairs five hours later, in the dark, giggling the whole way.

And we haven't been apart since.

Now is that a fairy-tale ending or what!

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.