Kissing

Leta liked kissing. She liked it a lot. She also liked the feel of a man near her, next to her. And when she had a few drinks in her, she liked both all the more. Her first husband Ralph was not so affectionate, nor did he like kissing. And, well, he had severe halitosis, which made her also avoid the experience with him.

Yet she still wanted it.

Perhaps, she thought during occasional moments when her current life seemed slow and uneventful, if he had been more affectionate, even if he had liked a kiss here or there, their marriage might have been happier, might have lasted, might have just been more pleasant.

But she had nothing to complain about, not in the least. Having met and subsequently married Albert had been the best decision she made in her life. He, at least, liked to be close to her. Instead of planting himself in a special easy chair, he would sit right beside her on the davenport, his body connecting to hers. Sometimes she could feel his touch, but sometimes not, until one of them shifted, and then the physical contact reasserted itself, and she felt a wave of happiness.

As for kissing, Al seemed to feel as she did. He kissed her first thing in the morning right on the lips, when he left for work, upon his return home, and before they went to sleep on those nights they didn’t make love. He kissed her when the supper they ate together was particularly tasty, which was about five days a week. He kissed her when she finished making him a new shirt. (While he could have purchased his shirts from the local shop, he loved that she made him his very own.) He kissed her good-by and hello any time they were out in public and temporarily parted. One of her friends called them the “kissingest couple she had ever known,” and Leta liked that moniker. She and Ralph were barely noticed, even among their own circle of friends.

And she had always liked to be noticed.

The best part of kissing Albert was how free and public it was. There was none of that puritanical, and in her opinion, false sense of decorum that proclaimed affection between two adults that loved each other was crude or wrong. Their physicality and their frequent reminders of the joy they felt together was healthy and natural.

The first time they kissed Leta recognized that the feelings she had were the right feelings of a woman for a man, that up until then everything had been artificial and stiff. Al’s lips were full and soft. When they met hers, they connected like two pieces of a puzzle that belonged together. With Ralph, she had felt that their touch was always forced, sometimes pressed so hard it hurt. But with Al, all was smooth and easy.

Al had also introduced her to what was called the “French kiss.” While she never would have admitted it to Ralph, Leta had kissed quite a few others before they married—nine that she could count off-hand. While their names had faded with time, the impressions each incident created still lingered. The boy with the strawberry-flavored breath, the boy with the soft hands, the boy who kept his eyes open and so on. Although she had experienced roving hands, she had not, at least until Albert, had another boy include his tongue in a kiss.

What a thrill! It was as if she had been kissing wrong all along and had just learned how to do it the proper way. Of course, the quick kisses she frequently shared with her husband lacked that kind of fervor, and that was fine as long as when they were embracing or in a state of arousal the full kisses occurred.

Albert’s kisses and affection and her two beloved children with her were all Leta needed, she realized, to live the happy life she had always wanted.