bisou, page 5

My first kiss, my first real kiss, came from my cousin David. David with whom even then I knew I was in love with, and even now, I am still in love with and he is in love with me. David who is always there. But he is far away now. Too far. But then… Then, as children, as we grew up…

We used to sit on the lawn under the shade of the linden tree and play the staring game. Do you know it? The objective of the game is to stare into the other person’s eyes for as long as you can without cracking up or looking away. The person who breaks first is the loser. With us, that could take hours. We would sit and stare for hours, marveling at how the color of our eyes and how they matched so exactly, and how when the sky changed or a cloud passed, that too was reflected in the dilation of our pupils.

Our irises changed from moss to leaf green to Monson slate with a rust sunburst at the center to a color so yellow it looked like honey. “Comme miel” David said. “Like honey.” His eyes too the same color. I knew that what he saw when looking at me was what I was seeing when looking at his eyes. David with his eyes like marbles. David with his gentle, endless waves. David with his soft, gently lined palms. David’s with his thin, fragile wrists and fine ankles so much like my own.

I had a tin of marbles then. I used to marvel at them in the night. I used to polish them under the covers. I used to think of David’s eyes, which were my eyes. I could win them in a game, I could win them in a game – twin marbles, I would polish them in the night; I would keep them safe.

It was early summer, I think, and we were walking alone on one of those heavy humid afternoons through the orchard, which was at the edge of the property with a narrow path that led to it, and the rest was fenced in by a winding and low wooden fence. The trees were mostly pear and apples that bloomed at different times.

“It’s too hot,” I said, flopping down under the shade of what had become ‘our’ tree – our tree because we had so often gone there to talk and seek refuge from the others, that we had claimed it. I flopped down on the grass, my summer slip riding up my legs, the cotton of it wet and sticking to my skin, my bare feet dirty and sprinkler wet. I remember David was still wearing his tennis whites from an earlier game with someone (probably his brother Martin) and how his wavy was really wavy that day and how he needed a haircut and I was hoping against hope that he would not get it cut because I really liked all those waves. I liked it messy and crazy like that.

We were lying on our sides, looking at each other’s eyes that rolled in their sockets as we spoke. I was asking David questions about what it was like being more ‘grown-up.’ – What’s it like to drive? What’s it like to have a girlfriend? What’s it like to be able to go out late? That sort of thing. I remember that much. And I remember too that I could feel his breath against my cheek – but because we always had lain close together I didn’t find it strange.

In fact, the only strange thing at all was that this time I noticed that I could feel his breath and that I could smell it as well and I liked the way it smelled – it smelled to me of white wine and grass and hay. Our hands were entwined, which wasn’t strange either – that had almost always been this case, only this time, this too felt different. I felt something in me turning over and for the first time I noticed the incredible softness of his hand, the smoothness of his palm, and I opened his fingers and began tracing circles on the center of his hand and up and down his wrist and watched as the hairs on his arm began to prick against his tan skin.

Neither of us spoke a word.

We had never not had something to speak about so this was confusing, but there it was, and there we were, in a private orchard, as the day began to end, and the bees hung overhead like a mobile sticking their proboscis deep into the flowers and we lay wordlessly holding hands, me tracing the fine etchings of his palm. Then I remember David leaning in and I wasn’t sure of what was going to happen next and I’m not sure he was either. Then all that I had waited for, that we had waited for all this time, it happened. He kissed me. That is, he-me, we kissed. I had wondered if he would ever kiss me again after that first kiss, even though it had scared me then, I remembered the feeling of his lips on mine – soft.

I had spent hours hoping that one day he would kiss me, and hours of course, hoping that maybe he wouldn’t because maybe that would be wrong and maybe that perhaps it was not such a great idea. Then I wondered what that kiss would be like. I also knew that David had thought the exact same things, not that he said them, I just knew. We always just knew. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what it was I wanted from David before that day – I knew that I loved him, and I knew that I loved him perhaps more than I should. I knew this. But what this meant, I couldn’t say. If you ask me now how to define that love, I still can’t. I can only tell you that I love him, he is my other, my best friend, a lover? no. Wrong word. He is my cousin. He is David. We are cousins. And because we love each other, and because we are in it together, then we must be in a way “in-love.” If you need some definition, this is the best I can do. Still, I don’t think that really sums it up.

Long there had been something between us that was different – or different from the way it was between say, me and Martin, or me and any of our other cousins or friends, but I couldn’t quite define it. It would be like trying to define a sigh. David and I had a relationship that defied translation and since we really felt no need to explain it to anyone, neither of us felt any particular need to define it. More, a thing only requires definition if it is known to others and therefore requires some understanding on their part, and because we are both close-lipped by necessity, then our relationship is outside the realm of definition.

I can say that it is and always has been sweet and shy. Yes, I would say there was, for lack of a better word, some “chemistry” or “thing” between us” – everyone saw that – even we saw that. It was sort of hard to not see. Stupid to deny – but I always just assumed both of us too bashful, too shy to really do anything about it. As I thought, What happens when shy meets shy? Nothing. More, how could I possibly know what to expect since I hadn’t done anything with anyone and hadn’t read any books except for a few I managed to pilfer from the library, and even those I didn’t really understand very well and none seemed to capture what I felt for David, hence inapplicable.

Now I wasn’t so sure nothing would happen. We both lay there under the tree in the grass for a while just holding hands and looking at each other, eyes locked, as if looking for some tacit sign. I squeezed his hand tight out of fear and because my heart beating so quickly I thought it would explode. I was really pretty terrified because I knew what would happen and I didn’t know what would happen and I wasn’t sure which terrified me most: that he would kiss me or that he would not kiss me.

He did kiss me.

He leaned over and gently kissed me, chastely on the lips, almost a whisper of a kiss. He stayed there a moment to see if I would start, but I didn’t. Not this time. I wanted to keep kissing. I liked his breath. I liked his mouth on mine. I wanted to gulp. Maybe I did. I don’t remember. I remember thinking that I have played this in my head a thousand times and that it was nothing like I had imagined. It was actually better. I felt the tip of his tongue just ever so gently part my lips as he offered it like Sunday Communion and I took it as such and opened my mouth a bit and accepted it as one accepts the wafer and I felt him melt on my tongue and this time, I kissed him back.

I’m not sure how it went after that. I don’t even know how I knew how to kiss, because I had never kissed anyone before, but I just did. I remember it being gentle and how he never let go of my hand and how our hands kept holding and squeezing and fingers moving and changing as the kiss changed as if our hands themselves were part of the kiss, which they were. He tasted, like his breath, of summer. I know that he stopped at one point and told me that I kissed like honey, and I knew exactly what he meant. Do you know what I mean? He meant that it was slow in coming, that when it did come, it was sweet and worth the wait, that it felt good on the tongue, that it lingered, soft, warm. I thought of how he said my eyes were like honey. Now my tongue too. Miel. This was part of our common language and now, a language of the tongue.

I know that I probably should have felt guilty or something or terrible or that I had committed some deadly sin, but I didn’t think that. I also knew that in Judaism that first cousins were allowed to marry and often did and that David was Jewish and me a quarter and didn’t that count? I knew our family wouldn’t see it that way, but then, I didn’t really plan to go back to the main house and announce this to our family did I, and I didn’t expect David too either. In truth, I felt happier than I had felt for as long as I could remember. I felt more complete somehow. It was as if I had been waiting for so long to be recognized. Don’t get me wrong. Not recognized in some way as a ‘woman’ because I knew I wasn’t a woman yet, so that wasn’t it. It was more that I knew that David and I had some understanding that transcended words and that even we lacked the words for. As I said, it was really all lacking definition. To this day, I still can’t define it. I can tell the story, but I cannot tell you what it is… I can only be a journalist and report the facts and the emotion.

It was Friday. Friday June 14th at about 1:30 when David first kissed me. By the time we started making our way back to the house it was about 4:00 p.m., which means we had been kissing for hours, and without words, we had spoken a whole new language which both of us understood. Friday, which meant that Saturday everyone would be home – nobody at work, and Sunday, even though David was Jewish, we would all be expected to attend church, and although it was totally optional, communion was part of the ritual. Would I take communion, I wondered? Yes. I would take communion. I felt no guilt at all. I felt if anything, only purer. In some way, perhaps some backward way, kissing David had absolved me, and he too, of so many things. It was something we both needed. It was good, pure, innocent, and it was necessary and I was absolutely unapologetic.

Then you, Abner. You came along, uninvited into my adult world and I fall without realizing or wanting to and not knowing whether or not anyone will catch me. In fact, I am certain that, unlike David, you will not catch me. You are not a cousin like David. You do not love me like he did, he does. You will, you may hold my hand and you do, but you will disappear out of fear. Your want is so great, my friend tells me, that I actually terrify you.

Do you realize, Abner, that for all that we have done, for all of the secrets we keep, for as much as we have shared the taste of the other’s mouth, our mouths have never once met bang-on? That is to say, for years of this affair, as it is – and it is an affair – we have never once spoken the dialect of our tongues, and I know, I know you want to – you know I want to, yet at the last minute you back out. I would never back out. I am certain and sure in this. I feel no guilt no sin. Just as with David, I see no wrong in wanting one thing for the self.

As then, we are patrolled. They seek to see us apart. We are “unnaturally close.” All of this has such a familiar ring to it. What next? What if you did let yourself go, Abner? You already offered me the pear and I bit of it from where you had bitten and I tasted you, just as I had tasted your mouth on the spoon the day before. So what if our lips meet. It scares you, doesn’t it? What scares you most (and for the record, it scares me just as much), is how good it would be. It would be Bach’s partita in G. major. No blank aria. I always thought that with David. I used to try and guess which aria it would be when we did, if we did, finally kiss. I figured it would be O Mio Babino Caro, but god no… it was lasting and more complicated and more intense than that, and this Abner, this is what scares you so.

Bisou – un Baiser (or simply baiser – to fuck, to make-love, as you well know you tell me), which page was that on? Page 4 or 5. Smack in the middle, I think. I put it right in the center. A kiss was all that was required. A kiss of reassurance. Would that have been where we would have stopped? I can’t say. All I do know is that we both had made some tacit promise (there’s that sous-silence again – the one thing, or one of the things, you reneged on and when you did, I felt my heart break for you took of something precious and tossed it aside. But you didn’t, did you? You keep those words tucked away still, un baiser being one of them.)

Why, Abner? Why do you keep this bisou, un baiser tucked away in the middle of a little home-made book? Do you keep it because one day you’ll do it? Do you tell yourself you will? Are you summoning the courage because I know you never will and I know that I cannot make that move because if I do and you push me away, we will both hate the all of this forever. We have come so far – we are already deep in it, Abner. This affair is ours – secret and hidden and we are in it.

That kiss – it hangs between us, waiting to be had. Your fear, I know, is that once you have tasted me, you will never feel that you can get enough and by contrast the rest of your life will seem so dissatisfactory and Yes, god, I understand. But you must make your peace with this as I have. Carve out what you can, as David and I did. We make our peace with the now. We made our peace with the verboten. We took in the holy host. We confessed (no matter that he was Jewish and me part Jew as I said). And funny Abner, you too are Jewish – yet you feel some need for confession. I will confess with you Abner. I will go with you and I will hold you hand.

Will you, then, do as we? Will you follow or lead to the pear tree, just as you shared in your way? Will you fall against me and offer me the host of your tongue, just the tip until I accept it like a wafer and in this kiss, I find all the absolution I need.

I wear a red-thread for you, Abner. I won’t wait forever. For now, we are in the thick. You disappoint, but I know, a friend tells me, “He is in love with you.” I didn’t see this, but I think about it and I see it.

I’m waiting for now. But that kiss. Page 5. Find what it is you need to find within yourself and make your peace with it; dispense of unnecessary guilt (a useless emotion – you have the ‘could-be dream-lover of your life-time, you told me cryptically). Your coy mistress. All of your references. You’d already slipped, to the sin of love’s false security.

It’s not false, Abner. I am here. Where are you?