| | In a diary I kept in high school, after the first one finally happened, I started to keep a list of boys I'd kissed. (I also kept a list of concerts I'd been to that I wish I still had, but anyway) I wonder who was on it, and what happened to all those boys on that list. I remember the first, and some in the middle, but which was the last name I wrote? I wonder what happened to the list. (I imagine it sitting in a pile of notebooks at my parent's house, or rotting in a landfill, or maybe it was recycled and lives on as a toilet paper roll or something) It's funny how things change - I remember how momentous a kiss was. How giddy I'd be when I got home, opened my diary, and added a name to the list. Then I would mull it over, touching a finger to each name, my finger telling my lips, and my lips taking me back to each of those moments in time - happy when they happened, sad or indifferent when they ended. But the thrill - the thrill of that first kiss was always there, ingrained. (Time has way of distorting memory, making each moment better or worse than it was in it's own time.) I remember how important that list was to me. To document. To remember. Now here I am, ten (or more) years later. I stopped measuring relationships by kisses sometime in college, and now, being married, I have nothing to keep track of. Even the short list of people I've slept with is hazy these days. It's funny how time changes what's important to us. The things we take for granted. It's sad to lose that feeling - that thrill. (When did it go? When the list got to 5? Or 10? Or is there always that moment of sparked anticipation as lips draw together like magnets? It's been almost 5 years since my last first kiss. I guess I still feel a spark sometimes in those moments of warm breathed anticipation, faces drawn close, noses brushed against one another, but is it possible for the 3 millionth kiss to feel the same as the first?) I miss the days when a kiss was so much more. When it was everything. *** I listen to an NPR blurb about worldwide poverty and the people who live on $1 a day or less. I think about what it must cost me to operate this car I'm driving, the payment, the gas, the oil changes, the tires, maintenence. And what I ate for breakfast, how much did that cost? The $5-7 I'll drop on lunch. And the daily cost of my mortgage, electricity, cable. Clothes, cosmetics, magazines. Computers, videogames. Fucking starbucks and satellite radio. That trip to the grocery store. The shalowness and frivolity of it all, and how infrequently I think about it, let alone question it. I just... I just want shit. It's gotta cost $50 to $100 a day to support me. What would I do with only $1? And what could I be doing with the other $49? |
