It was October 11, 2006, I was 42 years old and I had just come out to my family over the course of the two months just before that day. More importantly, having waited half my life to even dare dream of love, I already knew that I was more in love with the man I'd only just met than I had ever been before or since... I was "in love" far beyond anything I had ever imagined "love" could be or feel like. My heart had never felt so free or so joyous in all the years I'd been alive. And it was at that momentous time in my life that I first truly experienced the power of love and the magic of a kiss...
Although at the time I was a man in his forties, and even though I'd been married to a women for a short while in a bout of self-delusion that even now I find hard to reconcile, I had never experienced the joy of a romantic kiss - the passion of lips joined in exquisite ecstasy, but on that night, for the first time, I would.
I had fallen in love with Stephen Christopher Harris and on that night, I was invited to visit with him in his rooms at the Fisher Mansion. It was still early days in our romance, but even then, even before either of us had dared to use the word, "Love," I knew beyond any doubt that I loved him as I had never loved anyone else. And I knew that it was "the love" that I had imagined in all my secret dreams that had both comforted and tormented me in the decades of my life spent in a closet of my own making where I had fearfully watched those dreams pass away like sands in the hourglass of my life...
Although we had spent some time together in public places, that night, we talked nervously about this and that, but mostly we lingered in each others auras... In that room that night, we were connected in a way that only the greatest poets and thinkers have ever come close to describing. I remember it as a very surreal moment in my life, as we sat in his outer room with the television tuned to a rerun of an ancient "Charlie's Angels" episode. I remember how we nervously tried to make small talk to avoid just sitting there gazing into each other's eyes while drinking in the heavy elixir of bondedness that was thick in the air that night. I remember being afraid of such intense feelings for him and I tried to break the spell we were under by finally commenting on the set decoration in the program that was watching us rather than us watching it... I pointed out how the "casino" being depicted in the episode had walls made of the cheapest do-it-yourself paneling and how you could see them tremble as people walked by... I remember saying, "Who'd believe that's supposed to be Vegas, even in the 70's...?"
And as Stephen sat next to me on the love seat directly in front of the television. He looked at me and asked me if I liked to kiss. I answered honestly as I draped my arm across the back of the love seat and across his shoulders, saying, "No, I really don't like kissing very much..." But when I said that, the look on his face instantly became one of distressed dejection. And that was the moment that for the first time his desires became my commands... I looked deeply into his eyes, as I turned his chin towards me, and I said, "But I'm willing to learn to like it..." And with that, he leaned in to kiss me, but I didn't kiss him, and instead he seemed to understand the look in my eyes that said, "Not yet..." It was then that he laid his head on my chest and wrapped his arms around my waist and we sat there silently listening to a 30 year old TV show as we carefully breathed in each other's scent and basked in the magic sensation of each other's warmth and embrace for the very first time.
Finally, the program ended , it was 11:30 pm and I was afraid of what might happen if I stayed a moment longer. I knew beyond the shadow of any doubt that I was in love, but I was still unsure about him and I was still afraid of love and I also knew I could not well endure having my heart broken again so soon... And so I told him I had to go home as we both stood up facing one another. I could see in his eyes that were soft and yet piercing at the same time, that he wanted to kiss me, but he didn't. But as I pulled on my jacket, I stepped in close taking his hand as I thanked him for a lovely time of just sharing his company. And as I was holding his hand, feeling his pulse and the warm blood running through his veins, it was then that all my fears melted away...
While still holding his hand, I leaned in as we both closed our eyes and I kissed him for the first time... it wasn't a deep passionate kiss, in fact it was little more than our lips gently pressed together for the briefest moment in time. But as we opened our eyes, it was clear that we both had felt the palpable current that had just blazed between us. And though I had been kissed before by others I thought I loved, I had never felt anything like what I felt for the first time that night. By the time we'd walked downstairs and I was out the door and walking to my car, my heart was racing, I felt feverish and short of breath and though it was a frosty autumn night, beneath my shirt, I could feel beads of sweat running down the center of my chest... it unnerved me - having never experienced such an absolutely exquisite sensation as what had just happened and that had left my body still tingling. I waved to him as I drove away, and when I was a few blocks down the street, I stopped the car and just sat there at the curb on the dimly lit street, still lingering in the feeling that still had yet to subside.
As I finally regained my composure, I tried to clear my head as I drove on, but all I could think of was this man I knew I loved and that I had just kissed for the first time. And it was then that I realized why people kissed although I had never understood it or imagined it before. I had experienced my first real kiss.
Later that night, as I lay restlessly awake in my bed, I could still feel that peculiar and intoxicating sensation still electrifying every nerve in my body. I laid there thinking of him for hours, until finally I saw the first light of day peaking over the roof tops outside my bedroom windows. It would be just a few days later that I would declare my love to him for the first time. And in the course of the painfully joyful and tragically wonderful romance that followed, each of the thousand or so kisses that we shared brought back to life every sensation that marked this very first kiss... Yes, even the very last kiss on that fateful morning years later, felt like the first... And for each of those brief moments in time, when we kissed, we were one and we were whole, and I knew what love was.
I am always remembering...
"Fear Eats the Soul"
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