In honor of this Int’l Kissing Day

Dad, you don’t have to read this one.

I’ll list my top 5 kisses. In order of greatness. Criteria is wide-ranging and I will leave it somewhat mysterious, with clues only discernible, at times, to me.


1. “Crazy Erik”.

2. Holding down poor Keith M. behind the fort on the playground in 5th grade and giving him a kiss on the cheek. He was like a mini-Fonz. He wore a leather jacket. He put a comb in his back pocket. He was the epitome of cool.

3. Under the arches at college. He asked permission. Very cute.

4. Two disgruntled Renaissance cherubs.

5. How sad but I remember the date. Also sad is that it was so long ago. April 29, 1994. Best. Kiss. Ever.

Thanks, boys. Smooch.

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29 Responses to In honor of this Int’l Kissing Day

  1. Emily says:

    Only *two* cherubs? Prude.

  2. Anne says:

    I remember my best one too: November 1, 1990. My 20th birthday. That was the most excellent 24 hours ever.

  3. Big Dan says:

    I have a kiss, too, among a longer list of more pedestrian kisses, that stays with me.

    Sometimes I don’t even think that it really happened. Like it was a dream.. or like the whole half-year was a nightmare. Of course, more than a decade later, it has grown larger in my head. Details become inflated, romance added. The thing is, at the heart, it’s true.

    Just like there are certain elements from the periodic table that can only exist briefly under select circumstances, there are emotions that exist the same way.

    I was 20 years old, a patient on the bone marrow transplant unit at the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals. There were six rooms on that ward, all sealed for sterility because we would have no white blood cells for the better part of a week, then new immune defense systems for another few months. So, we only saw each other.

    A girl, I think 18 (funny how time plays with the details – never mind, though, it’s the image that matters) came onto the floor the day one patient was released and another died. She came, like me, bald already from months of treatment, skinny as a sheet of wax paper. (I jokingly told her we were so skinny we could “hanglide off Doritos.” When you’ve got late-stage cancer, you get your laughs where you can find them).

    The other 4 on our ward were older. Most had just been re-diagnosed or come out of remission and instead of risking long-term chemotherapy that might not work, decided to do the bone marrow transplant up front while they were still healthy (also funny how your re-define words like “healthy” when you have cancer) and had the best chance for survival.

    So we sort of gravitated toward each other, Sheila (yep, that was her name) and I, because of our age, I guess, and because our rooms were next door to each other. Interestingly, she said she originally had jet black hair, then did a course of treatment and it grew back blond, which broke her heart she said, but also gave her a great conversation starter. I would never see what color was planning on coming out after this treatment.

    We could only see each other maybe once a week out of our own physical weakness. However, my transplant “took” and I started moving around more.. walking to visit the other patients, especially when I heard they had a bad day. Looking back, this was the beginning of the compulsion to go to where hurting people were and do what I could – I’ve been an emergency room chaplain and ICU chaplain for a while now.

    Sheila, on the other hand, was not getting better. She grew frail and tired and non-responsive. The nurses kept asking me if I could visit from time to time when I could, so when I had that rare hour or so with some energy I’d roll my IV stand (mmm… lunch! I only took in food intravenously for 5 weeks) into her room. Usually she’d be asleep. Always on her back, her head on its side in the pillow, a few straggling strands of hair against a face that was literally white now. It had been yellow and jaundiced for a while, but this far along all the color had gone out of her life I guess, and her skin was the metaphor.

    It always makes me stop to remember that ghastly (when you were in the same sinking boat, you could call each other “ghastly”) struggle for breath, like her lungs were fighting against her. A loud inhale, as if surfacing from minutes underwater, then sinking down to the bed, then repeat.

    That day, Sheila had a bloody nose for 7 and a half hours. In the morning it started and, with no white blood cells and no healthy marrow to help produce reds, clotting was nearly impossible. (My dream kisses never used to include the word “clotting,” but there it is) She had something on the order of 4 blood transfusions that day.

    I came in (it was late May) around 7:30. Just a little light left outside, bleeding in through the wall-sized hospital room windows. I shuffled in, really. I had heard reports from Sheila’s room all day. There is a time when time is just over.. when you’re waiting for the inevitable outcome and trying to ease pain however you can. At these moments, anything is allowable… forgiveness, irrationality, anger, romance, even pulling of plugs, as the metaphor goes. It is what James Taylor indirectly refers to as “time spent out of time.”

    She had confessed the week before that she had never had a boyfriend. Certainly she had been kissed, she said, but never a boyfriend. Those are the things that hurt you when you heard them, more than negative diagnoses… sick since she was 12.. never had a boyfriend, never been to a water park, never gone to college… I mean, what the Hell was God thinking? And it meant more to the six of us.. we all had our list of “never”s, didn’t we?

    So I shuffled in. She was awake; looking back, four transfusions can give you a bit more vigor… like a sudden rush of blood to the head, only in this case a rush of blood everywhere. In Sheila’s case, “a bit more vigor” meant coherence.

    She turned her head and smiled just a little when she saw me. You cannot imagine anything more frail-looking. I think to this day that you could see the light from a flashlight through her body if you held one up to her back.

    So what the hell was I supposed to do? This is one of the too-many moments I had in my life where I learned that sometimes comfort is impossible and during those times, the best form of communication is silence.

    I just sort of shuffled to the side of the bed and stood there. There was a nurse in the room, at the foot of her bed. Later, the nurse would say she was “practicing being invisible.”

    Not knowing what else to do, I smiled as well as I could at Sheila. I took a few specks of crushed ice (BMT patients always have those white styrofoam cups with crushed ice near their beds – they are one of a hundred images that always bring the sense-memories) and leaned over her, just gently brushing her lips to moisten them. Looking back, in cancer patient terms, this is one of the most intimate, compassionate acts one human being can provide for another.

    Another hard breath.

    On a whim more than anything else, I leaned in and kissed her lips. Sometimes you do things because you don’t know what else to do. Sometimes they are even the right thing to do.

    Her lips were cold.

    Wet from the ice.

    Imagine it how you will. Lingering just a bit so that it was more than a simple peck. Not so long that it would interfere with her next breath.

    I stood and she smiled again. (Fortunately, because I was internally and, I have no doubt, visibly terrified of what her reaction would be)

    What else to do? What else to say? The nurse (nurses on BMT floors were usually like drill sergeants – Ride your stationary bike! Drink! Move!) quietly helped me back to my room. She even tucked me in (my temperature that day was over 100, but I didn’t think that was the time to bring it up).

    We are all products of our environments, of our circumstances. That was what I did with mine. I still cry to tell the story to my wife. So sue me.

    I never realized until now that I’ve never written about this. I hope it doesn’t take up too much space, Red. If so, do delete it… I’ll remember to cut and paste it somewhere.

    I saw Sheila one more time after that. She was in her room, her parents were there, and another nurse. Sheila was somewhere else, doing something else.

    Her parents remembered me from their daily visits and her father, a tall, strong man who now walked like a much smaller, much more tired man, pushed me in a wheelchair beside her. I held her hand for a moment, I think.

    She didn’t hear a word I said.

  4. Shaugh says:

    Best kiss? This must really be a girl thing. I can’t say there was any one best kiss. I know there were two “non-kisses that shoulda-been” which will haunt me forever and ever!

    One was an ex-lover who I think wanted to be together again. I didn’t chance breaking up her pending marriage even though I wanted her back more than anything.

    The other was a friend’s girlfriend who I wanted to be with so bad it frightened me – but I couldn’t betray the friendship.

    Hmm… Memories.

  5. red says:

    Shaugh: Ah yes, those might-have-beens. Those are the best kisses of all, eh?

    I think, by the way, that “best” is, in retrospect, not the “best” term for something like this. Maybe “most memorable” would be better.

  6. debbie says:

    I’m still haunted by the kiss that got away. I was in ninth grade (1974) and had a wicked crush on “L”. We were at a spanish club party at someones house and the two of us snuck out to the ravine in the backyard. I had never kissed him, or any other boy, and I was giddy with anticipation. We were 1/8th inch away from “THE KISS” when the flood lights in the backyard came on and we both took off running.. The opportunity never presented itself again, and I was to forever be denied a kiss from “L”.

  7. Shaughn says:

    Whoa.. Dan!

    I just read that story – tears in MY eyes! I think you gave a wonderful gift that day. Like rain on the desert – a lifetime in a single instant, as the Buddhists would say.

    You should write a book.

    Good to see there are still civil people in the world. I hope you live long and well, my friend.

  8. red says:

    I’m speechless.

  9. Big Dan says:

    Thank you. I think you might have missed it at first because when I hit “reply” it saved my place in the line of comments, but I didn’t finish writing it for an hour and a half so other comments got in first. Then, when I did post, it showed up in the original order, if that makes sense.

    Blogging hurts my thinker.

  10. RebeccaH says:

    I can’t really remember a best kiss, but I can sure remember the worst one I ever had. That guy could suck the air out of a ballroom. Bleh!

  11. red says:

    Rebecca : Ha! Think we might have kissed the same guy? Sounds very familiar!

  12. SarahW says:

    Sheila, great thread.
    Wish I’d had the guts to pin down a couple o’fellas I can think of….

    Dan, thanks for relating that tender and bitterweet moment…reading that was like being in another world for a short time…

    PS, I’m in Richmond, worked on that looming, brooding Campus/hospital for years. Can’t bring myself to call it by it’s new name – it will always be MCV to me.

  13. Big Dan says:

    Sarah

    I was there for two months as a patient and 2 years as an emergency room/ICU chaplain.

    WORST. PARKING. EVER.

  14. red says:

    One last thought: The best part about # 5 was that he DIDN’T ask permission. Enough said.

    Welcome – all you people from Tim Blair. :)

  15. Nancy says:

    Big Dan

    I defy anyone with a heart to read your incredibly articulate post and not cry. You described the scenes so vividly that I could see them. I’m glad that you are alright now. Keep sharing that gift for writing.

  16. MikeR says:

    Dan – Wow.
    Thanks for taking the time to not only relate your story, but to tell it so beautifully.

  17. Larry G says:

    Sarah W:

    My son has cystic fibrosis and goes to MCV for checkups. I was unaware that it is no longer called MCV. What’s its new official name?

  18. Big Dan says:

    Shucks.

    Sheila (our Sheila, not my Sheila) will tell you sometimes things have to come out when you’re a writer. It was just time and this was the right forum.

  19. Nephew says:

    When I was 17 I was living with my Aunt & Uncle. I was shy, had a complex about pimples and was very awkward with girls.

    My Aunt (my Dad’s younger sister) had a business making Wedding dresses and stuff. She had a shop, and three or four seamstresses in a big workshop out the back. Part of her success was she modelled the dresses herself in the catalogues and magazine ads.

    One of her seamstresses had a daughter who went to my school and I had been trying, very ineffectually, to get a date with her.

    One day, when she was hanging around the workshop waiting for her mom, I screwed up my courage and asked her for a date. She just laughed and said, really loudly (everyone looked up), “Go out with YOU ? No way!”. So with everyone looking at me First I went red as a beetroot, then I started to cry. At which she started to giggle.

    I ran out. Later that evening my Aunt talked to me. She hugged me, told me I was a very attractive guy and any girl with any brains would consider herself very lucky to get me.

    Then she gave me the greatest kiss I ever had. Until then I had no idea what real kiss was. Then she held my chin and said “You are the greatest kisser … just go out and kiss those girls like that and you’ll be the most popular boy in town”.

    We never talked about it again. And she was right – I was the most popular boy in town. Mind you, she bought me a bunch of really cool clothes, sent me to a good hairdresser and made my Uncle buy me an old (but very cool) convertible … But I put it all down to that kiss.

  20. Amos says:

    Jesus Christ, dan, what a story.

    Every moment of our mundain existance is danced on the fragile lip of a terrifying precipice. Most of us prefer not to look down, some of us have no choice.

  21. Headzero says:

    Dan –

    Wow.

    There is a heart tugging movie script in there – easy. Start writing. That would be the best follow up to the kiss is to get it out if not to movies to the WE network.

    Go.write.now.

  22. Chainsaw says:

    Kissing is for sissies.

  23. CW says:

    I think there’s only one on my list. I had to think hard to decide if I had a list, but there is definitely only one kiss on it. It had to have been November or December 1981.

  24. CW says:

    Dan that is some story.

  25. DeAnna says:

    I have to stop reading this blog at work!
    This is the second time this thing has caused me to cry at work.

    Amazing, A-MAZ-ING story Big Dan.

  26. Shaughn says:

    Man, there are some fantastic writers roaming about in this place! I struggle to find perfect words, both poetic and descriptive, to make my points and thoughts clear. Some of you accomplish this with such ease!

    I intend to linger amongst you for a while with the hopes that some of you might radiate a bit of that lingual brilliance and I might absorb it!

    Keep writing!

  27. SarahW says:

    Larry G, the new name is “Virginia Commonwealth University Health System” Somehow changing the name is somehow akin to being on the forefront of transplant suregery or inventing antibiotics:

    “Since 1838, the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals (MCVH) has been on the forefront of advances in healthcare, providing patients with some of the most progressive treatment and technology available. The July 2000 transition to the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System (VCUHS) was another innovation. The change allows the VCU Health System to continue providing the state-of-the-art care on which our patients have depended for more than 160 years.

    VCU began as a cut-rate junior college, so there has been some resistance to the MCV name-mangling, even though MCV has been part of VCU for many decades.

    Big Dan – parking has improved a little for patients, but I sure did collect my share of tickets during my tenure there.

  28. Big Dan says:

    Sarah,

    Good. If I ever come out of remission, they’re gonna send me back there. Part of the reason I didn’t get many visitors was the parking. Of course, the other part was that I’m insufferable.

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