What do you get when you kiss a guy?
SINGLES by Karenina Yaptinchay
Manila Standard, p. B24, 5 April 2001

Does he love me? I want to know. How can I tell if he loves me so?…It's in his kiss. - Ally McBeal soundtrack

For some reason, I recently found myself so fixated about kisses. I really don't know why. Maybe because I haven't kissed or been kissed by someone or for a very, very long time. But I bet it's that old Dawson's Creek tape I stumbled upon and which I had been playing in my car over and over again for the past couple of weeks.

"Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight. Lead me on the moonlit floor. Lift your open hand and strike the band and make the fireflies dance. Silver moons are sparkling. So kiss me," goes the song by Sixpence None The Richer.

I found myself singing the song in my head, so hypnotized and obsessed that during a decent conversation with my crush one time, I had this strange urge to kiss him on the cheek. Now that would probably shut him up for two seconds. It was not the perfect moment, but I really got curious about how he would react if I kissed him. Because this just all in my mind, I cracked all of a sudden, leaving him to wonder what was so funny about what he said but probably realized later that I was either intoxicated or just goofing around again.

What is in a kiss? "It's just a kiss," some people say. Harmless. No biggie. When I asked a very liberated friend of mine how many people she has kissed in her life, it took a while for her to count and then she said, "About two busloads, perhaps." Holy smokes!

If there is no big deal in kissing, why don't we just kiss whomever we want and get it over with? We probably could. But somehow, something inside some of us still makes us think about the repercussions as well as the deeper meaning of a kiss.

In fact, the kiss has been used as a symbol for things that are far from harmless. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Poison Ivy poisoned her victims through her kiss' venom. "Prelude to a Kiss" tells the story of how a seemingly innocent kiss transferred the person inside a young lady into an old man and vice versa. The 1988 movie "The Kiss" used it as a symbol in witchcraft. What about the movie "Kiss the Girls" where the girls were kidnapped and beaten to death?

While under a mistletoe during a duel, Batman told Catwoman, "A mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it." She replied, "A kiss can be deadlier if you mean it." (Batman Returns)

Well, Batman and Catwoman may not be the best source for "lessons in life" but what they said makes perfect sense to me. Even Vivian, the professional hooker in Pretty Woman played by Julia Roberts, refused to kiss Edward, the knight in shining armor played by Richard Gere, during the initial stages of their business deal. Vivian said a kiss is too personal. Deadly, perhaps.

A 30-something single friend of mine recently told me the frustration she had with someone she was seeing. After non-committal encounters, she just had enough, lost it, and surprised him with a kiss. He responded but was still non-committal. To this day, she is still lost and has no idea where the relationship is going. She remains frustrated because it took a lot of courage from her to make the first move. She seriously meant what she did and thought the kiss said it all. Not quite, apparently.

Another friend who has been with her boyfriend for some X number of years, confessed that she "almost" cheated on his boyfriend, who lives out of the city, a number of times. Almost? I asked. She said she went out with several men in her boyfriend's absence but thought that it was harmless. "I knew it was time to stop going out when I had that very strong urge to kiss the guy," she said. The kiss of death.

I sort of disagreed with her on the cheating part because going out with somebody else while the boyfriend is away is already cheating in my book. It's better, I believe, to just be single while you try out the smorgasboard. No need to go to the buffet table if you are already enjoying an a la carte meal. Gluttony, I call it. My friend told me to get real. And she was right, too. While I call it gluttony, others call it keeping their options open.

But I agreed with her about the kissing part though. If you cannot live with the consequences of your actions, it's always better to think twice, thrice or even a million times before you do it. But then I tend to think a lot, and, therefore, I very much am. I am not saying that thinking too much is always good. In fact, my doctor gave me medication because he said I "think too much." I promised him I would work on it.

Some people I know admit to not thinking about what they do before actually doing it. While some find it liberating, others find themselves regretting it later. Some people are just risk-takers and some are not in the same manner that some people find no big deal in kissing and some consider it to be special, sacred even. But taking a risk gives you a chance, even a slight one, to actually get something you aspire for.

To some people (particularly Prince and Tom Jones), a kiss is so important that it rules over all other qualities of a girl. "U don't have 2 be rich 2 be my girl. U don't have 2 be cool 2 rule my world. Ain't no particular sign I'm more compatible with. I just want your extra time and your . . . . . kiss."

To me, a kiss is just too special that it would have to take a whole lot of prelude before it occurs. The longer the prelude, the more special the kiss. A kiss is something that should be remembered and cherished, not something to be regretted later on. It gives a unique feeling, some kind of chemical reaction perhaps that could send tingles down the spine. I am a romantic, not too hopeless I hope.

A kiss, however, can also be only just as good as it gets. It can be treacherous, too. While it gives someone the ultimate feeling of warmth, closeness, and tenderness, it can potentially turn around to give someone a feeling of disgust, repulse, and even nausea. This usually happens when the relationship with the person who kissed you or you kissed turns sour. Then you wish you had never kissed in the first place and try so hard to forget about it.

Some people even seal their relationship with a kiss. In weddings, the kiss is the first act of a man and a woman as husband and wife. A kiss can even jump start a very uncertain relationship or non-relationship. A friend told me that if she were in my place, she would have kissed my crush a long time ago to find out once and for all if he liked me or not. That would have probably ended self-inflicted torture as well as my single life, she said.

But aside from the fact that I think too much before I act, I also tend to question my desire to have a relationship and end this so-called singlehood. Am I willing to take the risk just so I could find out if someone likes me or not? Is the risk to kiss someone worth giving up the glorious singlehood life at all? I guess not. At least, not yet. But if someone dares to kiss me, that would be another story.

Comments? E-mail me at [email protected].