I'M AFRAID OF A KISS IN THE DARK

Intervention on a mail art envelope for Lavona Sherarts, accompanied by this text:

I'm afraid of a kiss in the dark
dedicated to Lavona Sherarts

Who hasn't been attracted by Klimt's painting "the kiss"?
The total surrender in that kiss makes me wonder if these lovers were "legal"?
It's not the kiss of a married couple, I guess, but the kiss of clandestine lovers.
Love is clandestine or is not, is one of the main themes of my latest poetry edition "the alphabet of love". Melody Gardot sings the same point of view in her amazing song "make me your lover undercover or don't ever love me at all".

Certain people (more and more is the impression I'm getting) suffer from "fear of contamination". Tainted love was a major song from the eighties. Has Aids something to do with those fears or is it the general evolution of our society. We have become so clean and odorless compared to the generations before us, we don't know exactly how to interrelate anymore. We even prefer artificial smells than natural ones.
Certainly in American society this is very visible. How to become an outcast there? Be poor, don't have a driver license, lack white teeth! And sneezing in public is considered as a public crime!!
So how do we touch each other in such a world, how do we kiss, that long longing surrendering kiss like lovers do? Do you kiss and then run to the bathroom to have a thorough sponge bath and brush teeth and tongue for half an hour? A few seconds of body contact followed by a cleaning and cleansing of body and soul?
Let's shake hands and then off to the bathroom again.
I had a lady friend once who was keen on sex but she couldn't stand the smell of sweat, not the one of her lover(s), not her own. So love making was a kind of tragicomedy. She wanted to make love but get it done as fast as possible. Okay, most men will find this to their own rhythm but for me this was part of a nightmare scenario: love reduced to a determined time frame by perspiration.

On a more serious level to be afraid of kissing means to be afraid of kissing the wrong person. How do you know who's Mr or Mrs Right and who's Mr or Mrs Wrong. It's an eternal question as old as the world and as old as relations exist. Woody Allen made it the main topic of his early movie "Love and Death". Person A loves B but B is in love with C who's in love with A. So we all love the wrong person and sometimes settle for the "less of evils".
Like one of my femail friends explained me years ago: "I don't love my husband but they are worse men on this planet, so I prefer this relationship even if I'm not happy".
Could I kiss such a friend? I doubt it but sometimes you do because you don't know each other that much. You react on hormones, smells, pheromonal attraction, body language.
The other language follows later and then you suddenly realize that you have not much in common, yes, 2 hearts are beating but are not beating together, despite the exchanged kisses in the light and in the dark.

On a very serious level I'm very afraid of the kisses in the dark by the spirits in the house. You may consider this as a joke but for me it's not. I've always been able to communicate with ghosts in the house, not constantly, but from time to time. Once this evolves in a friendly and teasing relationship it becomes tricky. Like the time I felt the presence of a naked body in my bed who used her lips and breasts to tease me and then flew away across the room, laughing loudly at my scared reaction. Men who say that women are teasers have never met a femail ghost…

Guido Vermeulen, 14 August 2010