Last night I went out to dinner and, after we were finished eating, I asked my dinner companion if he liked what he had ordered. As you do. He said it was OK, but that it's funny, because he doesn't really like portobello mushrooms all that much, but he had ordered the sandwich because one time he had had a really really delicious portobello mushroom sandwich, the best ever, and he keeps hoping he'll find another one as good as that one. "There's a metaphor in there somewhere," he said, "but I'm not quite sure what it is."
It made me think of my first really fantastic kiss. "Larry Straights" (not his real name) kissed me under the cherry tree in front of the art building at school when I was 17. It made my knees weak and my lips tingle and it was perfect. Erotic but sweet, soft but firm, inistent but not overbearing. We kissed until my lips hurt, and it was glorious, and I still remember how it felt. And I realized that I've been holding that kiss up as the ideal, the touchstone against which all other kisses are measured. Not that I haven't really enjoyed kissing other people, or that the whole time I'm kissing someone I'm thinking about that other kiss. But it's the ideal I hold in some part of my mind. And I think I've been searching for it in some small way, and I haven't found it, and I don't know that I ever will. And that's a little sad, but I guess perfect kisses and perfect portobello mushroom sandwiches are fleeting, and not the holy grail of happiness.
Posted by thevieve at December 23, 2005 9:55 AM