Not quite kissing

Over breakfast, I tell Amber how I had a dream that some woman kissed me. I then told the dream woman that this kiss would make it difficult for us to be friends. Amber is unbothered by this, beyond the fact that this was a dream. The imaginary woman did not even have a name. If someone were to kiss me in the real world, that wouldn't be Amber's problem. She was confident it wouldn't much matter.

She is slightly more bothered when I tell her that a kissed the woman back, but I chalk it up to an involuntary reaction. I reference a report I recently heard where a woman kissed a stranger with whom she was arguing, then bit off a chunk of his tongue (which a seagull stole). When a woman kisses you, it isn't always easy not to kiss back, more so when it is a dream and your defenses are down.

I do not think anyone will fall in love with me again. Amber loves me and, for the most part, is in love with me, but it isn't an active process. She just is, and it doesn't bear more than automatic thought, "I love yous" shed on exhalations. She likes pecks on the lips and face, but she does not much like what I (and the French, apparently) consider proper kissing, the sort where someone might have the opportunity to bite off a tongue.

It was not always that way, but it is now. She doesn't have motivation toward it; it is too much for her, so she doesn't do it. This is one of those things she believes is a part of her potential autism -- though I have not made a careful census of autists and their feelings about kisses. All I know is that she seemingly enjoyed it, then she didn't really. It is not the only thing that falls under that umbrella, but it is one that I notice. A few good seconds of kissing that I abandon for domestic tranquility because it hurts more when she turns away than when I do not try.

People won't fall in love with me for their own reasons, among them that I am not available to fall in love with. I may wish to be kissed more and more thoroughly, but I adore my wife and am not going anywhere. When I was young -- and less lovable -- there seemed no end of people wanting to give it a go. It was limerence, but that is the nature of "love" at that age. I am not sure what I would do with someone who decided that they had fallen in love with me at this point, beyond setting some firm boundaries and hoping for the best.

This isn't to say that there haven't been a few people who wanted to have sex with me and who vacated my life when it was clear that I was serious about that not happening. (I am not so petty as to name them; since they didn't push it, wanting sex from a disinterested married man isn't too wrong, however saddening I found it when they left after their appetite wasn't met.) This was not falling in love with me. It was not about romantic emotions, only a radically nonmonogamy on their part. In short, it doesn't particularly fit the bill of falling in love.

I have no real foundation from which to object; I am not falling in love with anyone else. I have had a few potential friends I was briefly fond of, but only a couple (literally a couple) have stuck around long enough for me to decide that I did more deeply care about them. The others, because we did not meet quickly enough, decided that the companionability faded. That was mostly fine. All my "in love" energy tends to redirect toward my wife anyway, aside from occasional parasocial crushes on actress-singers whom I will never meet.

That last bit is, I think, the only opportunity for someone to fall in love with me in a way I will welcome. Fall in love with my work. Read something I've written -- even if it is no more than a quote -- and feel fluttery. (Gods know I do it with other authors enough.) I put so much of myself in my work and so much of my work into the world. Surely someone has felt the warm blush of a literary crush over something that has come from my pen. Not toward me, but my literary output. I love my characters. They are available for your affection as well, slivers of me put into each of them. Let them crawl into your mind when you are asleep and give you a kiss that will make you question waking.

last watched: Captain America: The First Avenger
reading: Lolita: The Annotated Edition