The Weekly Mindfuck: Making Out

Making out has long emanated a certain kind of desperation, a very specific sort of voracity that aches. When I was younger, the ache originated in abstinence—much as I wanted to absorb the other person's body entirely inside me, I wasn't having sex and I didn't want the option on the table yet. It was like drinking skim milk; it would do, I suppose, but it was never really satiating. When the floodgates finally broke, kissing's role in my life shifted. I had something richer, more satisfying, more indulgent, and making out merely prepared my palate. It made sense. Now I really was pulling someone else entirely inside me. 

My relationship with kissing stayed this way for years. It was always fun, and it always made me feel connected to my partner, but by itself it was merely the light version of what we really wanted to be doing. It had been a long, long time since I'd done it long enough that my lips turned raw, since I couldn't stop, since it went on for what seemed like hours, but I was experiencing something new entirely—it was hunger, absolutely, but I didn't desperately need to mold bodies so much as mold minds. It was like we had found connection somewhere before or beyond sex—I wasn't really sure—that neither of us could let go. 

We had sex eventually of course, and more than once. But when he left and I sat on my back porch, beer in hand, and reflected on that morning, it wasn't the sex that I remembered most. 

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