When we blow kisses, when we send them in a letter, they always travel in a generic plural, kisses. Lots of kisses. But every kiss is unique unto itself, like a snowflake. It’s not just a matter of how that kiss is given, it’s also how it comes into existence: the underlying intent, the tension accompanying it. And then there’s the way it’s either accepted or rejected, the vibration—cheerful, excited, embarrassed—that buzzes around that reception. A kiss that smacks in silence or amid noisy distractions, bathed in tears or the companion to laughter, tickled by sunshine or in the invisibility of darkness.
Kisses have a precise taxonomy. There are kisses given like a stamp, lips stamping other lips. A passionate kiss, a kiss not yet ripe. An immature game. A shy gift. Then there’s the far end of that spectrum: French kisses. Lips meet only to part: an exchange of papillae and nodes, of humors and caresses with the flesh of the tongue, within the perimeter of the mouth, within the ivory presidio of the teeth. Their opposites are a mother’s kisses. Lips pressing against cheeks. Kisses heralding what will follow soon after: the enveloping hug, the gentle caress, the hand on the forehead feeling for feverish heat. Fatherly kisses graze the cheekbones, they’re whiskery kisses, prickly, fleeting signs of proximity. Then there are kisses of greeting that brush the flesh, and the dirty old man kisses that sneak up on you, little slobbery ambushes that batten off a furtive intimacy.
Savage kisses can’t be classified. They can put a seal upon silence, proclaim promises, pronounce verdicts or declare acquittals. There are the savage kisses that barely reach the gums, and others that practically shove down your throat. But savage kisses always occupy all the space available, they use the mouth as a way in. The mouth is merely the pool into which you wade, to find out if there’s a soul, whether there really is anything else sheathing the body, or not—the ferocious kiss is there to probe, to fathom that unsoundable abyss or to meet a void. The dull, dark void that conceals.
There’s an old story told among neophytes of barbarity, a story that regularly makes the rounds among breeders of fighting dogs: desperate creatures, devotees in spite of themselves of a cause of muscles and death. That legend, devoid of any scientific basis, tells how fighting dogs are selected at birth. The dogfighters scrutinize the litter of puppies with icy intolerance. They’re not interested in choosing dogs that seem powerful, they don’t wish to overlook dogs that look too skinny, they don’t care to favor dogs that push their sisters away from the mother’s teat, they’re not trying to identify dogs that punish brothers for their greed. The test is different: the breeder yanks the puppy away from the nipple, seizing it by the scruff of the neck and pushing the little snout close to his own cheek. Most of the puppies will lick that cheek. But one—practically blind, still toothless, gums accustomed only to the mother’s softness—will try to bite. One wants to know the world, have it between its jaws. And that is the savage kiss. That dog, male or female as it may be, will then be taught to fight.
There are kisses and there are savage kisses. The former remain within the precinct of the flesh; the latter know no limits. They want to be what they kiss.
Savage kisses come not from good nor from evil. They exist, like alliances. And they always leave an aftertaste of blood.