The Kiss on the Forehead

I have been kissed on the forehead twice as a grown woman. Well, three times, but twice by the same guy in the same instance, so let's count them as one. I've got to tell you, I'm not a big fan of the forehead kiss. I keep thinking that, under the right circumstances--I'm married to your best friend and you save me from being run over by a car and in your relief that I'm okay, you embrace me and cannot help but place your lips on my sweet flesh and, even though you long to smooch me right on the mouth, your love for your best friend prevents you from violating his trust and so you gently kiss me on the forehead and then move away so that you don't have to see me if you can't have me OR I'm busy kissing the cutie in bed with us--being kissed on the forehead might be okay. But, in my experience, the forehead kiss means "you ain't getting any smooches any farther south than this" and what fun is that? The first forehead smooch went like this. There was this cantankerous guy that I loved and loved to bicker with* and we'd go to dinner--my two roommates and me and him--every week and he would call us hooligans and I would sigh and make googly eyes at him and wish he'd leave his fiancee for me, even though he was a Republican jack-ass whose dad knew Bob Dole well and I was a liberal do-gooder. So, one day at dinner I wasn't speaking to him, though I can't remember why. I'm sure he deserved it though. And he ran up to me at the car and grabbed me and smooched my forehead. And I laughed and things between us were better, though that was as close as he ever came to succumbing to my charms. Which is too bad. The second one was much more dramatic. There had been some drinking. A lot of drinking. And there had been a minor scene of brief upper-body nudity on his part and the kind of confession that you always hope you might hear, just for the sheer romantic tragedy of it, until it actually happens and you look across the table and pray to whatever local deity you can drum up that his wife of less than a year did not just hear him say that. And then, you decide to leave, because said confession shook you and you are too drunk to keep from crying about it. And so, you unwisely grab him and take him out to the stairs and you say your tearful goodbyes and he pulls you to him and kisses you on the forehead and you start down the steps, but he hasn't let go of your hand and he pulls you to him again and you lean forward and whisper something in his ear that was needless considering that you're going home and he's going home and you probably won't ever see him again, and he leans over and brushes your forehead gently with his lips and you break free and you rush out to a waiting taxi and zoom off into the night. And you think, at that moment, that what you'll carry with you is what he said, but what you realize years later is that you're more thrilled by the thought that you rushed down marble stairs in high heels and actually made a dramatic exit without falling on your ass. Anyway, the kiss on the forehead. On a scale of one to ten, I give it a three in sexy, a five in charming, and, if properly executed, an eight in drama. Unfortunately, I have to also give it an eight in the kind of patronizing department. Execute with caution. *No, no one you know. A different cantankerous guy. No, different than that one. No, not him either. No one anyone but Miss J knows. He's never commented here, he doesn't read this blog. I just like cantankerous men.