Kiss Me Baby, One More Time
Having enjoyed some quite remarkable make-out sessions lately, I got to thinking about kissing and its importance. I’m not referring to how amazingly elated it makes one feel but to how it affects others. Seeing two men kissing is still believed to be the most horrid thing anyone can ever experience, clearly more revolting than starving children or war casualties. Yet when lesbians go at it, straight men clap and ask for more. So in a world with such double standards, what is one supposed to do?
November 7th, 2010. The Pope has come to visit. Spain is bathing in the light of God and faithfully awaits impatiently their leader. They have gathered in the thousands to cheer him on. The leader of the Christian faith, God's representative on Earth, has made it his business to save us from temptation and sinners better watch out. If you have sexual intercourse outside of matrimony, use condoms or –and God help you – are gay, Benedict XVI is here to put you back on the right path. Unsurprisingly, Gays are not easily converted and they’ve decided – infidels! – to stand up for their right to love one another. Blasphemy!
On that Sunday morning, two hundred of them made their way to the front of the line. In a sea of “Jesus is my friend” T-shirts, they were careful not to draw attention to themselves and behaved as normal as their deviance allowed it. The Pope Mobile came into view and what did those queers do? They locked lips and started snogging each other’s faces off. What a disgrace! The Pope felt his breakfast make its way back up his throat. He looked away but he was surrounded. On both sides of the street, men were kissing men, women were kissing women. He closed his eyes, hoping it would make this nightmare go away. It did, God answered his prayer. He continued on his merry way to the Sagrada Familia where he preached for a world ridden with such atrocities. The gays had made their disgusting point but He remained supreme.
Unaware of what was happening some 800 kilometres away, I was walking hand in hand with (you want to know, don’t you? I’m not telling!)… in Malasaña. I heard a murmur as if the wind was carrying a prejudice; it brought to my ears this refrain …maricón…maricón… I shivered. The Pope being the bigot that he is, is one thing and let’s face it, it’s his job. But being called names, some mere two streets from where I live and just a few steps from our Mecca: Chueca, really unsettled me. Is prejudice still so overwhelmingly present? Have we closed our eyes to reality? Is kissing still a political gesture? And so I stopped. I refused to be bullied, to be made an alien in my own town. I stopped and I kissed him. Much like those 200 protestors in Barcelona, I stood up for what I believed was right and with a simple kiss, I stood my ground.
