Amber Taylor is celebrating International Kissing Day, and calls for kissing stories.
I will tell you a story about one of my favorite kisses. It was in March of 2002, and I was in Austin, Texas, at the South By Southwest music festival. It was late and I was on my tiptoes, wearing flipflops, standing very close to a musician in cowboy boots. We were on a back street behind a club, and I was worried about my toes. The perils included his cowboy boots, the patches of urine from clubgoers who'd decided to bypass the bathroom lines inside, and (I feared) rattlesnakes. He laughed and said, "You know you're in Texas now, when you've got to worry about snake, piss, and being stepped on by someone's boots." And then he kissed me.
A month before, I'd gone to see Wayne "the Train" Hancock play at a dive bar in Portland. He was great, all twang and that old-timey country mix of melancholy and hostility. And his upright bass player was really cute. [Note: the bass player currently on Wayne's website is not the guy who was playing with the band when I saw them....] I sat toward the side, near the stage, and sang along, smiling, to the songs I knew. I listened hard to the songs I didn't know. My active listening must have stood out, because at the intermission Wayne and a couple of the guys from the band came over to talk to me. But not the bass player. He seemed like he was looking at me during the next set, though, and when I caught him the second time he smiled, and I smiled back. At the end of the show I went to buy a CD from him and we talked a little bit. We talked about South by Southwest and raised our eyebrows at each other when we discovered we would both be there.
So when I got to Austin I kept my eyes open for Wayne's performances, and on Saturday I wandered by a backyard party where he was in the lineup. And the bass player smiled at me again, and when the gig was over he came and sat down beside me. Well, actually, he was walking towards me, when an old man in a Stetson and a suede jacket with fringe headed him off. He was a singer and guitarist and needed a bass player and had liked the way this guy played in the last set -- would this guy stand in with him? The bassist came over to me and asked me if I would wait. I said yes, and he said yes, and I watched them talk about arrangements and rehearse for about 5 minutes before they went out and performed for the crowd. They were great, although I've forgotten the singer's name now. He sounded like a much older Roger Wallace (who I also saw that day).
And after the second show he came over and sat down beside me. He remembered my name from Portland, which made me smile. I invited him to dinner, and he said yes, and we stowed his bass in the back of his pickup truck and went to a funky restaurant, where I recognized a whole bunch of performers I'd seen earlier in the day. After dinner he walked me back to my rental car, and that's where we were standing, on a side street not far from a couple of clubs, me in my flip flops and he in his cowboy boots. The kiss was long and sweet and unhurried, and I could feel his hands on my waist -- one, calloused and rough from playing the bass, and the other smooth and soft. We stood there in the street, amidst all the perils to my uncovered feet, and kissed for a long time.
Then he drove home to San Antonio, and I went back to my room. We'd talked about connecting at a concert in New Braunfels the next day, but I didn't see him there. He gave me his card, but I was too shy to call him. The next year I went back and kept my eyes open for him, but he was no longer playing with Wayne and I didn't see him with another band. By the end of the weekend I'd gotten my nerve up to call him, but the number had been disconnected and no further information was available....
Maybe it was better that you never saw him again. It makes you remember the kiss and not some annoying habit he had that you would end up finding out about later. Perfect memories don't come often....they must be savored!
Posted by: Courtney | July 06, 2005 at 03:16 PM