Kissing Strangers

It's the darndest thing, but most of us are out there trying to kiss strangers, as uncomfortable and as discombobulating as the experience usually is. We watch a show and fantasise about how it would be like to have this piece of fiction in our lives because of the character they have created on screen. Which has nothing to do with who they are. And has nothing to do with who we are. Or what we need.

(Which is nothing, if you dig down deep enough. Nothing and nobody. At least, not in that way)

A stranger always feels strange. They stare at you with indifferent eyes because you are simply a face, a not very interesting face, in the crowd. 

And in the intimate setting of a smoky bar, a stranger, with their liquid, whisky-infused eyes, looking at you less indifferently, is still strange. Everything about them is strange, especially this need for fake intimacy brought about by longing and loneliness and the search for any port in a storm.

Because you have no idea that you are holding your breath; waiting to exhale.

But after the high, the hangover.

After the loving, the morning after.

It feels like a desperate scramble to feel something, to make something out of nothing, to pretend for just a few minutes longer.

It is madness but you can't see it if you're caught up in it. 

It is madness because it leaves you emptier after than before.

It is madness because it is not nothing, and you can carry this not-nothing for life.

A lifetime of scars, of empty encounters, of dwindling into nothing.

Kissing strangers.

It's unbearably sad. 

It's hopelessly desolate.

It's always strange.