The kissing bubble

FLASH FICTION:IN THE LAND of a thousand kisses no one has sex any more. They abandoned all that long ago, when they discovered that kissing was really the point.

Everyone liked the kissing. It was uncomplicated, with or without clothes; it could happen anytime, anywhere and since nobody needed to get pregnant anymore, it was as far as anyone needed to go. It was perfect. Everyone kisses – babies, children, teenagers, old people, even priests can kiss, even those who don’t know how to do much else; it isn’t difficult. It’s all legal. There’s no messy age of consent. It doesn’t even count as infidelity, not really.

No one knows who invented it; other animals don’t do it. It is the one physical behaviour that makes us unique; we are distinguished by the kiss. In literature, in poetry, the kiss is our great symbol, our metaphor for love. One kiss can last a lifetime, so they say and I agree. I mean it can be enough, enough to last a lifetime, just the memory of it, replayed on the brain, like an old movie on a loop, over and over again, the parted lips just coming into focus before everything blurs. But then, I was always a romantic, or so I was accused, even in the days when there was still sex.

Yes, I remember them – those, that, whatever! Don’t try to confuse me with grammar, never my strong point. That’s all gone now too, of course, no need for it. No need. We are moving so quickly these days; who has time to parse a sentence? Immediate absorption, instant gratification – that’s what we need and that’s why the kiss is so perfect – swift and easy and indestructible. Sex was far too complicated for these times. I didn’t mind when they got rid of it; well it was so gradual really, taxing it and then raising the taxes higher and higher, adding all those terms and conditions, the legal penalties, the fines; it just became too much of an ordeal for most people, too much of a tightrope.

I was relieved, to be honest, when it finally faded away. Hardly a whimper. We were well prepared, well softened up by then. Ha Ha. The only ones who complained where the owners of the swingers clubs; they’d only just set up in business when the whole thing started to fall apart – the sexual bubble they called it, following on from dot.com and property. But the kiss was always secure; they should have opened kissing clubs. That would have been the way to go. I could have drawn them up a business plan. I used to know about all those things, once. Though, I was never bothered about variety myself. I only ever had the one proper kiss but it has kept me going all these years; they can’t take that away from me, no sir; you can sing it – they can’t take that away from me.

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