Soap Opera

I remember the first time I saw two men kiss.

It was on television. I remember handling the remote control, waving its unsteady weight around with tiny hands, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The television hovered in front of me, the only real thing in the room, as I watched with innocence like an unfurling nocturnal flower, and then a growing sense of faintly uneasy curiosity, like a quiet dog nosing his master's cold, dead hand, soft paws padding in the sticky, vast ocean of scarlet surrounding his corpse, just feeling, never knowing.

Their shirts were too tight, hems pulled tight across bronzed muscles, hair too perfectly coiffed, features too pretty. I didn't understand. They had wine glasses, winking in the grainy light like secretive smiles, dark liquid shifting inside imperceptibly, their manicured nails tapping the crystal rim to emphasize their words heavy with a meaning that I knew enough to acknowledge, but could not name.

I remember what he said, his shining lips parting around white teeth and his pink tongue, enunciating demurely.

-I have rules, you know. People can't just walk in and out of my life as they please. He reclined easily, the challenge apparent in his voice and eyes that even I could see.

The other man replied, slipping the wine glasses out of their hands and smoothly setting them on a table out of sight, out of mind:

-Is this against your rules?

And then he was kissing him, palm flush against his face, fingers firm on his head, and they were serious and intent and wanting, and I began to understand but I did not. It was too much, like the way that holidays were too much, with too many people and too much food and too many smells and tastes and touches, too many shifting shadows and laughing, red-faced adults, too many flickering, dim lights and feet tapping on polished hardwood floors, and lurid decorations you weren't allowed to touch, and not enough children to take the edge off of being outsiders.

My unknowing eyes searched the screen, ravaged for every detail. I knew my mother would not approve, and because of that uncertain fact I looked all the harder. She was in the other room, and as I suddenly heard her footsteps sounding in the hallway I stood and ran, little bare feet pattering on unsteady legs out the doorway, a earth-shattering portal to salvation.

I stole a moment of solitude as a child in a house where I never knew shallow loneliness, and I saw two men kiss and it opened the world up to me.