The Egg and the Ego

In high school, Love 101 was included in the curriculum in the junior year. She could still remember the different kinds of love her unstylish, inept instructor wrote on the board. Platonic, romantic, erotic, filial, etc. There were many to mention and describe. Milinda always thought that she could never forget them. It was everybody’s favorite subject. More liked than Chemistry, of course. On the other hand, marriage and the first night was discussed thoroughly on Sex 101 when she entered pre-college year. It was a prerequisite; she had to finish and pass the course within a year before actually entering to college ground. All pre-college students in her batch believed that the knowledge and experience of Sex was great. Virginity was of great value to everyone, men and women alike. And to experience Sex, one has to accomplish two things, Love and Marriage. But Milinda knew all the in-depth concerns to these subjects already, except for one. The Kiss. What was the Kiss all about? All she knew was the Kiss is an expression of true and pure Love, through pressing one’s lips to another’s lips, with the opposite sex, one that you love and vowed to get married with, and live with for the rest of your lives. This Kiss was keeping her mind in active motion, alongside with the concepts of Love and Sex. The dissatisfied lady, who is now just thinking and not bathing, still remained in the tub until her mother came, opened the bathroom door and asked her: “How about getting flushed with the soap, dearie?”

Milinda went downstairs and proceeded to the dining. Her mother was drinking coffee when the daughter sat down opposite her. She smiled at the old woman, then started to eat. Her mother was watching her intently. Sentiments of loneliness and sudden realizations filled the old lady’s mind. She was actually thinking about Milinda, her only daughter and companion in life, will be married soon. She envisioned her little girl leaving her for good. “You’ve grown a lot”, the teary-eyed mother uttered, “and you will be leaving mom soon, then I will be alone”. Milinda stopped and gave her suddenly depressed mother a consoling look. She reached for her mother’s clenched hand on the table and squeezed it. “Mom, I am not leaving you forever. I will still be yours”, Milinda said with comfort. Her mother was not looking at her but at the cup of coffee. “Are you reminiscing our bad, I mean, dad times”, the daughter chuckled while trying to look at her mother’s steady, wandering eyes. Mother smiled upon hearing the ‘dad times’ phrase. She knew her little girl was going to use it to soothe her mood at that time. She said she cannot help but think about the people she used to love then and love until now. How depressing is the feeling of being deserted for someone else, the mother expressed with a thinking and smiling countenance. Milinda’s father actually left them for another woman. Thus, her father, after discussing with Milinda’s mother about the arrangements they are to make for the family affairs especially concerning Milinda, never appeared to them again. And up to now, they never heard of him, though the monetary support came as often as promised. But now, Milinda is still waiting for her father’s reply to her letter, informing and inviting him to her wedding.

“Mom”, Milinda opened her mouth and responded with a question she thought was funny. “why didn’t you just give dad a kiss so he’s done with?” Then she began to laugh. Her mom, on the other hand, looked at her with much surprise and pulled her clenched hand up from Milinda’s hands. Within just minutes, right after she heard the question uttered in mid-air, the old, depressed woman became upset. Milinda, who was just starting the ’silly’ discourse again, felt her mother’s hand moving out from her consolation touch. She knew how her mother will react to her opening, so she retorted at once: “Why, mom? It was just a joke. The Kiss thing? It was really just a joke.” Then she laughed. Her mother interrupted her from her gladdened state, and erupted with an incensed reply: “You know what The Kiss means, Milinda. You know it, and it is not a joke. You are big enough to understand.” Milinda soon stopped her unreasonable guffaw. She looked at her mother straight in the eyes and then nod her head.

So it was then that she, the ceased Milinda, turned back to what she was thinking in the bath this morning. She could not help herself but mull over the thing that she was ever confused with and understood at the same time. The Kiss. She will be married in just a short while. Six months is not that long either. It will be just a couple of sleeping and waking up. After the wedding, the much-awaited first night arrives. Milinda and Baroné will surely have a great, great sex. Days and weeks will surely pass, and their newlywed relationship will reach a year. Then after, she, and if Baroné wants as well, would sit down at the rocking chair on the porch, look as far as her eyes can see and think things over. Milinda prepared questions in her mind to boggle with: Is this relationship I am involved in worth lasting forever? Is this marriage a candidate for the almost perfect category? Will the children be satisfied with their mom and dad? Are we going to prove the purity and trueness of our love through just one kiss? With the kiss? This was the most critical part of her contemplation. The Kiss was not a joke, her mother was right at that point. To kiss was either to produce everlasting life or death, on both parties or just either of the partners. Maybe similar results, or most of the times, different. So how does one know if he or she will live an everlasting life, or be eternally damned?

As Milinda was becoming more and more transfixed with this life-and-death matter with her own love affair, she started to notice and comment to the stories she had seen on TV, heard on domino gossips and read on novels. She once had seen a movie that featured the kiss but not really the real kiss. The kiss between Marcot and Newjuel in that film, Positive Pains, was a digital hoax. It was computer-generated. Surely it was. No one in the world will kiss random people, unless someone brainsick really wants to die because of the impurity or absence of love in him or her! Well, that’s how the kiss operates. When a couple decides to kiss each other, the individual love is to be weighed first. Is your love pure? Did you not consider the desire of having someone else than him/her? Is your love true? Did you profess love with the vow to love every inch of that person you are with? Do you love him/her despite of her shortcomings, failures or handicap? Do you purely and truly love him/her? If then these questions were satisfied with the required answers, the couple who will kiss should be ready of a curse or a blessing that the ultimate act of proving love will grant. So that’s it. When one has impure and untrue love, to kiss is worth to die without question. And when one has pure and true love, to kiss is to live forever.

Milinda, upon seriously pondering to these thoughts again, believed what her mom had just said. The Kiss is not a joke. The daughter submitted to her mother’s authority in absolute respect but in sheer self-shame. She kept on moving her head as if she was agreeing with her mother’s animadverting eyes, intently looking at her face. It was self-shame that she felt but not embarrassment. Why would she feel that way when all she was aware was that this was just the restart of a dismissed question-and-answer that happened last night? That self-shame just popped out from her and Milinda never had an idea why she felt that way. Perhaps, it was because she used her father and mother’s split up for her self-serving cause: to know what the kiss really is. An interval of silence satiated the breakfast breakout between the two ladies. Both sat still and were immobilized by the urgent thought as to who should break the silence and speak first. The mother was about to speak when Milinda, still not looking into her eyes, took it up. “I’m sorry, mom. Yeah, you’re right”, the little girl apologized, trying to put up with her charm and smile that her mom would surely not resist. After dropping these words, Milinda picked her spoon and fork up and started to eat her breakfast. Her mother stood up and went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. Milinda saw her silent mother, her back turned away from the daughter and her face looking outside the small windowpane just above the sink. Mother took a deep breath and then turned towards Milinda. However, the other girl, afraid to be caught scrutinizing her mother, moved her head down at once and continued eating.

“I know what you want to know, dearie”, Milinda’s mother broke in. The daughter who pretended not to be conscious of everything just a while ago, had her face lighted up now. She wanted to ask questions right away but was pulled back by the memory of her early, impulsive mistake. So she remained quiet and waited for the words next to be uttered. Mother for the second time, took a deep breath again and now, cleared her throat. “I did not kiss your father since I was afraid he would die. I know he was cheating on us. I loved him but what he did, made me hesitant in rethinking if I still love him. I began to doubt on my love for him. And that isn’t pure either”, Mother explained. Milinda stopped eating and took a glass of water. As she was drinking, her mother continued: “I know, dearie, there are millions of people who believed that the kiss is totally unnecessary to prove love. They go on with their lives believing that it doesn’t have to take the risking of one’s life to dare and prove love.” At this point, Mother turned her back again from Milinda and looked outside the window.

Milinda was out to meet Baroné in the city square. She was carrying a big bag with all her important stuffs inside it. Before the taxi parked in the side area of the square, Milinda caught her boyfriend sitting on a bench near the trellis (perhaps he was up for the shade for its 11:31am already). The cab parked on the side, just across the trellis lot where Baroné was waiting. Milinda came down from the car with her big bag on her right shoulder. She was about to cross the street when the ready gentleman on the bench stood up and made a stop sign on her. Several cars passed, after which Baroné crossed the street. “I told you, I should have fetched you from your house”, Baroné said while eagerly getting the big bag from Milinda. Milinda replied that it was just fine; there was not any problem about that. “And besides, you might have interrupted our mother-and-daughter drama this morning. You know, I would not allow you to do that”, the lady who just clutched her hands to Baroné’s left arm uttered.

It was 12 o’clock at exact noontime. The sun outside seemed to parch the green lands viewed from on inside the train. Milinda was wearing her favorite, green face-hugging glasses. She was comfortably leaning to her fiancé’s big arm while looking outside the untainted window. As of now, the kiss was still on her mind. What if I ask Baroné to kiss me this night, when we are all alone in the cottage, her mind went on. She turned from the glass pane to the old couple sitting there on a seat on the other line of the train. The couple were intimately snuggled to each other. As Milinda could see it, the old twosome were kipping in slumber or tiredness. The thought came again to her mind: Did they kiss already? They have reached a long time in their marriage. They might have learned and realized that they purely and truly love each other. And for that, they will live an everlasting life.

It was not until so long a thinking that Milinda began to rationalize the kiss. She was so much inclined on the kiss, not just because of the mystery of its gifts. The people she saw on TV who already experienced the kiss gave testimonies on interviews. All claimed that the kiss made them cry tears of joy and overmuch excited them. The stir brought by the kiss to their senses was unforgettable, though they say, they could never explain thoroughly after then. Butterflies on the stomach, yes, they became a literal tactual sensation in their guts. The kiss was for some an experience of a positive electricity coming inside and out of their body. No one could control it. It was far too natural but all the more echt and tangible.

Milinda was more than just intrigued; she must be really into it. It must be coming from something greater than just human beings, she thought. It was clear that what must trigger the kiss was just pure love, true love, nothing less and nothing more. To desire to experience the incomprehensible sensation of the kiss would not even pass the main criterion. That isn’t pure love. It’s just pure desire for the sensation. If one has the strong urge to kiss but have not love, he will surely meet his death. And even, to be driven by the insanity of proving one’s true love would bring out not everlasting life. When this argument is scrutinized, one will clearly see that it is not really, really true or pure love that drives the kiss. It’s just the care to prove it, let’s-see attitude. Milinda suddenly straightened up from her comfortable posture. She began to think things over again. This time, she felt totally puzzled: So, what really drive the lovers passion to give in to the kiss?At her chaotic silence, Baroné, disrupted by her sudden movement, asked her: “Why, honey?”

They arrived at the cottage, which Baroné rented for their weekend lam, at a later time when the sky was turning orange-purple and the cool wind was setting the atmosphere. After preparing something to drink, Baroné went outside the porch to accompany his hushed fiancée. Milinda was staring at the horizon, where the burnt-out sun was about to set. She, at one look, seemed to be so untroubled and serene. But when Baroné arrived at the porch, he noticed the usual difference on Milinda’s countenance. See, Milinda was sitting on the rocking chair with her legs resting anterior to her breasts and her arms hugging them. Her eyes was very far from where it is placed. The man with the glasses on his hands, smiled and went beside Milinda. Somewhat stirred up from her deep contemplation, Milinda sighed, moved slightly, teased the man with her slightly toying look, then stood up. Baroné jeered thinly. He too stood up.

“Baroné, it must have been this true and pure love”, Milinda said as she was staring at the horizon “Or maybe more than that, that drives lovers to, you know, give in to the kiss.” Baroné did not respond; he too was looking at the horizon. Milinda continued on pouring her troubles about the kiss. “This true love must have convinced people itself. It has power that we could not understand. It has its own consciousness. It makes people go or just stay afraid. These people, who lost their love in their own hands, are now suffering too hard for they felt they were just tricked by love to kiss. But, honey, it’s clear right? The one who dies is the one who is not reciprocating that pure love. The one who lives is the one who is not afraid to risk life for he knows it will be given back to him in full, eternal.”

“But is it not love to hold on to your mad desire to kiss just to in the same way, hold on to the life of the person that you love?” Baroné said, his voice increasing in volume.

Milinda in the meantime looked as placid as someone dead. She looked at Baroné. “No, I don’t think so. That isn’t love. That’s fear. That’s doubt. The kiss requires true and pure love”. Baroné returned the stare to the woman beside him. Milinda, moved by what she feels and thinks was the unexplainable, turned closer to Baroné until she could see his face so close in just inches. She stared at his eyes and saw the usual difference. She touched his chest and felt the beating of the inside. It was beating fast. Her eyes fell down on his nose, then probed his whole face. She touched his hair, until her hands fell right down at the back of his neck. Milinda felt a whirling sensation in her head; her sight became blurry as she gets closer to Baroné. But there was instant, shortened clarity when her eyes met Baroné’s lips, his full lips.