At this point in history, queer tears suggest AIDS and grief and Matthew Shepard and possibly the right wing's latest fear-mongering tactics. But for now, the sadness leaking out of me has more to do with all the issues we gay men have with kissing. Yes, kissing.

It is supposed to be so easy. Thoroughly natural. Lips touch, smooch, linger: You take it from there. Tongue, no tongue; smacking, no smacking. A smoldering glance across a room, a stolen kiss in the hallway, and the next thing you know, you're in bed, six months down the line, arguing about patterns for the china. If, of course, that first kiss was hot enough to spark.

Easy as pie and twice as yummy. No?

Well, no. It's not that simple for a lot of the gay men I know, including a lot of the gay men I have loved. It's not easy, it's not necessarily instinctive and the connection to romance is not just an issue, it's a mess.

My first kiss with a guy was in a car. I pushed him away so hard, his head practically bounced off the opposite window. He was amazed and horrified, and so was I.

I thought girls were for kissing, and men were for cocksucking, to put it bluntly. I did not want male lips touching mine. In a word, "Gross!" I mean, really, what was he thinking?

To my ignorant, twisted teenager's mind, men provided a sexual outlet until the vow of marriage. Then, at some unforeseeable altar, a magical kiss following "I do" would forever seal my attraction toward women and eliminate the need for men. Unbelievable -- but this is just one example of the many fantastic fables we gay kids told ourselves, growing up without a clue in the '50s and early '60s.

So when I first fell in love with a man, it wasn't because of his eyes or his biceps or his hair or how he filled out his jeans or the thickness of his wallet; it was how he kissed me. He made the past disappear. Pure and simple. I moved in after a week, and moved out after a year. Typical.

Several lovers and 25 years later, when I go to a sex club in the city, half the men want to slobber all over each other with tongues big as fists falling out of their mouths, while the other half turn their heads the moment a potential pucker comes within two feet.

Trust me, kissing is a very loaded issue for gay men.

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