It was only a kiss - in english

“How did it end up like this?

it was only a kiss, it was only a kiss!”
The Killers

I have been craving for this moment for god knows how long. Basking around in Puerto Vallarta, in my hand a bowl (chabela) of large, fresh and juicy shrimps on a hot and spicy soup with cucumber, tomato, avocado and onion. I’m eating my shrimps as if there is no tomorrow when something my friend says catches my attention:

- ...last evening, this woman kiss me right on the lips

I look at him, spoon in the air, quite puzzled. Since when a kiss has become such a big deal for him? In the last ten years I practically had no contact with these guys, since then there have been marriages, children, divorces, bankrupts, good fortune... Could these years have changed him so much? From careless womanizer into a hopeless romantic who has rediscovered the joy of little things of life? Could life experience turned this guy 180 degrees around into a someone who is moved by a single kiss on the lips?

- When exactly did this happen? - I ask

- Last evening, when we were in bed.

My theory about the new born romantic started to show cracks.

- Where you having sex with her?

- Of course!

- ...and you didn’t expect a kiss?

- Well -he says shrugging- I like her enough to fuck her, but not enough to kiss her.

I took a long sip from my beer, while in my head my short lived theory about rediscovering the simple things of life crumbled to dust.

Right then, as if invoked, his cell phone biped announcing a text message.

- ..And speaking of her- he says as he turns the phone to me so I can read the message.

It reads:

“I want to ask you a favour: could you at least fuck me with a little bit of tenderness? ...But anyway... today I’ll spend the afternoon shopping with my cousin. Bye”

Sex is not something Vallartenses get shy about. My friends seem to know everyone in the city, from the mayor to the whores, and for some reason every person we talk to manages to make a sexually explicit comment in the first minute of conversation.

Let’s say we stop to greet the owner of a burger joint. We do the Vallarta handshake, spill out our names and then we move to give way to a couple of black girls walking by the same sidewalk. He says, looking reflectively as they walk away: “what I don’t like about black girls is when you go down on them, the inside of their pussy is purple, really purple”.

Or my favourite one: we are having drinks at a karaoke bar called “the shower” (where I massacred Charly García’s “nos siguen pegando abajo”, the crowd cheered me out of pity), when a young guy with a carefully crafted regetton singer’s look joins us at the table. In the precise moment when he is sitting down I’m trying to recognise a woman’s perfume and I look around saying aloud:

- What’s that smell?

The newcomer looks at me for a moment, then he smells his hands and says

- That’s probably me, sorry about that, I was just fingering some girl.

Then he pours a bit of his vodka on his fingers, rubs them against his jeans and the conversation moves on without a pause.

While I ponder on the relativity of politically correctness, the speakers blast the latest Puerto Rico’s big hit, a dementedly upbeat song that says something like “your body is so hot that you are about to blow up like a Palestinian”.

Puerto Vallarta. Dec 30 2006.