How Not to French Kiss (Lad)

Dear Lad,

° O goody goody! said I to myself when the gospel was intoned, for it was the one that bids us all be wily as coyotes and crooked as snakes. How Daddy used to guffaw at its fundamentalistic preaching to the Choir.

° And the homily began promisingly enough, with a humorous anecdote. Profligate Youth cheats on final exam, Professor observes the scamping, Professor rejects the proffered finished exam, Professor promises an F, Profligate Youth draws himself to his full 6.5feet and says, "Do you know who my Daddy is?", Professor say he don't care who he be, Profligate Youth (in a Christlike brainstorm) shuffles Blue Book indistinguishably into the large stack of uncontested exams and dashes out of the lecture hall lickety split.

° Tee hee! One can see where this is going, shrewd shrewd Profligate Youth, all headed for twisty sainthood.

° But no! At this point the anecdote goes horribly horribly wrong: Profligate Youth has a recurring nightmare that God the Father is staring disappointedly at him--o Lordy, I just know that happened--so he repents, is given the penance of repeating the course, and the absolution of not being expelled. "And from that point on, Profligate Youth changed his ways and followed the Path of Righteousness."

° And from that point on--because, of course, if Profligate Youth was a weaselly little sneakthief when young, he just learnt to hide it better, most likely at Enron or in Congress or in the Council of Bishops, when older; and the reason he had those dreams, and "repented," as Cousin Gypsy could tell you, was that he subconsciously realised that he might be traced through someone's knowledge of who his prominent father was, he'd stepped right into it. But, I say, from that point on my attention wandered, for I saw there was no Aristotelian probability in this homily.

° Leopard change his spots my foot!

° Didn't set about counting the panes in the stained glass windows, I know the sum by heart.

° And I could still taste your espresso from an hour before--you recall it had two identical hearts side by side in the bottom of the cup--and I recollected one of your earthsign groundings: for the moment I told you, sei mesi fa, of the Clerick's seconding Baron Scarpione's injunction against pansyflower communicants' behaving in a way that they two construed as "out there," you retorted--well, what else was there to say?

° So I suddenly saw the problem stated simply: "What behaviour is 'out there'?" Why not use this liturgical downtime wilily by observing, Colette fashion, the mixedsex couples? For they, at least, must surely be "in there."

° Well, there were only three couples in the entire basilica canoodling during the preachment. In fact there were only three mixedsex couples under the age of thirty. And it does appear that at Assumption couples, mixedsex samesex or bothsex, over the age of thirty observe a tabu against touching one another.

° For sure none of them do. Touch.

° But, I say, three twentysomething mixedsex couples. What's more, none of the men was dressed appropriately, and only one of the women (a floral print sleeveless sheath, nicely toned to her fairly natural blonde hair), so these couples perfectly display the prerogatives of secondclass membership at Assumption.

° For sure samesex and bothsex couples could not aspire to firstclass. God's curse must lie equally upon the barren and the illtailored.

° These then are the observed customs of secondclass affection, tacitly acknowledged as "in there" by Baron and Clergy alike:

1. The taller may rest an arm on the shorter's naked shoulder.

2. The shorter may stroke the face of the taller during a lull in the dramatic flow of the sermon.

3. And the taller may place a hand on the hand of the shorter and both hands may rest in the crotch area of the taller.

I'm telling you what I saw with my own eyes. Bastien would've seen it too and attested, but couple No. 3 were in the pew directly behind his blond head. I had to stretch my spine to full length just to view them catercorner.

° In short, we now know exactly what secondclass communicant samesex and bothsex couples may, with Clerick's and Baron Scarpione's permission, do during the sermon at Assumption, I scarcely like to think of the Passing of the Peace.

° What is "out there," then, must necessarily include:

1. -- -- -- -- --

°--well, I reckon there's to be no tongue, 'sall I can figure . . . .

§§§§§

° Course the catch is there aren't any twentysomething samesex or bothsex couples at Assumption, too busy worshipping the goddess Venus, I expect.

° And pocky, pustulant, putrefying posttwenty flesh in any imaginable conjugation--eeeuuu!

° Affectionately (but in an "in there" sort of way), Giac.