To eat with kisses

“Can I give you a kiss?”, he asks, by way of greeting. It is a meeting of wine people, from Incavi, and most people welcome each other with handshakes and a lot of frankness and warmth. “You have to do it,” I say jokingly. “It’s just that I like to ask first,” he says, upon hearing me. And he adds: “At home we are very kissy, but you never know…” I pause for a moment on the adjective. To be kissy. To be someone who likes to give kisses. In the Spanish language it would be to be besucón, and in Basque, musukatzaile. In Finnish, suutelija. I wonder, then, if all languages have this meaning. The word that explains that someone is given to giving kisses.

It is not fashionable to kiss, because it is fashionable not to invade the space of others, not to force contact, especially if we are addressing children or someone of the other gender. Being surly looks good, being expansive seems less sublime. Morally, today, the person who does not want to rub against others is superior to the one who does. But we are Mediterranean, we. Our way of tasting wine and sharing it, our way of celebrating food come from afar. And our way of relating physically as well. I don't want to be touched all day and by everyone, agreed, but this gesture, which is rubbing cheek to cheek and sending the kiss itself into the air, to the horizon, seems beautiful to me. Animals lick you, to clean you, and thus indicate that they are close to you. Children rub their nose against yours, they want to bite you in jest. It seems to me that we, adult humans, can be kissy. To me, what really invades my space is indifference.