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Index Author's Note:
This work is based on on a true story. The Renaissance
festival in Tuxedo NY sported a kissing booth a few years back. For a dollar,
you could kiss your choice of period-dressed beauties. A young buck watched a
few random folks take their turns when he and one of the 'wenches' caught sight
of each other. He took a few turns with his fancy. Several hours later while
leaving the faire, I spied them walking, together, arm in arm. Guess the first
kiss took...
The town faire bustled with more souls than had attended in recent memory. Onlookers, serious seekers in search of the trivial to the most extravagant, sailors fresh in need of ways to squander their voyages' pay, and women offering their empty purses, and themselves, as a repository for all easily departed coinage...all came to the faire. A convention of all classes, mingling fine fragrances with the rank of a thousand peasants. Each in search of a bargain.
A sailor recently departed from his ship and a few golds richer walked the more populated avenues of the port, mingling amongst but not with the locals. For two days did his feet take him about, but no trinket or gaudy find enticed him. Even the pewter steins his seabound companions favored and spent innumerable hours polishing, comparing and using to quaff ale seemed so unimportant. It was as if the emptiness of live had dawned upon the man, and no comfort could be found in material possessions or commonly beauty. Observant but without interest did he pass the brothels and the cat-houses. Old buddies from previous passages for spice and mirth and plunder could entice him for his drinking company, but scarcely would the chair be warmed than would it be empty. He could not tarry, as if driven by an inexorable yearning - a sacred quest.
It was always the case that the worst tasks, of lifting, shoveling or cleaning, befell upon the youngest additions to the household. Few urchins would know a kinder madam, and the youngest addition was indeed more fortunate than most. At twenty two she was already ten years late in entering the profession, but her stunning beauty, masked for so long beneath layers of grime and abuse, and an infectious smile had changed an old attitude quickly. Being a runaway prior to puberty, the advancing years visited her with the additions of womanhood, yet unencumbered by the gamy tendencies of impoverished adulthood. It was with great tenacity that she had held on to her only gift this long, and with great sorrow forged of resignation to her lot that she consented to its loss. Romantic waxings melted into the misshapen reality of the day.
It was, then, by divine intervention that these two were saved, as the sailor found himself in a crowd gathered about a booth, with a woman of obvious former beauty and a tongue made sharper than forged steel hawking her goods. To entice, excite, enthrall the assembled was the aim, for some would later return to take long drinks from the lips they had tasted this afternoon. A half-copper would buy the kiss of the purchaser's choice, and a line began to form out of the crowd. The saultry, well-endowed and en-deviled were chosen - some often. But never was the maiden. Her look was one of being far off and completely without experience in the acts of love. And so it remained until the short line of willing purchasers was exhausted and the madam began to pressure those wavering in the wings. the sailor shyly declined until his eyes met those of the girl. She had gone unnoticed by the sailor, who had been consumed by his watching of others enjoying their purchases.
A twinkle, a flush. It lasted only a fraction of the smallest time before she turned her head. A sensitive nerve was being touched. But across a gulf of a few yards a resounding cord was being played. And in less time than it would take the sailor to draw a tankard was he at the side of his vision manifest. As if it was to be his first and only, the touching and parting of his lips to hers was a delightful dance of fantasy in a world turned cold and hard to lovers and the wonders of creation. Distraction, cruel distraction, whispered her brain to her heart, which skipped no less than three beats. Moved, drunk with conflicting passions, the sailor pressed another half-copper into the hands of the madam and again engaged an angel with a most gentle embrace. The maiden was too surprised at the act, so disorientated by the crowd's cheers, to put up her guard. In the blink of an eye was her wounded heart bathed - nay, awash - in a river of love. Lighting could have struck them both, but surely no just deity would have let such a moment as was now passing be interrupted, even by the most significant of cosmic events. Again, they parted, and waited, and watched each other. Being a man of action, the sailor reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew another coin. Just where the motion of gently tossing it over his shoulder ended and the kiss began cannot be discerned, for the attention of the onlookers, and the madam as well, was firmly fixed upon the joining as if Zeus himself had brought his chariot and fiery steeds earthward to offer Athena his services in reaching the evening's Olympian celestial celebration, due west. No one ever heard the half-copper chatter against the hard earth - or even cared.
Only as the same person could these two be more engaged, save the acts of affection. And had each clover, leaf and reflection of the Goddess's creation had its way, even their hearts would have beat the same time, in the perfect melody of rioting blossoms waiting, in the beams of dawn, for Sol's gentle warmth.
Like a ripple started by a tear, all who witnesses were swept up by the moment, as if each were participants in the spontaneous generation of a miracle. No one was surprised when the madam failed to demand remittance for her investment, though she had done so for previous customers who came for satisfaction and desired to keep their finds as wives or concubines. In all fairness, she had no chance against the winds blown by the unfolding event, as her heart had been softened already by the initial meeting and the taking in as a student of the urchin already way past her prime.
Another, who had had a kind husband but lost him to the angry coral and thrashing brine, knew her chances for similar rescue to be naught, as surely many year's quotas of happenstance had been used up on the maiden and the sailor. Some of the girls, often selected but never taken, each watched with at least a curie of jealousy.
With the imperial grace of the gods themselves did the lost and the looking walk from the site of their encounter. And in the telling of the story years hence would it often be added, truly with only the smallest bit of exaggeration, that the very heavens opened before them and all the light, warmth and grace lost on the port since the Golden Age's passing graced their path, their faces, and their backs, year after year, into legend.
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