Voices of the Kissing Ban
The ban, it was good for us. My friend and I. We hadn't worked in months, and suddenly there were things that needed doing. Enforcement. Demolition. I was enforcement first. The long arm of a law.
The arm, anyway.
My friend, he is saying something about the size of my penis.
*
At the start, we had defined 'public' as 'anywhere that wasn't under a roof', but this had its problems. Hitherto innocent outdoor toilets were hollowed out, their tops taken off, becoming the infamous 'kissing cylinders'. You remember. The sounds were unbearable. We needed new ways of knowing what was happening inside. I had my ear against one in particular when I hit upon the now familiar definition. 'Any place where air can pass through'. I'm still proud.
*
They employed us to wave fans at weaknesses of the wood.
I met my wife in a kissing cylinder.
Sometimes the walls weren't weak enough. We had knives to open them apart. Then they felt our breeze okay.
I'm sorry, I meant: I met your wife in a kissing cylinder.
*
Yes, that's right. I started the Chapped Lips League at the time when they were taking walls off houses. My mother caught pneumonia in a breeze. Her bedroom open on all sides. Why? She hadn't put her lips on anything in years. When I found her they were blue.
*
They were working for us, that lot, the CLL, and never realised it. Who wants a great red 'X' on the side of their house? Dead mothers indeed! We had mobs hammering at our doors. Begging us to take their walls from them. Entirely unnecessary, of course; we'd had no doors for months. The doors were in piles in the dust by the dogs. The dogs had made a sort of pissing against them.
*
Because no one ever had their revenge by putting things back to the way they were, is why. Yes, the early days were difficult: you try running a sloganeering campaign when there are no walls to draw on. But we found other ways. More permanent ways. It's much easier to learn something when everyone is looking at you, but thinking about themselves.
*
I like my scar.
I like your scar.
My scar is a great red 'X'.
*
The business with the blades was a problem, yes. We had to retaliate. But I am nothing if not a man of ideas. Here. Would you like to see my lips? I've kept them all, pressed in a book.
*
I cope. One's plosives, and eating spaghetti, are most difficult.
