A Kiss on the Lips

Sweet nicotine I’ll miss you once you are gone,

Like a lover, a friend, a favourite son,

The black sheep of the family, my sweet cigarette,

Can I live without you will I learn to forget,

The caress that you give when I’m feeling down,

A kiss on my lips, one second of calm.

I remember our first embrace in my youth,

That second I realised an unmistakable truth,

No matter what they said I knew they were wrong,

Whatever would happen we’d get along,

Be friends, confidants, my cigarette and I,

A kiss on my lips and now a tear in my eye.

I must say goodbye to a favourite friend,

A romance I believed would never end,

Like a mistress who poisons me day after night,

I need to let go but I don’t want to give up the fight,

I want to take you and hold you bring you to my lips,

Like a kiss from a lover you’ll always be missed.

And if we should meet in a pub or a club,

Excuse me for ignoring you, my darling, my love,

One kiss from your lips there’d be no going back,

We’d be dancing and talking and starting to laugh,

About all of those times I held you, we kissed,

A kiss on my lips I still remember that kiss.

Megan

“No way,” Ian laughed as he slapped his best friend Tomas on the back. “Not with Megan you’re mental. She’s a freak.”

“You made the bet. I get anywhere with her and you’re paying for footie at the weekend.”

Sitting on the back seat of the number fifty seven, his arm wrapped around Mad Megan’s shoulders, Tomas couldn’t help thinking back to that conversation a sense of shame brewing inside of him. His cheeks reddened as he remembered how smug he had felt as Ian had patted him on the back and how he had laughed along as his best friend had proclaimed “you’re the man!”

Admittedly his date with Megan hadn’t gone entirely as planned. Most of the usual haunts he used to take his unsuspecting dates had been black balled, the cinema was derided as nothing more than a mouthpiece of the American demon whilst a suggestion they go to a nightclub had been met with a frosty stare. Yet despite the limitations imposed by Megan on where they could spend their night Tomas had found he had enjoyed walking around Hanley with nowhere to go, laughing and enjoying each other’s company.  

Sneaking a look at Megan nestled next to him on the backseat Tomas wondered at how he could have taken part in the cruel name calling he and his friends had used to subject her to. How could he have missed her ethereal beauty? Maybe she was a little strange, kooky even but he had discovered that night he found her little idiosyncrasies enchanting and from some other place he heard his Nana’s voice chiding him. “You should never judge a book by its cover.”

When they kissed, there on the back seat of the number fifty seven, bouncing along to the streets of Stoke,  Tomas found himself lost in a world where only he and Megan existed and then she pulled away to look at him, a look of ecstatic incomprehension in her eyes and her words hit him like a sledgehammer. “I can’t believe I’m here with you! I always thought you and your friends were laughing at me.”

For the rest of their journey home Megan’s words rang inside his head in all their accusatory might to a background track of the laughter Tomas and Ian had shared as they had joked about Mad Megan. Hand in hand they left the fifty seven and walked now upon the streets of Hartshill until finally they came to rest outside Megan’s front door. As they kissed and she whispered her parents wouldn’t be back until the early hours Tomas found himself ignoring the possibilities, her honour strangely meaning more to him than his desires, and so he hugged Mad Megan and made his way back through the streets to his home, alone. 

Behind the swimming baths, the following Monday morning Tomas smoked a cigarette whilst dreading the moment Ian’s bus pulled up outside their college. Eager to discover the gossip his friend arrived earlier than usual and as Tomas confessed to nothing happening Ian’s lecherous grin quickly transformed into a look of triumph. “Ha football’s on you this weekend. I told you she was frigid,” he gloated before screaming in agony as Tomas thumped him on the arm. “Hey what was that for?”

 “Leave her alone she’s not that bad. If you want the truth I enjoyed Saturday night.”

If possible the grin on Ian’s face grew wider as Tomas spoke, “don’t tell me you like her? You love Mad Megan?” Ian teased his friend.

Shaking his head Tomas thought about what he had truly felt on Saturday night. “No I don’t” he told Ian truthfully. “But I’d like to think that we were friends.”

21st Century Film

These days people of my generation can often be heard complaining there are no decent films being made anymore but is that really the truth? Our parent’s remember with fondness classics from their childhood, be they Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid or Star Wars but ask them and I vet you they can hardly remember the turkeys that due to the passage of time have disappeared from our consciousness?

In today’s age we have the technology to see any film no matter how obscure the director or actor whose name is up there in front of us in lights. In our parents day a trip to the cinema was the highlight of the week but nowadays our access to films is almost unlimited and so with this proliferation of choice we are bound to see countless films with most being classed as anywhere between disappointing to down right awful. But does this really mean that films in general are getting worse?

Maybe then it is because we see so many bad films that when a film of a certain quality comes along it is either instantly branded a classic from it’s first day of release winning thirty six thousand Oscars or slowly spreads by word of mouth from one movie fan to another until you really aren’t a member of the human race unless you can recite three separate dialogues and have your own unique view on what the writer was trying to say. (Which was probably I’d like to get paid more for my next picture).

This in itself creates its own problems because whereas films from the distant past (the eighties and earlier) have only become recognisable because they have stood the test of time films of today can obtain that classic tag for simply being better than the thousands of mediocre straight to video movies that we can’t help watching when we return home late on Friday night from the pub.

When we see a film we believe to be a classic we shouldn’t compare it to a film starring the same leading man or lady but instead try to consider what audiences in twenty years time make of it. Using this criteria will Lost in Translation be released on DVD, Blue Ray or HYD or whatever the format of the day is twenty years from now as a classic or will it be shown on BBC2 as an alternative to the Norman Wisdom season? Will American Pie be as fondly remembered as Kind Hearts and Coronets? Or Twilight as The Lost Boys?

The only people who can truly determine whether the film we watch at the cinema tomorrow night is classic are our children because if they still want to watch it when they grow older then that film has stood the test of time.

Alison

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Sheepishly Tomas removed his hand from inside Alison’s shirt, a smile crossing his lips as he saw the light of the bonfire on top of Bunny Hill, reflected in her eyes. “I’m sorry I just thought. We were. Well! You know?”

“What?” As the flames flickered Tomas could see just enough to know he had made a mistake in letting his hands wander. “Just because we were kissing you thought you had the right to feel me up?”

“No! I mean, well it was getting pretty heated and . . .”

“And what? You thought that gave you the right to slip your hand up my blouse?”

“Well yeah!”

“Why?”

“Well because, I don’t know. You did it with Ian!” Even before the words left his mouth Tomas knew he had said the wrong thing. And watching Alison storm to her feet he wished not for the first time in his life, he’d kept his big mouth shut.

Pulling on her jacket, which even with his limited experience of girls, Tomas knew was now closed for business. Alison glared at him, “do you want to know what really happened between me and Ian?” She asked, “NOTHING!”

Not knowing what to say Tomas stayed where he was looking up at Alison, who after her outburst of anger, now strangely had tears running down her cheek. “Something might have happened between us,” she confided “but he ran away before it did. He made some lame excuse about not being ready and then he stopped calling me.”

Tomas felt like smiling as he thought back to the bravado with which his best friend had described his secret liaisons with the girl stood next to him but seeing the tears on Alison’s cheek wiped the smile from his face. Then in a moment of enlightenment he understood why she was crying and what the tears were for. “I’m sorry,” he told her, “I can leave you if you want me to.”

“Don’t be a muppet all of your life,” Alison laughed as she leant over him. “I’m just telling you I’m not that sort of girl,” she whispered before kissing him tenderly on the lips. “And even if I was Ian would never have been man enough to find out.”

An hour later Tomas rolled from atop of Alison and coming to rest upon his back he looked up at her smiling happily down at him. “I thought you said you weren’t that type of girl,” he joked.

“I’m not, but like my daddy always tells me there’s always a first time for everything.”

That Saturday night as they met for their weekly pool and pot night Ian couldn’t help but notice the smile emblazoned across his best friend’s face. “I’m guessing looking at you, you and Alison got it on last night?”

“Why?” Tomas asked realising for the first time his best friend was not the hero he always thought he was. 

“We spent most of the night talking.”

Shaking his head in disappointment Ian groaned, “I can’t believe you, when I left Bunny Hill you had it on a platter. What went wrong?”

“Nothing I had a great night.”

“But,” Ian couldn’t help but shake his head, “I told you what Alison was like. What went wrong?”

“Nothing. I told you I had good night. We spent most of it talking.”

“Talking! I can’t believe you. You’re such a disappointment.”

Tomas grinned, “funny that. That’s what she said about you.”