Queensland’s kiss-a-cop campaign for happier relations with the Law reminds me that I have been an advocate of kissing for a long time.
In fact I’ve been a member of the CIB (cuddle-in-bed) squad for as long as I can remember.
It’s my contention that it’s better to kiss than hiss and to love than to shove but if the Law wants to keep me at long arm’s length, that’s its business!
This is the time of year for lip service and the office party has found me in my usual amenable frame of mind.
I saluted the tea lady in gallant fashion and she squealed and screamed and pelted me with used tea bags, the wanton that she is.
“Ullo darlink,” I whispered Charles Boyer-like (he was a great lovair, kids, back in the old romantic Dreamtime), “Your tea is weak but your passion is strong. Let me take you away from all this, at least as far as the mistletoe.”
“Lawks a-mercy,” she shrieked, “he doesn’t half carry on.”
“It’s not what he carries on.” said a cool, young secretary. “It’s who he carries off.”
I could see that she was jealous. Young, liberated and with her eye on the prime minister-ship, she saw me as an old decadent, kiss-about, perpetuating the ancient right of the Lord of the manor to kiss where and whom he might; a relic of chivalry when knights went forth etc. with their hawks and driving their falcons.
At this stage I put up my pre-fabricated mistletoe and stood, huge and watchful, beneath it, my great form frozen into immobility and my leather lips trembling like a stoble pole on a windy day.
People kept away from me as if I were a redback.
It made me think that Time has not altogether left me unscathed.
Oh, I may be just a kisspot but I’m not altogether immune with blue eyes looking into mine, eyes alight with passionate intensity, eyes saying “I’ve given you all I can, you have drained me dry,” even when they belong to my bank manager.
I’m disappointed with my poor kiss tally this office party time because I thought my safari suit was particularly appropriate what with me being the size of an elephant and swinging off the decorations and shrieking “you Jane, me Max” at passing office girls.
I think those courteous days when, if people weren’t dancing the gavotte, they were kissing each other’s hands, could be returned with some advantage.
While I’m continually invited to kiss people’s feet, it seems to me the graciousness inherent in the kiss has been overtaken by the sensual slobber or the perfunctory peck with a lot of lip in between.
It’s not so much that people want to kiss my mug, but mug my kisser. It all goes with higher Opec prices and violence in cricket.
And what about kissing a cop?
The whole city watch-house would be full of whimpering patrols with the thought of my being loose on the streets.
The pretty policewoman says to the duty sergeant as she brings her prisoner: “He said “Kiss me, Hardy, so I applied a full Nelson.”
Or, as they say in the Banana State: a hard kiss often leads to a soft cell.
Max Fatchen