A roll of quarters pressing into my thigh caused me to remember the single kiss I gave to Sarah. Meeting her after class, I briefly pressed against her closed mouth and then embraced her. I did it without thinking, spontaneously, as though it were a habitual and casual greeting between two friends who weren’t secretly wishing to rip clothes and enter each other. The calculator in the pocket of my hoodie, now pressed between us, prompted me to explain that although I was happy to see her, it was only a TI-83 she felt digging into her stomach. It was a silly thing to say because of how difficult it is to mistake a calculator for an erection (which she may have felt as well), but it was that line, originally about a roll of quarters (which more closely resemble a penis) that linked those two partly similar moments.
I immediately put that kiss out of my mind, but Sarah didn’t. I did not think about it at all until she brought it up some days or weeks later. I forget the exact comment and the context, but she teased me about having kissed her and then not saying a word about it. I changed the subject, but I was struck to realize I had forgotten that obviously momentous incident. How strange that it was so spontaneous and impulsive! I really believe that I did not perform that action freely.
There was another episode of that spontaneity. Watching television, nested into my limbs, Sarah attempted to guide my chin towards hers. Without realizing she was initiating a kiss, I instantly stiffened my neck. It was resistance in some sense, but I wonder if true resistance is possible. Looking over what I have just written, I see myself always caused to act. The quarters and the calculator acted on me almost as though they were material, mechanistic causes, while the agents of my spontaneous bodily actions of initiating and then refusing kisses are obscure.
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