I've always been especially self-conscious about my breath. I grew up with an older brother who made great sport of trapping me in clouds of reek that came from his various orifices. I have especially acute memories of the fetid air that came out of his mouth in the mornings. As a pissed off teenager it was easy to come to the conclusion that my brother's breath smelled that way simply as a reflection of what a horrible person he was: loud, obnoxious, prone to tyrannical outbursts of violence. How could his breath not smell like a dying possum in a sewer?
This was the first time I ever considered the fact that I also might have bad breath in the morning. I didn't just consider it, I took as an irrevocable fact. I could never really get a sense for the state of my breath, whether it was rancorous or neutral, but the memory of my brother's breath from my childhood always left me suspicious that common genes left me susceptible to all his physiological shortcomings.
This is an unfortunate because I am fond of morning kissing. Waking up with someone, seeing their face inches from your, the first light of day swelling at the blinds, it's hard to think of something to do other than kiss. Life is too short, filled with obstacles and reasons things fail or fall apart. Waking up close to someone I care about, I've always felt a dopey sense of luck. It makes my body want to speak, and the most instinctive language is kissing.
The great cosmic joke is that, in this happy bath of gratitude, there's eight hours of digestive exhaust and stale bedroom air to stand in the way. Touching lips for the first time in the morning, still in bed, no time yet for tooth brushing or gargling, is a kind of blunt physical intimacy. It's a test, to see if your love and attraction can stand up to the physical realities of your partner's most unromanticized form. I know that I, for one, look like a bleery-eyed pile of trash in the morning. Even after a full night my face goes pale, my wrinkle lines deepen, and my hair turns into an entropic molding.
After turning over and seeing your lover's eyes already open, looking at you softly, there's a hint of trepidation in leaning in for the day's first kiss. Add in a night of boozing and cigarettes and it's almost too much to think about what fallibly pungent vessel it is that you're foisting on her.
With the women I've been in love with, I've never had any revulsion from breath or unflattering body odors. I still remember some mornings with one woman, the first touch of our dry lips, nudging them open softly, breaking the shy seal of morning mouth. The first warm breath mixing together, dank and fecund, slowly rubbing the wetness from the inner lip outward. The first shy probe of the tongue, not wanting to overwhelm the other person, slowly widening until the whole mouth is open and the kiss is becoming sexual.
Two women I've dated had the distinct taste of broccoli in the morning. I remember noticing it for the first time, recognizing the taste, and then quietly marveling at the fact that I actually liked it. If this were my brother, or some one-night stand, it might have been overwhelming. With someone I cared about it was sweet, another part of them that I wanted to touch and hold (or lick, as it were). That's the great trick of falling in love. It can teach you to crave everything in life, even the things that once might have been nauseatingly inconceivable.
I'm not sure if I have a "type" of woman, but if I do, I imagine her breath tastes like broccoli in the morning.
Previous Posts:
Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile
Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds
Love Machine: Making A Scene
Nerve Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant
Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate
Love Machine: My Mother
Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection
Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room
Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph
Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On
Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry
Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner
Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night
Sex Machine: If You Can Get Me Hard I'll Show You A Good Time
Date Machine: Tool Academy, or Watching TV with Your Girlfriend
Sex Machine: Getting Laid
Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?
