Needy Greedy Love (Part 15)

Meanwhile, Gunn wept sad and sorrowful tears of sadness and sorrow for his mother, for Cat, for the mess in his living room, for the gradual decline of democracy as a functional government in a world increasingly given to socialism, and for the free market economy stymied by governmental tariffs, treaties, an incompetent Congress, and the slow-footed and chaotic United Nations.

But when Gunn looked up, he saw Thais's lips moving. It was a good thing he was once deaf thanks to a really bad job at a pharmacy with an old man named Gower, because Gunn could read those lips. "I feel so much angst," those lips said. Thais, the cop with heels sculpted by warm Brazilian sands, was reaching out to him. Thais, the contortionist who taught him yoga position number thirty-four, was feeling angst. Thais, who had asked him lovingly to Wet-Vac his mother's big-boned ashes, was crying for his help.

And then a thought hit Gunn like a freight train hitting those stupid semi-trailers that have gotten stuck on the tracks and someone had the sense to film it with his or her cell phone.

I love her, Gunn thought, because Thais Knotts makes me feel safe and secure.

But mostly, Thais Knotts made Gunn Adhamh Glendonwyn feel. He felt. It felt good to feel. It made him feel full of feelings that felt good. His feelings were strong. His feelings were virile. He couldn't ignore the manly feelings coursing through his Scotch (or Irish, or both) veins. Felt feelings must be released, he thought. He needed to feel something. He needed to feel feelings for someone who made him feel.

"I don't know what to say," Thais said, not knowing what to say.

So Gunn kissed Thais. He kissed her so she didn't have to say anything. He kissed her so he wouldn't have to say anything. They kissed each other, not speaking, mind you, in a silence without words of any kind, so neither would have to say anything for a long, long time. It was really quiet except for a whole bunch of lip smacking going on.

Her lips felt good to him, and his lips felt good to her. They kissed each other hard, loosening teeth and even bruising the little spaces under their noses, those spaces that have a name that nobody knows except maybe anatomy students, Jeopardy contestants, and those nerdy kids in the national spelling bee.

Her tongue tasted like dusty Hummel figurines mixed with coffee and doughnut sprinkles. His tongue tasted like Tom Collins, Johnny Walker, Cuban cigar, and ash from his dead mother. But neither cared, because they weren't saying anything, and saying nothing was sometimes a very good thing to say.

They were kissing fools. They swapped spit. They shared old saliva containing, as everyone knows, all known diseases and even some that had threatened to spread into a pandemic and cause the Centers for Disease Control to throw up their collective hands and cry, "We are so not in control of any diseases, but at least we're safe here in Atlanta since we have all the cool antidotes." They played tonsil hockey, Thais using a wicked slap shot to score again and again and again. They tickled each other's uvulas into submission. They stayed in lip-lock while Gunn's mother's dust floated maternally all around them, and afterward, Gunn's little crooked tooth, the one that made him look most like an incorrigible rogue, had straightened out.

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