Stolen Kisses

Earlier this year I saw on TV the film I Love You, Man. It is both a fun film and a terrible one – terrible because it is set in a kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland where the gay men are indistinguishable from the straight men and in which the gay men are emboldened to hit on whoever they like. The film follows Peter, played by Paul Rudd, who has no male friends, in his search for a straight male pal to be the Best Man at his wedding. Early on in the film he participates in a number of 'man-dates' to try to find one. It is a sign of the dysfunctional world in which Peter lives that, when he succeeds in making one (Sydney played by Jason Segel), one of the ways the two bond is by talking about masturbation; in this world, the world the film represents, this is almost the only way that two men can prove themselves straight to each other, by talking about how they fantasize exclusively about women. In a pre-apocalyptic wasteland two men shouldn't have to this to become friends. They shouldn't have to prove their heterosexuality to each other.

I Love You, Man is riffing on the difficulties associated with making same-sex friends in a world where homosexuality is both condoned and visible, where friendly overtures always run the risk of being misconstrued as sexual advances. Early in the film, Peter goes on a 'man-date' with a chap who shows no indications of camp-ness and goes so far as to make a passing comment on the attractiveness of their female waitress. At the end of the evening, this chap kisses Peter on the lips, entirely without prompting; Peter does not react to the kiss at all. When he gets home, his fiancé tells him his mouth tastes like an ash-tray and he tells her what happened. Although Peter did not ask for this kiss, did not want it, he accepts the experience seemingly without distress. In a way the film is performing a worthwhile social service by normalizing an experience that I suspect at least a few straight men may have had and find upsetting, but it lacks verisimilitude by downplaying the discomfort such an experience can engender. One thinks of the scene in The Crying Game in which the protagonist cowers in the shower, trying to cleanse himself, after having discovered that his amore is really a man (a scene parodied in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective). An unsolicited kiss can verge on violence, can be close to a kind of rape.

At this point in the post, I would like to segue to a slightly different topic. I should disclose that I have kissed a few people without permission, all girls, and I would like to describe one such occasion. In 2004 I travelled through Europe and one time I found myself in a train carriage traveling from France to the Czech Republic through Germany sitting opposite a girl with an extremely fine caboose lying stretched out prone, sleeping, on the pew opposite. As the journey continued, she woke up and we embarked on a conversation in English: it turned out she was a Polish physics student who had been visiting the site of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva which was not then completed. We discussed particles and anti-particles for a time and then, shortly before we arrived in Prague, I pounced on her, abridging the distance between us and kissing her impetuously on the lips. I remember, when we disembarked in Prague, she seemed a little discombobulated upon leaving the platform.

Now, for most of my life, I have treasured this memory as something romantic. To kiss a cute Polish girl on a train traveling between Strasbourg and Prague seemed the apex of my European adventure. In later years though, in thinking of this moment, I started to worry that I had done something immoral. I had invaded her space without her explicit consent. It may be that I had mistaken my attraction for her as being something mutual. At this time I was young and was supremely confident of my own sexual appeal: I had been the object of some interest from several girls at the French language school I attended in Montpellier and had enjoyed a fling with a Manchester girl in Provence. But perhaps the kiss I stole from this Polish girl was unexpected, even unwanted. I can no longer be sure. Perhaps I should have asked her first, "Can I kiss you?" And, if I'm honest, I have to admit that her answer at the time would probably have been "No".

My moral scruples about this memory makes me worry that I might have been like Donald Trump. Readers will know what I'm talking about.  When talking to Billy Bush on a bus, Trump said that his fame allowed him to "grab women by the pussy" if he wanted; he also told Billy something like, "I'd better have a mint just in case I feel like kissing her [the female Entertainment Tonight presenter]". Dead centre of his own narcissistic bubble, Trump imagines that his attraction to women must always be reciprocated. It makes me worry if I have a little Tump in me. Am I, I wonder, or have I been in the past a little like America's odious current President-Elect? I can only hope not. One difference, it seems to me, is that in his comments to Billy Bush, Trump appears to implicitly recognize that his advances are unwanted whereas, in my advances towards women, the context itself has always seemed to warrant the attempt.

Sexual politics is a minefield. Of course, "no" means "no" and a woman has the right to withdraw consent at any time. But I have many times been in situations where the lass put up a little resistance, resistance, mind you, that didn't amount to an outright "no", and then acquiesced. It happened early on in both my long-term relationships (the first lasting four years, the second lasting, more or less, about five) and it happened with the girl I had a serious crush on between 2009 and 2014. In my experience, consent does not need to be explicitly verbal to be established. It can be tacit. I hope I can make this claim without coming across as a chauvinistic asshole. I am of course talking about stolen kisses and nothing that goes any further.

One advantage of living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland is that it may help a person to see himself from the outside. Suppose Billy Bush had said to Trump "My fame as a television host means I can grab you by the crotch if I want" or said "I better take a mint just in case I kiss you". Turning the tables in this way might unlock something in Trump's head. Arguably Trump might perceive this as a violation of his personal space, a kind of sexual harassment, and, finding himself the victim, cause him to reappraise his attitude towards women. Perhaps it might force Trump to realize that the behavior he brags about is reprehensible. Although, judging by the double standard he has displayed all his life (being at once both extraordinarily thin-skinned and a bully), even this turning of the tables might not register on him or enable Trump to see himself from the outside, as others see him.

The essence of ethics is to imaginatively put oneself in another's place. I argued this in the post "The Person and Her Situation." But to put oneself in another's situation one first needs to understand it. One needs to ask questions, one needs to make the effort. This is the fundamental problem with modern psychiatry – no one even asks questions. And errors compound which are never corrected. How can one treat a patient if one doesn't even understand him or her? At the moment, psychiatrists don't even make the attempt.