as you wish

Since my last blog was devoted to the male celebrities I long to lock-lips with, I thought I would devote this one to the women I want to kiss.  Not really, I just put that in there for your husband who is reading this over your shoulder right now.  I don’t want this to be considered purely a chick read!

Once again, I will start over.

Since my last blog was all about the men I would like to kiss, I started thinking about all the great movie smooching I have seen in my life.  There are so many of them (and my brain is a bit fried because I do have a tribe of three children who are not in school or camp right now).  Again, there are so many great climatic kiss scenes in movies that if I even tried to list them, I would probably think of only the fluff ones from all my favorite 1980s movies.  One that immediately comes to mind is the great kissing scene in Top Gun when Maverick rides his motorcycle to go see Kelly McGillis’s character (I just looked up her name on my favorite site for actor info, IMDB.com and found out her character’s name was Charlie.  Does anyone else remember that?  I thought I knew that movie by heart but would not have answered that correctly on millionaire – I think I would still have lost at the 50/50.  However, who can blame me?  I was 17 and just spent 110 minutes watching Tom Cruise BCJE – before couch jumping era- and Val Kilmer on the same big screen, how in the world could I be expected to even notice there were women in the film? )

I would love to impress you with my film knowledge and refer to some incredible scene in an obscure Katherine Hepburn film.  However, I grew up in Miami before it was the great cultural playground it is now.  I was not exposed to The Arts in my youth. And in my adulthood, I am kind of busy with little things like trying to figure out how to raise my tribe to be honest, culturally aware, well-read, non-judgmental, charitable human beings who during their time here will contribute great things to this earth.  Not sure if I am doing such a great job because the only goal they all three have at this moment is to figure out how to surpass the next level on Super Mario Party 8 on their Wii system. 

Again and again and again, I digress.

The point is that the best, most enjoyable, most satisfying kissing scenes are usually the ones at the very end of the movie, culminating the 100-minute journey the viewer has just taken with the leads of the film.  The viewer gets what we really want, a happy ending (and not the Larry David kind either).

The film ends in complete and utter romantic perfection…

Think of the scene at the end of Sixteen Candles (I warned you I would only reference 80s movies) in which Molly Ringwald’s character, Sam, finally gets her birthday cake.  Oh, I loved that scene when she is sitting not at, but on the dining room table.  After seeing that movie, every girl at my high school had at least one date which involved having dinner on the dining room table. (disclaimer:  I only dreamed of that date, as I never dated in high school.  I didn’t even go to prom because the guy who was going to be my platonic date left me a drunken message one week before prom letting me know he would not go with me.  Oh, but I am sooooo over that May 9, 1987 phone message left at 11:27 pm. One incident that helped me “get over that” was running into that guy at a South Beach club post-college in my skinny jeans and flashing my new engagement ring as I said hello. Ha!  Issues, me? Never. )

In any case, I am absolutely convinced Sixteen Candles is one of the reasons the name “Jake” is one of the most popular names on any playground in any city in this country.  We all sat in the theater with our big permed hair in scrunchies wearing our Stagelight make-up, oversized NO sweaters and leggings while we watched that scene when “Jake” kisses Sam over the candles of the cake.  And, in that very moment, we decided that the most perfect boy in the world would be named Jake.  Not I though.  I am way too level headed to name after a movie character.  Instead my “perfect boy” name came from a gorgeous guy my brother went to high school with.  (I do google him once in a while to try to find a current picture.  He is a successful builder in Miami but darn it, he doesn’t have any pictures on his site.  Guess I will keep waiting for him to join facebook.)

Darn, I am already exhausted from this blog and I have not even made the point I wanted to make yet.  So, here is my point.

After that breath-taking kiss, do Harry and Sally really live Happily Ever After?

I used to believe that.  I thought once Wesley kissed Buttercup in The Princess Bride, the rest of their life would be a fairytale. You know, Buttercup was brilliant as she was smart enough to fall in love with the boy who answered every request with “as you wish”.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our husbands did that? 

Honey, please put take out the garbage, for me.
As you wish.
Sweetie, please pick up the dry cleaning on your way home, for me.
As you wish.
Darling, please pick up little Jakey from baseball practice, for me.
As you wish.
Pumpkin, please bring home that cute guy from Abercrombie, for me.
As you wish.
Honey bun, please bring home that new Louis Vuitton Miroir Alma GM, for me.
As you wish.

I think “as you wish” could be the marital version of “Dayenu”.  (a big apology to any reader who has never been to a Passover Seder, as that will not make sense to you.) 

It is just that I think it is a disservice to us as young girls to be led to think it really is “happily ever after”.  I think the truth is a bit more “mostly happy unless of course you are totally PMS-ing or he uses your very expensive hair shampoo to wash the dog or he has the nerve to actually agree with you that those pants indeed ‘do make your butt look big’ or especially, if his mother comes to visit.”

Don’t get me wrong.  I love being married.  All I have to do is listen to my friends, Taylor and Victoria, on Cosmo Radio in the morning.  Their daily dilemmas describe how tough it is to be a single woman right now.   Those girls on Sirius absolutely help me appreciate my husband more and more.  The idea of having to be single and in “cougar mode” at this point in my life makes me completely nauseous. Truly, I just don’t ever want to have to shave my legs that much again!

I wish only that I was prepared for the reality of marriage.  Although, I don’t expect the Hollywood movie writers to show Brad annoying Angie because he chews his cereal too loud or Tom angry with Rita because she leaves little balls of floss on the counter.  That certainly would not be entertaining.  It is not that I want to see it in a movie; I just want a little truth in advertising. 

I want to leave you with this thought.  Next time a movie ends with an unbelievably romantic kiss, imagine Don Pardo narrating a disclaimer during the credits like they do in pharmaceutical commercials. 

This is how I imagine his narrative:

 “Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy will indeed have moments including happily ever after, but they will also experience the following symptoms:

fatigue, annoying habits, difficult in-laws, money debates, criticism, stonewalling, passive aggressiveness, loss of appetite, gain of appetite, nausea, swelling of the abdomen (especially for 9 months after a romantic evening such as the one in the end of this movie), mortgage payments, students loans, etc….”

Before I say TTFN (as my tween would say), I must go back to our conversation about Top Gun one more time.  While I did drool over Tom Cruise circa ‘tighty whities’ in Risky Business, as far as Top Gun goes, I was always a bit more of an ‘Ice Man’ girl myself.  How about you?