Monday PDA

Today the air was soupy. Like when you walk out into it, coming from air conditioning, and your skin simultaneously grows a second skin of sweat.

Thus, it felt prudent to wait and do my weekly long run after the sun had left this equation, so I set out from the gym at 8:42 p.m. Which turned out to be the right idea. Legs were strong. It took 72 minutes to do 8 miles through the Back Bay, up Mass Ave to Harvard Square and back around on Memorial Drive, breeze off the Charles the whole way, Brahms string sextets on the iPod .... a layer of sweat present but not stifling. When I hit Copley again, the fountain was still turned on (hallelujah!), so I peeled off my socks and shoes and iced the hot out of my feet.

A welcome treat.

As I dried off, turning and standing to walk to my car, I noticed a couple lurking just off the steps of Trinity Church. Two men, youngish, in t-shirts and khaki long shorts. One had his back to a tree and the second had just leaned in to kiss him, with a pre-lustful touch. As if they were just getting started, prior to hands and heads getting involved. The one leaning in would give the kiss, then pull back and grin, then lean in again.

I found myself watching as I walked by, trying not to look like I was looking. There was something so correct about this couple and how they were making out. Taking advantage of the emptiness and the shadows, the evening cool after a steamy day, no groping or grossing-out. Happy to be where they were.

Who wouldn't want to be in either of their places?

I'm the first to say I'm not usually a fan of public displays of affection. But I have memories of such ... long ago, a kiss in Brookline's Corey Hill Park that was worth every minute of its 2 languorous hours. The summer afternoon a date pressed me up against my front door while pedestrians crossed the street towards us not 10 feet away .... and another time, at 1 a.m., at the same door, when another man persuaded me into the same position with the same level of insistence. The last time I saw the CFO, when he open-mouthed kissed me standing out on Congress Street, traffic pouring past.

Ah, it must be a Monday. When one is wistful already for the next weekend, for the companionship and those times of unabashed openness and comfort.