Some of us, in retrospect, were a linguistic prequel to “trans,” though transgender was happening and being somewhere around us, out of our grasp. We were crafty creatures, but unlike the gender scene now evident, ours felt denuding, maddening, stranding.

I am tender toward identities but suspicious of them.

Kissing is the ultimate act of estrangement, queer in the stretchy sense of “strange” that many queers prefer to distinctions between straight and gay.

know for a fact, feel for a fact, that slices of this film have lived inside me.

The more one considers making out, the more it seasons, the more it opens up. Just how promiscuous is our reading? As a kind of sex, does it have protected and unprotected forms? Is it any tamer for the reading child?

What kind of animal, what kind of insect, is my kiss? A kiss is something abuzz, alighting, maybe even burrowing.

Gender is always a scene of making out.

what’s unfolding as I kiss a text? as I make contact, actively receiving it in my body?

It may look like there’s “a child” before you; a later me; a kisser; a rational reader. Yet for you, I’m words.