About three years ago, a lovely young fellow named Federico came to visit Seattle. Federico was from Argentina. I have a special e-mail account that some of you old school internet users might remember as a "shell" account. It's like the kind you got when you went to college if you started before 1996. Remember "finger" and "irc" and "ytalk" and "pine"? Yeah? Well, I still have all of that. Anyway, Federico has one of those accounts too on the same server, and though I'd never met him, I saw him writing in IRC one day that he was in Seattle and was visiting and was wondering what there was to do. So I offered to show him around. Mind you, there was no internet crush involved - this was the first communication that Federico and I had ever had. So, one drizzly Seattle December afternoon, I walked down to the Denny Regrade to Federico's hotel to meet him and show him around a bit. Federico was not exactly a looker, but he was a dear sweet boy. And oh... the accent. God, it just made me melt. Now, I'm going to cut this story a little short to get to my point (yes, there's a point coming, wait for it), but more or less, Federico and I had a blast tearing up Seattle. He seemed to be pretty impressed by the end of his tour. So, after two days of touring, late at night, I walked him back most of the way to his hotel. At the bottom of Denny hill, we were saying goodbye. He paused a moment and then asked if he could give me a kiss? He explained that it's something that they do in Argentina. And there was something about him... I don't know if it was the accent or pheremones or what... but I was already getting attracted to the boy. And then he gave me a kiss on the cheek, and my face turned lobster red and a big unsupressable grin came to my face. I KNEW it was just one of those "mwah!" sort of kisses, but I couldn't help myself. And suddenly, I found that I was trying to scheme on ways to get into Federico's hotel that night. I managed to keep myself under control, but god DAMN. Something about the little kiss on the cheek... I've never wanted to scheme on a boy like that before! My tummy went to jelly. And I skipped merrily up Denny Hill (no easy feat!).

I've never seen Federico again, but I've never forgotten that little kiss on the cheek. I think that it was my favorite kiss ever even though on the actual passion meter it was probably a 1.

Bryn had some Argentinian friends, and once she took me to a party of theirs. They kissed everyone on the cheek too. I didn't have QUITE the same reaction to it, but I am convinced of one thing. Kissing on the cheek is a GREAT tradition and we should SO make it part of our culture. Don't you think everyone would be a whole heck of a lot nicer to each other if we all kissed each other in hello and goodbye?

It's probably good though that I don't live in Argentina. I'd be a regular whore.