LBJ kissing his father goodbye.
This makes me think of…
We all kiss on the mouth in my family. We’re stupid and common and we don’t got no class whatsoever. Somewhere in the history of everyone else came a time when men stopped kissing men because of fuck knows. And then from somewhere else came kissing on the cheeks. Sophisticated. European. Modern. In France they got two kisses because of the unions. In the UK we only got one because of rationing.
Meanwhile, stuck out away from civilisation on the Wirral, no one thought to tell my family who still to this day grab each other and kiss on the mouth.
I don’t tell people anymore. To warn them, I mean. I just take them out there and let them come to Jesus on their own. My wife, first time she met them, was bombarded; hardly knew what the fuck was going on.
They’re a strange bunch anyway - particularly for a girl from the South. We spent two or three days over there with them. She got kissed on the mouth a lot by a lot of strange people. Drunk, mostly. She makes it worse by being the kind of person you want to just grab and kiss anyway.
When we were driving home she suddenly turned to me and said “They kiss, your family, you know? They kiss you on the mouth.” as though she’d only just realised it herself.
“You’re goddamned fucking right they do, baby.” I didn’t say because, Christ. But I thought it.
And this picture of LBJ saying goodbye makes me think of that, and Uncle Ian and a family of thousands all saying hello and kissing you because that’s how we do it.
