Siesta Key Beach, Selfie Kiss
“In the fancy spectacle of life, aspire to find a joy that does not need an audience.”
— Joyce Rachelle
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In August 2014, selfie was officially accepted in the word game Scrabble. It was also the year I took this photo.
This was a lucky shot. Just a fraction of a second, and a few millimeters, separate their lips. Adding to the challenge, I was using a very basic point-and-shoot camera with a significant shutter lag.
Nostalgia. Almost exactly 50 years earlier, in 1964, I received my first romantic kiss. It was moments before my parents and I disembarked in Cape town from our cruise on the Union Castle mail ship, the Pendennis Castle. On board, I encountered an exceptionally pretty girl with a perky nose and a lilting voice. Being seventeen, I could only watch from afar as several older boys flirted with her all the way down the coast. Once docked, minutes before we stepped onto the gangway, she suddenly appeared, pecked me on the cheek, then dashed off after giving me her phone number. Now, I was smitten, with a memory indelibly recorded for posterity.
In this photo, a young man is about to be kissed by a pretty woman and feels the need to record it and perhaps even circulate the photo on social media. When did it happen that a kiss is not enough?