that fairytale kiss

I remember the conversation. It was amidst incoherent conversation, discordant laughs and the stench of beer. What is your fairytale kiss? Everyone is asked. Everyone's answer I now forget, save for mine, and the resultant jeers of my drunken reply.

I said I want to kiss the person I love in a library. I guess that shows how nerdy I've been all my life. But hey. I can't deny it. The library is a special place for me. Sacred, even. It's the only place where things can make sense, if one has the temerity to, well, browse through all of the shelves. A certain lightness is evoked by the thought of being surrounded by the greatest written ideas of man. And it is natural, I think, to share that special place with the person you think is special enough to share your life with. Haha. Cheesy. But hey, the question, after all, asked for a fairytale kiss.

But the thing is, I've been rejected once before. In a library. And like the child who suddenly discovers that Santa Claus is just his dad plus a pillow tummy, I sigh. Adulthood is creeping up. There are no tooth fairies. No wizards. No happily ever after in this goddamn boring world.

Maybe my friends were right. Maybe I was naive in choosing my fairytale kiss, and more so, in actually trying it out. I hear their alcohol-induced raucous all over again. But this time, I join in the laughter.

For now I nurse the bruise my inner child has sustained. But hopefully, tomorrow, I'll learn how to check under my pillow for magic coins. Again.