Kissathon

1974. I stand in the main gathering area of the shopping mall. I was told that this is the largest shopping mall in the country.

It is after midnight. On the floor around me are couples on mats, some covered in blankets. Maybe fifty couples, maybe more. All of the couples have their lips together. In theory, they are kissing. But at this point, after many hours, it is more accurate to say that they are holding their lips together. Some drinks through straws while kissing. One man smokes, careful when he puts the cigarette in his mouth and when he pulls it out not to separate from his partner’s lips.

My job is to watch for whether any couple’s lips separate during the night.

I have been told to be scrupulous because, depending on the outcome, this may go into the Guinness Book of World Records for world’s longest kiss.

The day before, I rode from Peoria to Chicago on a bus. It was dark when I got to Chicago and transferred to the train that would take me to the suburb where I had reserved a room at a hotel walking distance from the mall. I had been a little surprised that it was possible for a 15-year-old to call a hotel and make a reservation.

On the train, the conductor looked at my ticket and told me I was going the wrong way. He consulted his worn print timetable and said “hmm” a few times, while I felt like the train and I were a silk scarf slipping off the edge of the table. The conductor told me that I should get off at the next stop and take the train going the other direction. He looked concerned as he was saying this. The problem, he said, was that the train going the other way would arrive very soon after we passed the station—so soon that I would not have time to go down the stairs and then up to the other side of the platform. I would need to walk across the tracks and climb up onto the platform. Also, it was the last train of the night.

I followed his instructions. On the other side of the platform, I waited, in the dark, watching for headlights on the train, which I knew may already have passed. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I had missed it. I saw nothing but dark past the dim overhead lights of the station. I wanted the train to come, I was worried that it wouldn’t, but at the same time I liked the dark pressing in on me from all directions. I pictured myself walking into it and having adventures.

After several hours of watching the couples, a woman relieves me. She is wearing a tight black t-shirt with the word “KISS” in rhinestones across the front. I lie on my side on a wooden-slatted bench nearby and sleep. In the morning, I go through temporary plywood doors into an empty retail space, the floor covered in plastic sheeting, which is the event headquarters. I take a bagel from the catering table. There are no bagels in Peoria, but I like them when our family visits New York.

Soon, the members of the rock band arrive with some helpers. They wear garish white makeup with huge black and red and silver shapes on their faces—one looks like some kind of vampire, another has a huge star over his eye. Another looks like a cat. Another looks like a fantasy spaceman. Their hair is long and black and seems to rise from their heads in defiance of gravity. They wear black leather outfits and huge platform shoes, which they have to lift and set down carefully so as not to trip on the plastic sheeting. I take some pictures of them with my dad’s camera. The band’s name is Kiss, and the kissing marathon is a promotional activity to spread word about the band, which is not well known outside of New York City. I wrote a letter to the band’s management after its first album was released, wanting to let the band and management know that I had enjoyed the record, because I assumed few people would buy a record by a band that looked so strange. I wanted them to be encouraged. The management called me a few weeks later and asked if I wanted to help out at this event outside Chicago.

When the band leaves the empty store, a large crowd has formed in the mall. It is Saturday. The crowd steps around the kissing couples and on up the broad stairs that cascade around them. Above, people walk on what looks like multiple catwalks to and from pockets of stores. The band steps through the crowd and through the kissers. Shoppers look at them from the corners of their eyes. The president of the band’s record label makes an announcement into a hand-held microphone.

That afternoon, when I meet my parents in our family car, which is pulled up to a curb in the parking lot outside the mall, I am wearing a pair of glittery light-blue pants and a pair of green platform shoes. My mom and dad say that they may not give me money to spend on clothes again if make such impractical purchases.

After I had woken on the bench, one of the organizers told me that during the night, a couple had fallen asleep and had fallen away from each other’s lips. When they awoke, they had been notified and left the mall.

As we drive home to Peoria, I imagine the couple folding their mat and blankets, and stepping through the other kissers, heavy with disappointment and shame.

Robert Fromberg has published prose in Hobart, Drunk Daily, Indiana Review, and many other journals. His memoir is forthcoming from Latah Books. He taught writing at Northwestern University for a long time, a long time ago. On Twitter and IG: @robfromberg