Did you know that Mistletoe is poisonous? And it's a parasite: it grows on trees, sapping their nutrients. It can look attractive, but eventually it kills its host.
Kristen picked up a sprig of it at the store when out shopping for a pre-Christmas dinner party we were throwing the first week of December. My wife loves the holiday season, so she was in her element, pulling out our vast collection of tchotchkes.
"Let's hang it here," I said, standing in the doorway between our kitchen and dining room holding the bit of mistletoe Kristen had brought home.
"Okay," she replied, "but the house rule will be you have to kiss whoever you meet in the doorway!"
We both laughed: it was kind of silly, but we were close enough to our guests that night that I thought it would be a bit of harmless fun. Since she was standing in the doorway, I grabbed her around the waist. Playfully, she struggled and squirmed to get away from my exaggerated smoochy kisses.
"We'll never get our prep done if you're going to start things," she chided me.
Just then there was a knock at the side door. Our next-door neighbors, Nathalie and Trevor, had arrived.
"What's going on there?" Trevor inquired, faux sarcastically, stepping through the door. "Hope we're not interrupting anything..."
"We were just testing out the House Rule: you have to kiss whomever you meet under the mistletoe," Kristen shot back. Kristen and Trevor dated in college. Later, she'd introduced him to Nathalie. The connection had been fluid over the few intervening years, until, by happenstance, we ended up moving in next door to them: Nathalie had called Kris when the house had gone on the market. We often had dinners at one another's or spent weekends away with them.
Just then, the doorbell bonged and I went to admit Stephen and May, our other guests from down the block. He was an architect, and she was a pediatric surgeon. They both had a kind of reserved cool about them. A cocktail hour at their place might feature a jazz LP from his collection of vinyl while we sipped scotch and talked politics. They were a contrast to Nat and Trev, with whom the discussion was more apt to be football and beverage more apt to be Coors Light.
"Good to see you, man," Stephen greeted me. He had a firm handshake on one side and a bottle of Syrah in the other.
May and I hugged. As I went to take her coat, I heard a commotion back in the kitchen.
"Oh Trevor! Stop that!" Nathalie called. Trevor was giving Kristen a deep smooch under the mistletoe. He had her in a full-body clinch, exaggerated as if just playing around. He did that a lot with Kristen, but it was still just this side of icky.
"It's all in good fun, babe! Your turn!" he replied, but he didn't reach for his wife. Instead, Stephen bussed Nathalie quickly. Kristen was patting her hair back into place, before moving back into dinner preparation.
On weeknights I'm usually the cook, but Kristen will often venture into the kitchen when we entertain. That was the case tonight, when she'd prepared a platter of roasted salmon with new potatoes, leaving me to open up a crisp Gewurztraminer--not traditional holiday fare, but a nice meal. Our guests arrived right on time and the wine flowed with the conversation. Three or four bottles in, the topic turned to our various plans for the coming year.
"Stephen and I are hoping," May volunteered, "that sometime in the fall we might be welcoming our first bambino." Stephen gave her a kind of odd look but smiled shyly.
"Wow! I hope you're successful," Kristen said. "I think... well, we're still on the career path for a bit."
"Don't wait too long," May replied. "You don't want to get into the need for 'heroic measures'."
"Heroic measures sound like extra fun!" put in Trevor.
"Trust me," May replied, "in saying that nothing takes the sensuality out of a romantic encounter quite like giving your lady friend a shot in the butt with a carefully prepared syringe."
The women around the table all shuddered faintly.
"We'll probably be joining you in a family way," Nathalie said, looking to get the conversation going again, with a hesitant look at Trevor.
"... but not yet," he finished. It was a phrase I'd heard them use before and there was no mistaking the subtle interplay between them: she wanted it and he didn't. Kristen, sensing the topic was turning radioactive, proposed getting the desserts. Once again, the mistletoe became a problem. Kristen went in the kitchen to prepare dessert while various guests leapt up to clear plates. Trevor was carrying in a stack of dinner plates, when he met her returning with the first servings.
"It's a rule," she said, stretching up on tiptoes to kiss him on the lips. He kissed her back, mouth open, even though he couldn't embrace her this time, since his hands were full of plates. Then Kristen sank back down on her heels and let him past her into the kitchen. We all laughed. Their former collegiate entanglement was common knowledge.
"Revenge for his earlier reckless abandon!" she declared.
After dessert, we adjourned to the living room. I went to fetch a bottle of port to serve as a nightcap. On my way into the kitchen, I found Nathalie blocking the doorway, going in the other direction. Nat and I don't have the history that Kristen and Trevor do. I've never known her as anything other than "Trevor's wife," and consequently we'd never flirted. Her eye didn't wander, and I didn't let mine. But she was firmly planted under the mistletoe, her long auburn hair let down around her shoulders, cool blue-green eyes twinkling. She was wearing a Christmas sweater over a bright red knee-length dress. She's shorter and chunkier than Kristen, but her big boobs and wide mouthed smile are winsome. The flush from the wine in her cheeks made her look cherubic and she looked good, so I leaned in and kissed her.
For a moment, just a moment, I felt her body moving in the crook of my left arm. Those two big pert breasts rubbed my chest while her thick hips swayed. But most of all, her lips parted, and our tongues dueled for a moment. My blood pounded in my ears as we parted. I stumbled into the kitchen. Can't blame a boy for getting a bit excited, even when the gal's not available and not your cup of tea.
"Probably no one saw that," I thought.
It might have been nothing if that had been the end of it.
My breathing came back to normal, and I wiped Nathalie's lipstick off before I came back. This time I met May in the doorway. She flicked a glance up at the mistletoe and winked at me, so I stepped forward and gave her a quick peck on the lips. Nothing sensual or suggestive there, but as she passed me, she whispered in my ear, "glad the gander gets some too." Then she was gone, headed for the guest bathroom, before I could ask what she meant.
The evening finished up and eventually I was able to join Kristen in bed. I switched off the light and we lay there in the darkness, exhausted, yet satisfied by a successful evening. Kristen seemed pensive, laying on her back and looking up at the ceiling.
"What do you think?" she finally asked.
"About?"
"Making munchkins. I know we said five years, but maybe May is right...?" She sounded unsure.
"You're only twenty-nine, hon. I think the five-year plan for your career makes a lot of sense... and it's only a little over three years to go now," I said. She'd worked hard to put herself through law school and pass the bar. Maternity leave might mess up her tidy progression at her law firm--no matter what the partners claimed. We had this conversation occasionally.
"Yeah, but... sometimes I just wonder if I'm making the right choice," she said.
