They kissed in West Side Story?

A stream-of-consciousness exploration of a classic story, and porn

I consider myself a reader but there are a plethora of the so-called classics I never finished or read in high school and college. Whatever their themes, cultural relevance, history, etc. were lost to my daydreaming. Movies too. To this day, I relish the fact that I’d never seen Pretty Woman or You’ve Got Mail or The Godfather. (I don’t know why three romcoms instantly popped up on the screen of my mind.)

The same is 100% true of West Side Story.

In junior high, we read parts of it. Maybe in highschool, too? It certainly lurked about in at least one college class. I know a few of the songs from the play even though I’ve never seen or read it. That’s the power of crossing the cultural saturation threshold — you don’t need to have seen or known something to know the references. (Do you feel pretty? I feel pretty. Oh, so pretty I feel pretty, and witty, and bright.)

The other night, I came home to my wife watching West Side Story, which I initially mistook for another movie, which I mistook for The Outsiders. I was wrong on all three accounts, then it clicked.

Tony and Maria were in the bridal shot discussing how their parents would take their relationship. The scene ends in a glorious and divine kiss. Literally. The music is as if the heavens are singing and onscreen, there is this heavenly light shining down on the couple as if their love is sanctioned by God. It’s an orgy of innocent make-young-love-great-again feels and nostalgia. It’s pure, exciting, full of energy and anticipation — full of the volatile mix of hormones that floods people during the perpetual acid trip of youth. The dialogue and moments, songs and style of acting, the ambiance of West Side Story, though an onscreen manifestation of the culture and mores of the late 50s and early 60s, was an enduring representation of being young and in love.

That whole next scene they sing about the day lasting too long in anticipation for night…Yo, I get that. Even old and jaded, I can summon past recollections of “back in my day.” Big games. Formal dances. Dark movie theaters. Getting an uncontrollable hardon when a girl touched me or looked at me in a certain way. Nothing but possibilities and energy, man. (Boy, boy, crazy boy Get cool, boy Got a rocket in your pocket.) (Okay, that’s not what the song Cool is about but whatever.)

Hold on a minute. Did they kiss in the bridal shop? They did.

Okay, okay. I know the original movie came out in 1961, and the original production in 1957 (in DC no less), but this got me thinking about the first onscreen kiss.

A quick search pointed me to the smooch “that [brought] down the house every time” back in the tail end of the 19th century. Back then, it was first and foremost a publicity stunt that showed the world just how much we love to watch an intimate act between two people on camera. We’ve been enamored ever since.

Right. So before we go on, this is where I notify the reader of the turn. We’ve discussed the title and given some context that fleshes it out. There’s some new information, some personal thoughts and anecdotes. The makings of a solid personal essay on the first kiss in West Side Story.

But the first kiss, even though Maria’s and Tony’s wasn’t the first onscreen, isn’t just about the beginning of something, it’s also about the end of other things. The beginning and the end, as it were.

“When was the first kiss,” I wondered.

“Probably not long before the first porn film,” my wife responded.

She wasn’t far off.

Considered the first pornographic film, Le Coucher de la Mariée appeared in 1896. It showed actress Louise Willy performing a striptease for her new husband on their wedding night. The risque scene was pretty tame by today’s standards. The technology didn’t yet exist to make Hokusai’s woodblock paintings come to life in vivid technicolor animation.

We didn’t have a film industry for porn yet, nor the modern monosyllabic word to describe it, but pornography as an understood description of the style has been around since the mid 1800s, and the subject matter since ancient Greece. Clearly, we were already thinking about making motion picture porn. We’d been looking at still depictions of coitus for millennia. Human culture has been obsessed with watching other people having sex, and depicting it, since before written history.

Thinking about Hokusai and hentai, I wondered when the first cartoon pornography was born. It also wasn’t too far off.

In the late 1920s Buried Treasure, a “six-and-a-half-minute silent black and white film that follows the character Eveready Harton (a pun on hard-on), who finds it hard to find anything by which he’s not aroused,” was allegedly born in New York. Over the course of those several minutes, Everyready explores sex with women, men, and animals. At times, his comically large penis detaches and runs around — like it’s got a mind of its own. He even has a sword fight with another Eveready Harton fellow that ends in a blow job.

You know, Everyready reminds me of a preacher who used to come to our college campus to tell us students we were all going to hell. He was nice about it and most students were friendly with him. We would sit around and make story requests of his sinful days. Someone would always ask about Rambling Gambling Rhonda and how she had almost convinced Brother Dan to have sex with a cow. Really, Dan’s story was about being an uncontrollably horny young man.

I guess the anonymous creators of Buried Treasure were on to something. It began with an innocent first kiss and ended when we knew we could make better pornography.

Then my wife got up for bed and my interest in West Side Story began to flag. Would I stick around to finally see him die? She kissed me goodnight — a long kiss goodnight. “Are you going to finish watching it?”

I didn’t want to see the climax. I wanted to forever be stuck in a perpetual build up. Anticipation, energy, possibilities… Besides, “Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” or whatever Shakespeare meant.

I changed it to Tosh.O reruns. Jackass was playing on the channel above. Both a different kind of porn. And both a more frivolous way to end the night.