You’re supposed to kiss the buffalo head in The Pub when you turn 21. That buffalo head seems like it’s been in The Pub since the 60s, so God knows how many people have kissed it. At least the large majority of them were, in fact, 21year old college students. So there’s probably a smaller chance that it carries catching, kissing diseases.
I didn’t care.
From a very early age, I’ve hardly ever even shared a drink with my own brother (and in moments of exception, I at least wiped the lip of the cup off between turns).
I have an intense disgust for other people’s saliva.
So, of course, it didn’t help when Jeremy yelled out to the crowded pub, “Look! I’ll do it first!” and then stood up on a stool to reach the buffalo head, mounted high on the wall.
The floor was so crowded; it was impossible to move without elbowing your way through the swallowing crowd. I struggled to see him above the crowd line, but my view was obstructed by so many flailing limbs – it was odd to realize how often people typically do flail their limbs, and I’d venture to say that one would never really notice unless they tried to see just a little above the heads of a crowd. Elbows and hands and arms were everywhere, swaying arrhythmically, without music.
“Jesus, he just frenched it!” Someone yelled out.
“It’s not even his birthday!” Someone else called out from the back.
Jeremy strolled over to me: “I just made out with that buffalo. If I can do it, you can do it.” I grimaced inadvertently, wondering whether his saliva had dried yet.
“No.” I firmly told my group of 25 who had come out with me to celebrate.
“Why, Tasha? Go do it!” My brother urged me. Easy for him to say – he turned 21 in New York where there were no buffalos around to kiss.
I hadn’t had more than a couple drinks when, in that packed environment, with ten different people talking to me simultaneously, I was becoming increasingly disoriented. I blinked furiously, hoping it would help something make sense.
I tried to squeeze my way to the door, but a wall of friends stood like guards, barring me from the exit. Like a whale, heaved by the ocean waves onto the formidable shore, the crowd heaved me toward the stool.
“Kiss the buffalo! Kiss the buffalo!” they chorused.
“No, that’s okay,” I told them meekly. “I don’t have to kiss the buffalo.”
“Kiss the buffalo!”
“It’s dirty!”
The crowd laughed. Even people at the back of the crowd laughed, though they couldn’t possibly have heard my reply.
“Ummm….”I stared up at the buffalo looming over me with an angry eye. “It’s luminous,” I told my Russian tutor.
“Luminous? How is it luminous?”
“Wrong word.” I thought for a moment: “It looms!”
“Why don’t you want to kiss the buffalo?” Someone else asked.
“I don’t need to. I already know it’s my birthday.”
“Tasha,” my roommate got my attention. She was always protective of me. “Do you really not want to kiss the buffalo?”
I shook my head ‘no’ like a sobbing five year old.
“Then you don’t have to kiss the buffalo.”
I felt like hugging her, but instead, I decided to hide behind her. This proved to be a difficult task, since she’s 5’2” and I’m 5’4”. Russell, who was 6’4” spotted me, and dragged me out from behind my surrogate pillar and left me beside the stool.
Masses of hands reached out to support my trembling legs as they themselves climbed the stool to the waiting buffalo head.
The noise died away and it was just the buffalo and I, having a moment. I looked at it and it looked at me. It wanted me to kiss it. It didn’t care how many people had kissed it before. I was the only one it cared about now, and this was our time together. I closed my eyes and pecked it on the nose.
“Hooray!” The crowd yelled.
“What was that all about?!” Jeremy shouted out. “I hooked up with that buffalo!”
I’ve never climbed off a stool before without sitting down first after a long list of awkward maneuvers. Nevertheless, this is how I attempted to come off the stool. This failed right away, and instead I fell off, backwards, and crowd-surfed to the exit.
Everyone gave me hugs and high fives, as though I had saved the pub from being blown up, instead of kissing an artificial buffalo head that was mounted on a wall. It was silly. But in spite of myself, I was proud.
I had kissed the buffalo. I was 21.
