"What do you want from me?" It was the typical line a woman who loves a man too much, hears from that man, when he feels he has to live up to expectations which are too high. What do you want from me? A question with a myriad of answers, although it is usually meant to be rhetorical. What do you want from me?

As he waited for her reply she swung her hand back and forth in front of his face, as if her arm was part of a clock, ticking out seconds. Each time it swung past him, he caught a glimpse of metal in the moonlight, a gift he had regretfully given her. He watched her hand sway back and forth and suddenly, ludicrously felt like a contestant on Jeopardy! He had given the winning question: What do you want from me? Even before the answer was revealed. He resisted the urge to laugh, knowing that would be the end of him, and waited for her reply.

The gleam of metal passing in front of his face had an almost hypnotizing effect, and he began to guess at the things she might want from him. He thought to himself, that he might not have beaten her so severely the times she had driven him to violence. He told himself that he should have never been so flagrant about his affairs with other women. He told himself that he should have left her, when he realized he could never live up to the expectations she made him feel he had to. He thought he should have sent her flowers; should have remembered her birthday; should have not gone to Tahiti with his mistress for their anniversary. He thought all these things as the metal gleamed past his face every half second. What do you want from me?

Then, he thought back further. To the beginning of their relationship, when she had seemed so different from all the other women he had ever met. When she seemed to understand what he felt, even before he understood it. She was so forgiving back in those days. She never questioned his judgment, never tied him with any of her strings, which he recently felt had been strangling him. Back in the days when they'd first met, it was enough for her, just to know that she was his. She had seemed to want for nothing other than his kind words and occasional caresses. She had kissed him greedily in those days, but she had never whined on their parting. Only recently had she greeted him with bitterness and questions. She didn't realize that her bitterness and constant interrogations only drove him to do the things which she abhorred. Her questions were the fuel which drove him into the arms of other women. Her suspicion was something he felt he should live up to, the only thing he felt he could live up to. He stared into her eyes, which danced with fury, and he was afraid. What do you want from me?

"What do I want from you?" She snickered, then fell into silence, as she thought about it. What did she want from him? She wanted him to be the man she had fallen in love with. She wanted all their days and nights to be like the first days and nights they had spent together. She wanted him to get help for his abusive behavior. She wanted to be apologized to. She wanted to know she was the only woman in his life; she wanted to be the only woman in his life. She wanted the abuse to end, the violence to stop, the peace to return. All of those things she had wanted for so long, which she secretly knew she would never get.

She thought of how he had been when they first met. He was warm and loving, gentle and kind. He was so charming that she reveled in whatever time he could spare for her, and when that time increased, she assumed that he was hers. That's was her first mistake, as it usually is in relationships, assuming that he was her possession. He never really belonged to her. He may have lent himself to her for awhile, but he was not the type of man to give himself away as easily as that. She hadn't realized this at first. As soon as she began to treat him as her own, he resented her for it. She should have left when the beatings started, but it was too late. She was determined. She was sick. She made secret bets with herself that he didn't care about his mistress enough to beat her. Then, one day, as she lay at his feet bleeding, her only desire a gentle kiss from him, he spat at her and walked out. Then she realized it had to end.

"What do I want from you?" She laughed again. "I want freedom from you," she said, as she pulled the trigger, and watched his rhetorical question splatter against the wall.

The girl sat alone in the restaurant. She was at a table near the back. Out of boredom, and nervous habit, she fiddled with her long, almost black hair. Without thought, she twisted it around the ring finger of her left hand.

The restaurant--an all night diner--was bustling with people although it was near two in the morning. Most of the customers had come in to feed their appetites after a night of drinking and dancing, but not the girl, she had another purpose in mind.

The booths were red vinyl, and the floor of black and white faux marble was highly polished, so much so, that when the girl stood--her long black dress falling in layers around her slim figure--she was confronted with a slightly distorted image of herself.

Her dress swirled around her as she walked towards the jukebox in the corner. She scanned the titles, trying to find one that fit the evening and her mood. There was nothing. No one noticed the startlingly beautiful creature as she returned to her seat dismayed.

Her huge blue eyes seemed empty, like mirrors, only there to reflect what passed in front of them, but offering nothing. Her deep red painted lips that contrasted drastically with her almost translucent skin, formed a pout, and she resumed twisting her hair around her fingers.

For a long moment she stayed still. She seemed to be a statue in the ever moving atmosphere that was the diner. He had walked in.

He was tall and muscular. His skin was golden, as if he had been exposed to tropical sunlight every day of his life. His blond hair hung loosely at his shoulders. He wore all white: White tailored slacks, white silk shirt, white wing-tips. He carried a black leather jacket. His lips turned down in a frown, and his green eyes seemed full of emotion: Passion, understanding, loneliness, utter despair.

As if under some unspoken command, she pulled two dollar bills from her bag and left them on the table in payment for the cup of coffee she hadn't touched. She got up and met him halfway across the room. As they embraced and kissed passionately, the diner continued to buzz around them, the love scene going unnoticed.

He slipped the leather jacket over her shoulders, and they headed for the door. The evening was still as they walked into it, disturbed only by a slight breeze. The air was warm, yet despite this, the girl shivered.

They walked silently to his black sports car, got in, and drove off. They didn't speak, so the only sound was the roar of the engine as they raced along the coast.

Arriving at their destination, they got out of his car and walked towards a cliff overhanging the sea.

"You're wearing all black, again," he said, speaking for the first time, breaking their silence. His voice was remorseful, and his eyes fixed themselves to a spot on the ground.

"I'm in mourning," she said, her angelic voice echoing over the sea. "I'm in mourning for my wasted life."

He stared up at her. The sea behind her with a sliver of moon in the sky formed such a beautiful picture, he would remember that moment forever. "I guess you won't have to worry about it, anymore," he said bitterly. For a moment he thought of the lives she was about to ruin.

She didn't respond, and he couldn't help thinking that this was the farthest apart that they had ever been, or would ever be. "Why couldn't you love me?" he cried, his voice almost lost in the roar of the waves below.

"Don't you see?" the tears were trailing in steady streams down her cheeks, "I am not capable of loving anyone. I have been dead emotionally for so long...there is only one thing left to do."

"There are other ways to get through this," he told her, although they had discussed the other ways before.

"For me," she told him firmly, "there is no other way."

"But...," the words caught in his throat, and he met her gaze, "but...I...I love you."

"And for that," she shook her head sadly, staring at the ground, "I am truly sorry." She reached her hand towards him, and in two steps he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his embrace.

"Don't leave me," he begged, clutching her to him with all his strength, as if his love could change her mind. He couldn't stand the injustice of a world that would take this docile creature away from him.

"You cannot keep someone who does not want to be kept," she said sadly, backing away from him, toward the sheer drop-off.

She continued to back towards the cliff. The breeze had turned into a wind, and her hair began to fly wildly about her face. The full skirt of her dress whipped up around her legs, and she continued to walk backwards towards the cliff, her arms outstretched in front of her--not in invitation, but in apology, almost.

He did not attempt to move, knowing that the slightest move would only hasten her journey. He just stood in place watching her retreating frame, his own tears pooling on the ground at his feet.

In moments, she was gone. If she screamed, the sound was extinguished by the roar of the tide, but his screams could be readily heard.

Maybe it’s just me, but when I started “dating” round about the time I turned 14, the average date was usually comprised of 50% “making out.” Making out when you’re 14 usually consists of hours of kissing and maybe some occasional groping, and in my case, one boyfriend who was constantly trying to get me to touch his penis. However, to a 14 year-old girl, a penis is kind of a scary thing, and after a while, he desisted and it was back to kissing. Now, I’m talking about some hard-core kissing. The kind that chaps your lips, and leaves you in desperate need of a Gatorade. This is the kind of kissing (or lack thereof) that I’m ranting about.

Now this period of kiss-filled dates lasted from the time I was 14 until I was 18 and lost my virginity. The first guy I ever slept with was someone I had a long distance relationship with. I didn’t see him very much, and when I lost my virginity to him, I didn’t like him very much. This was completely intentional (and could fill an entire different rant. After him, I was single for almost a year. I seem to recall very little kissing going on the 18th year of my life. Now my boyfriend when I was 19 started out by kissing me often, but once he and I started having sex a couple months later, kissing was but a momentary prelude to sex. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not frigid, I really like sex, but I really don’t like it more than I like kissing.

Anyway, back to the disappearance of kissing from my life. Every time I would try to kiss my ex-boyfriend with any kind of passion, he would say to me, “I’m too tired for sex” or “Not now, tonight, today, etc.” As if every deep kiss was a proposition, which it wasn’t, by the way.

I truly believe that you can convey more in two minutes of kissing than you can in three hours of fucking. Not to say there isn’t a time and a place for three hours of fucking, however at this time in my life, there is no place for it.

I tried to kiss my ex-ex-boyfriend passionately, five minutes later he’d have my clothes ripped off and that would be all she wrote, which wasn’t so bad, but some days, I just wanted a nice make out session, not a full-fledged sex fest.

Since I lost my virginity five years ago, I’ve had one make out session that was reminiscent of the past, and unfortunately, it happened to be with a man, who later turned out to believe I was that closest thing to pure evil he’d ever encountered.

That night, though. That night was memorable: drinking wine, looking at his paintings, listening to music; we started kissing and it was as if we’d never be sated. We couldn’t kiss each other enough. That was a night to remember. I remember for long afterwards I used to say of the guy who thinks I’m evil that he was the only man to ever kiss me as though he meant, which probably meant he was the only one who didn’t.

And maybe it’s just me, being a hopeless romantic, and all, but I have this idea about experiencing the perfect kiss. To me the perfect kiss is like the one in the movie A Room With A View, when Julian Sands and Helena Bonham Carter are in that field together, and he goes rushing up to her and kisses her as if his life depended on it. Now that’s a kiss. I want to be kissed like that!

Only once was I fortunate enough to experience something even close to that. When I was 14 or 15 years old, my friend, Carlos, called to tell me he had had some erotic dream about me and he was coming over to my house. When he got there, he walked in, backed me against a wall, and kissed me with an intensity I’d never known, or have experienced since. That kiss on an afternoon sometime during my freshman year of high school, I’d have to say, is better than any sex I’ve ever had. Not to say, I haven’t had good sex, but nothing beats the passion, intensity or power of a good kiss.

So, I guess what I’m truly peeved about is not having been able to find a man who appreciates the fine art of kissing. A man who could sit on a couch, park bench, blanket, in a car, etc., and kiss me for hours and not know or care if he was going to get sex out of it. Aren’t there any men out there who enjoy a good non-intercourse make out session?

I just want to be kissed (and maybe groped a little) is that so wrong? So, maybe other woman haven’t experienced this, or maybe they don’t care about it as much, but damn it, I want the perfect kiss, and I’m not going to be satisfied until I receive it!

I know that there must be men out there who enjoy kissing. The guys I dated from the time I was 14 until I was 18 seemed to really enjoy it. Now that I think of it, though, maybe they didn’t. Maybe guys that age just believe that if they kiss a girl for long enough, her clothes will just magically fall off and she’ll want to offer you sex. It’s too hard to say what guys are thinking at any age to know for sure. I don’t really keep in touch with the men from my past, so I can’t say if they enjoy kissing now that we’re older, but at least they seemed to, at some point in their life.

So guys, just a hint, try kissing, girls really go for that kind of thing.