Choosing A Road of Passion & Pain (with apologies to Lauryn Hill)

We talk about a lot of interesting things at my job, and most recently the topic turned to passion marks. If I recall correctly, we were talking about the Twilight craze and how there were kids being faux vampires who ran around biting each other to show their love. Kids these days don’t even know how to give a proper passion mark.

Back in the day, I was quite naïve, if you could believe that. I once thought a hickey was a bruise you got after hitting your head really hard. So that caused some confusion when a classmate tried to describe a ‘Who’s The Boss’ episode to me, the one where Samantha’s boyfriend gives her a hickey. I just couldn’t understand why Sam’s boyfriend wanted to beat her up. He seemed like such a nice guy. Duh.

Fast forward a few years and hickeys/passion marks were still a mystery. I’d gotten a few, but I still hadn’t gotten the logistics down of how to give them. I have fond memories of when I first met mother’s boyfriend, now husband, and he ratted on me for having a hickey. (Why does no one ever believe that it’s a bug bite??) Then there was my job at the bagel shop. I was talking to a coworker when a customer loudly referred to “that big ass hickey on her neck” in front of a line filled with customers. Fun times.

The first and only hickey I gave was to an old boyfriend. We were both teenagers, so it took a bit of strategic planning to get us to spend the weekend together, but it was accomplished. I was determined to leave my mark and I guess I did, in the tackiest way possible. That hickey was so huge, it was nasty. It looked like someone beat him in the neck repeatedly with a baseball bat. For weeks, folks were either teasing him about it, or asking if he’d been in a fight.

From then on, I decided to use my mouth for good and not evil.