The True Story of Animals Who Need Big Kisses

A few months before I started this blog, I met someone who made me feel like the last five years of my life hadn’t really happened. It would be a little out of scope to get into precisely why, but it was really strange to really like somebody again, because ordinarily I just wouldn’t let myself.

Of course, it was also completely and absolutely impossible from the beginning, but the way that I felt only made it worse it to know better, and so I poured all of that doubt into denial, convinced myself that my problem was that I had to be smarter, sharper, and better, and so when she loved (liked?) this crazy nonsense about kissing animals, I tried to give it everything I had.

And then, to my surprise, she wasn’t the only one who noticed it: In a matter of weeks, after the epoch of rejection letters that every writer goes through for years on end, this blog had an offer for production into an animated series, as well as a viral buzz on the web and a rapidly rising readership. Comedy Central and and other big sites were linking into AWNBK, and it was the most success I’d ever had. It was getting a little tougher to find the energy to write it consistently well with the competing demands of my real job, but I kept going, having weird thoughts that maybe this ridiculous thing was going to be the way out of all of my problems.

Then I lost my real job.

Then the girl went around the world, and fell in love with some kind of victorious athlete, and at some point somewhere she made out with my friend, or maybe even two of my friends, and I realize now that she was really hot but that we probably did not share similar values: She just thought I was funny, and I was happy to be funny to somebody beautiful.

We all have mistakes we like to make over and over again; this is mine.

Then the animated production deal thing lapsed, and now the guy who optioned the rights from me won’t even return my e-mails. I realize that this is not the first thing in Hollywood to not go as planned, but I paid a lawyer, and in the words of Ghostface Killah, I put a lot of money up: I’m hating.

Maybe I am just Canadian, but I would never be so rude to anybody, and I think it will be dealt with in time. Something winds through the cosmos for such ungraciousness, and it will find you.

But none of this matters, because none of the people I’m talking about are in my life anymore, or are reading this now, and you don’t know who they are, but all of these things – unemployment, loneliness, betrayal etc. – are going on while the months are passing by; while you are reading Animals Who Need Big Kisses, even if they aren’t. Lots of stories about my life in this time period are encoded in the content and tonal shifts of all these entries, so if you ever want to read all of them again, maybe it would be fun to keep that in mind.

Please know, though, that it has been just us, without them, for awhile now: The unintended consequence of all these vanished rationales has been a wonderful audience of people who I know enjoy reading these entries, and I have continued to write for your sake, and because I enjoy doing them myself. If it weren’t for your comments, feedback and support on Facebook and Twitter, I would have collapsed this project a long time ago.

However, I’m afraid that the time has come for me to move on – there will be no more new entries on Animals Who Need Big Kisses. I need more time to focus on my new project, The Albatross, which I am not doing for anybody but everybody. This feels good.

To commemorate all the time we’ve spent together, however, I’m pleased to announce that I will be releasing a book with the entire contents of this blog in early December, making sure to have it shippable by Christmas. In addition to the blog contents, I will be including some short stories about animals (who have many needs, and not only kisses) as bonus content, as a way of expressing my thanks for your buying it. If you have nothing else to read right now, you should order The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti, because it is perfect.

In the meantime, I will continue to post classics on the Facebook fan page. Please join the fan page to receive an announcement of when the book will be available for order if you have not already.

Thank you very much for your support of Animals Who Need Big Kisses! Comment on this entry with thoughts of the kisses which you yourself need as a wish towards the universe!

Your Pal,
Will O’Neill

Moose

Moose need kisses because they have done so much to express that they want to work with us – they even arranged to have premium, two-person seating sticking out of their heads – but we still rely on horses instead.

Even their friends, the reindeer, whose horns are far less impressive, got jobs with Santa Claus, even though moose are way better at being in the cold. Santa probably only got the sled after trying out a moose horn and breaking it off with his big, fat, 364-day hibernating butt. And, of course, Santa blames the moose: Now too does the moose know the pain of our commercial airliners.

And the deer? Well, we love deer so much we give them jobs acting in movies, and we hold unreasonable ideals about their innocence, and wish we could see them drink from ponds. With moose, on the other hand, we think that they can’t know love so that we won’t have to feel bad about the fact that they get no love.

So, to kiss a moose, you will have to give it a chance at a meaningful job, working on equal footing, with human beings. The good news is that you won’t be tempted to take this job for yourself, as what you want is a meaningful job where you either don’t have to see people at all or, on the off chance that you do, that it is socially permissible for you to abuse them.

That is our dream; the common thread linking all of our most desirable vocations. Moose are much different. They really just want to be on a team.

So, I guess, have them run some little league soccer team, where even the people in charge are supposed to be nice. Hey, everybody thinks monkeys can play professional sports – why can’t a moose coach?

Octopuses

Octopuses need kisses because when they don’t get kisses on their kiss spots, the kiss spots cry darkness because the octopuses are so sad.

Think about it: Your tears are transparent because you are a human being, who has the rationality to understand that you can’t always get kisses, so even when you are feeling down and don’t get them, the product of your misery is something on which you still have clarity. This is also a helpful parallel for writing songs.

Octopi, though, don’t know anything. So they cry blinding, horrible blackness from every part of them that wants a kiss. The invisibility oozes around them and they say “Nobody wants to kiss me because I am so ugly! So now I don’t even want anybody to look at me! I don’t understand life and would rather live in a shroud of symbolic noir!” Octopuses are yet another species that are sort of permanently goth.

Now maybe you are thinking “Those aren’t kiss spots! Those are their arms!” OK – if those aren’t kiss spots, than what is? Its mouth? You can see where I’m going with this: It has no mouth.

And so when I said before that it says all that stuff, I don’t mean it really says those sad things about itself – it just thinks them.

Don’t we all.

So, to kiss an Octomomo at maximum, you will have to leverage its loneliness into the closest cousin of that emotion: Jealousy. Start by taking one of its arms out for an expensive dinner but completely ignoring the other seven. Soon, the other arms will become angry at the attention you are lavishing on their friend, and start trying to co-opt your relationship by letting you give them kisses out of the blue!

Rather than resolve the problem, though, this will only make the initial arm jealous of the other ones, and then it will start letting you give it lots of kisses as well.

Soon you will be covered in Octojoe kisses from everywhere as the arms envelop and constrict you completely! And people will say “Oh no, do you need help?!” But they mean with all of these relationships!

Snails

Given its shape and texture, I think we can all agree that a snail really is a kiss more than it needs a kiss. And, thanks to its beautiful shell, it has not only the ability to give a big slimy kiss, but also has a perfect place to plant one of your own!

But some people say “Wait, that wouldn’t count – the shell isn’t really part of the snail,” and other people would say “Of course it’s a part of the snail! I think he is glued up in there!” but I am not like any of these people, and I would say “Well, what makes something really a part of something? What is the difference between essence and mere attachment?”

Then people throw things at me, because they would rather have opinions than consider them.

And yet, think about the consequences if the shell really wasn’t part of it: What if the snail gave you a big slime kiss by wrapping its whole body on you, and then you returned with a kiss on its cute little shell, and it was like “Umm, OK – but what about a kiss for me? I gave you all of myself, and all you kissed was my house!”

How would you like it if you gave someone all your kisses, and all they did was kiss your money? Or your clothes? And when you accused them of not really kissing you, they looked at you like you were crazy. “But you are that money, and this house – we live here!” they’d say. “Why did you go and get all this stuff if you didn’t really want it?”

And, like the snail, you didn’t so much ‘want it’ as you thought it would make you safe, and you never planned on it being so much better than you are that it drowned you out completely.

You’ve become little more than a shell of who you might have been. Your fear and doubt, more so than any synthesis or separation between yourself and some external adherence, is the truth about you and, I’m afraid, about the snail.

So don’t go being more beautiful than you really are.

You will be caught.

Black Widows

Black Widows need kisses because they are like girls that no guys will go out with anymore because the word is out that they are crazy. The guys are all like “Ya, she’s nuts – I heard she ate her last three boyfriends. She has nice legs but the rest of her is huge and gross. Wait, we were talking about how she is crazy, why did I suddenly start talking about her appearance? Oh, right: Because if she was hot I wouldn’t care if she was crazy.”

But, of course, knowing that other people think like this and that this is how the world goes round is what made the poor Black Widow crazy in the first place.

That you feel love, but also know that there is no love.

And so, rather than let that agonizing loop play over and over in your head, you just destroy anyone who makes you vulnerable to it.

So, to kiss a Black Widow, you will have to create a relationship with one that is intimate and yet holds no pretense of actually caring about it. That way, you can give it lots of kisses and still talk badly about it, because it won’t expect any better of you.

An expectation that would lead to your annihilation.

Of course, the Black Widow will eventually figure out that this is what you are doing, and go even crazier, and just start eating every guy she comes into contact with. This is about the time you should declare yourself as too mature for her, marry a nice young tarantula girl, and discard the black widow as an amusing and embarrassing fragment of your history. “Do you remember black widow?” your friends will say, golf bags in tow, and you will laugh dismissively, as if you were a different person back then, who did not and could not have known better.

But it was you, and you did know.

And you made her.

Buffaloes

Buffaloes need kisses because they literally look like steaks, or really any side of beef, which exposes them to danger because people see them and go “Oh my God, I want to eat that guy right now.”

And the worst part is that they don’t even know how much they look like hamburgers, and don’t realize the peril they are in. If they just saw a hamburger patty, they would probably think it was one of their kids, and pick it up in their mouth to carry it away somewhere and then suddenly realize that they were committing an act of semi-cannibalism…!

I say ’semi-cannibalism’ because I know that hamburgers come from a cow, but come on: It’s not like we eat chimp.

So, to kiss a buffalo, you’ll have to teach it how dangerous it can be to look delicious by showing it that we eat things that don’t even look that good, like turkeys. I mean, seriously: When you see a turkey and its weird neck thing, don’t you just feel like “Eewww.”

But then Thanksgiving rolls around.

So invite the buffalo to your house for Thanksgiving, and as it enjoys the turkey dinner, bring out a live turkey and be like “Hey man, you’re eating this guy. Think of what could happen to someone like you, who literally looks like a filet mignon.”

The buffalo, now adequately warned, will probably knock over your table and crash through your house, running for its life, and you will have made him into an active, alert buffalo soldier. Then you get kisses, like all the great drill trainers of the past!

Speaking of soldiers, maybe all the buffalo needs is a haircut? He wouldn’t look like such a meat slab if you could see his eyes.

Then again, it’s not like society consumes people just for having long, greasy hair that falls all over their faces anymore, or at least not beyond the consumption implicit in inclining them to rot in corporate basements running Linux servers so that you can have the internet required to tag Facebook photos of the satisfying life that you have and they don’t.

But don’t they want to do that anyways? Something something World of Warcraft?

Donkeys

Quick survey: Would you rather have a tail pinned on you, or a wonderful kiss? I think you know.

Of course, I suppose this might depend on whether or not you’d have to give the kiss at the same location as you’d pin the tail – if that were the case, it might not be so desirable. Pardon my French, but kissing an ass need not actually mean kissing an ass!

Is saying “Pardon my French” a Canadian phenomena? Do Americans ask people to pardon their Spanish?

Anyways, to kiss a donkey, you’ll need to convince it that a kiss is the only other option apart from getting a thumb tack in its butt, and becoming infertile. This is not the true cause of donkey infertility, but they don’t understand genetics because, unlike people, donkeys are mostly taught irrelevant subjects in school which only instill false hope in them for the future, like athletics, business leadership and creative writing.

These dreams are later destroyed and, many years later, donkeys realize that the importance of being inured to this feeling is what they were really supposed to learn in school.

So, to make this threat of infertility work, you’ll need to find a donkey that is really excited about having kids. If it is a donkey that doesn’t like kids, just put it into a wacky misadventure where a child is put under its care!

FACTS: There are no reported incidents of this type which do not end in the love of children! Everyone who says they do not like children are ignorant or lying! Absolute fiction has repeatedly, non-fictionally proven this!

When the donkey asks how kisses will prevent it from getting thumbtacked, say that its problem is that it has too notorious a target, and needs multiple bulls eyes on itself to confuse and disarray the enemy. If the donkey doubts the presence of this enemy, take it to an Office Depot.

Once the donkey is scared, and needs to know how to paint this camouflaging number of bullseyes all over itself, just smile and say “Lipstick.”

Homing Pigeons

Homing Pigeons need kisses because they have a sad story. You tell me if this is a sad story: You are bred and trained to do only one thing, and that is to return to the place that you think is your home. Except you have been tricked and it is not really your home: It is your job.

You get there and its like an office, with tons of other people who also thought they were going home but arrived to find out that all they have done in the process of undertaking their journey is work, and the nice letter that you thought you were taking home to your mom is actually some instruction of death.

Like what if your mom really was there because she’s a homing pigeon too, and you’re like “Oh hey mom, here’s a nice letter for you.” and she is like “Oh, how thoughtful – let’s take a look here: ‘Kill all zee Germans.’ Thanks a lot, son.”

So, to kiss a homing pigeon, you’ll have to give it the strength to abandon its idea of where it is from and begin a new life full of kisses. Start by taking a normal homing pigeon far from its home and sending it on its way with a message attached to its leg – this message should say “You forgot your keys.”

Then, when the pigeon gets home and sees the message, it will go “Oh no!” and it will immediately retrace its flight. Except this time, of course, its last flight path will have been to go back to you and, unable to keep too much information in its head, it will forget how to get back to its original home.

I cannot tell the story of what relationship you and the pigeon now build, and how you give it kisses, because it is not my story: It is yours.

But I will say that life goes on. I will say that there is always someone – and somewhere – that remains.

What is home to any of us, really, except a place that we remember to go?

Scorpions

Once upon a time, there was a frog sitting around on a swamp bank, and a scorpion walked up to him, and said “Hey man, can you take me across to the other side of the river?”

“Well, no,” said the frog. “If I let you sit on my back, you will sting me on our way across the swamp.”

“What?” said the scorpion, “I would never do that! If I did that, both of us would perish! Plus, if you think about it, I could just kill you right now. Something about this doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“You raise several good points,” said the frog, who then agreed to take the scorpion across the swamp.

About halfway across the swamp, the scorpion began stinging the frog, and the frog said “Oh no! Now we are both going to drown! Why would you do this?”

The scorpion replied, “I’m sorry: It is my nature.” And, with such a poetic statement at hand, awaited the unconsciousness and sinking of the frog. This did not happen. Again, the scorpion said “Sorry, maybe you didn’t hear me: I said it is my nature.”

But still, the frog did not sink. The scorpion grew impatient, as they were almost across the swamp now, and this was turning out to be a pretty ridiculous parable, and suddenly the frog rose way out of the water, and it was you wearing a frog hat and you had hidden the rest of yourself underwater!

“Oh no!” said the scorpion, realizing what was to come.

“That’s right!” you say, and trapped in the middle of the swamp with nowhere to run, the scorpion got all of the most kisses on its pointy little bum-bum tail.

“But why?!” said the scorpion, “Why would a grown man/woman put on a frog hat, learn to ventriloquize through it using their forehead, while underwater, and hang out in a disgusting swamp for God-only-knows how long, just for the opportunity to make out with a dangerous lizard?”

“I’m sorry,” you would say, “It is my nature.”

And the scorpion would say “But that’s so stupid!”

To which you would say “Well, OK: I am also unemployed.”

Albatrosses

Everything with kissing an albatross should work out easily, as surely they are already around the necks of people who could do with a little kissing themselves.

My only concern, I guess, is how exactly the albatross fits around the neck, and how that might impact the logistics of the kissing process. If it were attached around your neck at its feet, then wouldn’t trying to kiss it be perpetually out of reach? Like a carrot on a stick?

So then you would want to kiss it so bad, but it would always be a fixed distance away from you, no matter how you walked towards it.

And then you would realize: This must be where the idea of it being a bad thing to have an albatross around your neck in the first place must have originally come from.

Forever so far from kisses; and yet forever so close.

And so, in anguish, you tear the feet of the albatross off of your neck, attempting to free it from you so that you can kiss it, forgetting in the spirit of your rage what a bird will do the moment its feet are released: Fly away.

They say that if you love something, set it free, and if it doesn’t come back to you, then it was never really yours.

But I have found, in my life, that I knew – even beforehand – exactly who would not come back to me.

You have to let them go anyways.

Not that this is easy – real loneliness is not when you miss the people who loved you; it’s when you start to miss people you were actually better off without.

Real loneliness is not sentimental, or reminiscent – it is clawing, angry, desperate. Illusory.

Some part of you would still give anything to kiss that albatross.

Whether a gift or a curse: Love is love.