Where To Go And Make-Out In Eger, or, The Smears Of A Clown

Things have changed a lot since I last "made-out" (see above when me and one of my former sweethearts posed for Rodin. Dig the casual left hand; damn, I was smooth!). Or as least as I recall. In those deep catacombs of memory I remember making out as kind of a private, erotic, osmotic confluence of unstoppable romantic torrents. Occasionally, the girl I was making out with felt the same. I'm sure of it.


Back in the day, the rules were that you always made-out away from crowds, unless you made out in crowds, like when me and my 7th grade bros Henry and Paul would make out with our 7th grade girl pals, Kitty, Kathleen, and Tricia,  everyone kind of keeping an eye (and ear) on each other. Making out in one of our parents' basements, two-by-three on a busted, ratty couch as some off-kilter drier invariably rattled nearby, its clothes checked on invariably every few minutes by a not-so-tender-footed mom creaking down the stairs. Still, despite all that, our make-out sessions had the pretensions of privacy. And, of course, the aura of amour (however musty smelling).


But if Hungary is typical, the rules have changed. 

Since arriving here a little over a month ago, I have taken to going into Agria Park (trans: Agria Park), Eger's "Prize Winning Mall" (The plaque outside the mall states that the prize, given by some kind of real estate organization, was awarded by a "panel of independent judges." No mention is given whether that panel was made up of architects or mall rats.)


I'm not a habitue of malls, so, from what I have seen elsewhere, Eger's looks to me to be pretty generic. Lots of clothing chains selling back to their young patrons unique, hip, poutty, Made-in-China mass-produced identities; puppy-mill jewelry stores wedged in between the clothes stores; and of course, the cellular phone shops serving up the latest must-have generation of cellular wizardry -- the only retailers actually doing any business, from what I can tell.

As I am neither hip, young, nor unique, and as I don't wear (or give jewelry), or use a cell phone, what gets me here? Two things: first, the little coffee houses in Eger play the local Eger radio station, whose musical programming is a mix of bad disco and remixes of bad disco. Second, often when I go to a little coffee shop in Eger, I find that I am the only patron, and so I get wrapped up in a bit of self-consciousness, what with the shopowner having nothing better to do but listen to the radio and stare at me. 


So I escape those two things in Eger's award-winning mall by patronizing two coffee shops, side by side (one smoking, the other non), where I can (and do) have a one-two of hossou kaves (large coffees, as in, Turkish coffee, black as tar and just about as thick, with a dollop of steaming water), where I sit and sip unnoticed, and where, owing to the award-winning acoustics, I can't actually make out what music is being piped over the sound system, disco or disco re-mixed. 


At tables that would be considered al fresco if they weren't actually in a two story box, I sit as if on Main Street, watching the mall pedestrians go by. Occasionally I'll look at the book I brought as camouflage, but mostly I gape at the passersby.


And that is how I have become aware how much things have changed, make-out wise. For, while having a kave or two at my outdoor/indoor table, I have observed couples swoop in to take up positions on wood park benches between the opposing rows, there to engage in full-tilt, full-contact, tongue-tacking make-out sessions. I'm not talking a little puckering-plus, here. I mean serious sessions. Like, half an hour, during which, saliva ends up smeared over both smoochers' faces, resulting in a stinging, red rash on lips, cheeks, etc.

Before

 After

And totally unperturbed. They'll sit there and smooch as if they were outside the mall in a secluded parked car rather than inside the mall sitting on a wholly exposed park bench; as if there wasn't rotten mall music playing from speakers that wouldn't know a tweeter from a woofer if they got bit by one; as if there weren't Buckingham Palace mall guards stoically patrolling back and forth, back and forth, right in front of them; as if there wasn't a steady stream of other pedestrians passing by; as if there wasn't some American guy drinking caustic coffee studying them and wondering how can they do that?


I could understand if, after several hours of shopping and lugging around bags from store to store, a couple might say, "Enough! Enough shopping! Let's sit down here on this bench and smooch to our success!" You might even say that the mall would encourage such necking, maybe even advertise it -- just desserts for good consumer behavior.


But the I couples I have noticed have not come from shopping, nor do they head toward shopping once their romantic thirsts have been quenched. From all appearances, the only thing they planned on consuming in the mall was each other's face. 


This is the m.o. They come in from outside (the real outside, winter), plop themselves on a bench, shimmy out of their parkas, turn to position themselves just so (a la me, my girl, and Rodin), and then lock lips as though the whole mall had been designed and now exists for just their purpose. And then, once their lips have swollen to twice their normal size and have begun to occlude the oxygen flow into their nostrils, they separate, shimmy back into their coats and coast back outside, holding hands, giddy, lighter than air.

I admire their passion but their oblivion seems a little weird, a bit hard to fathom. Why come to a place and make-out where you will be under constant scrutiny -- real or imagined -- each and every salivating second? Wouldn't you want just a smidgen of privacy? 


Maybe they're exhibitionists, whose lipsmacking is made more erotic with an audience? 


Maybe they're sadists, cruelly taunting the lovelorn or simply the lived-long, those who lead kissless lives.


Perhaps, and this is a very long perhaps, these bench sessions are products of Eger's stout Catholicism -- it's an Archbishopric, after all -- such that these mall maulings are actually a socially approved, even applauded, form of safe sex, i.e., total abstinence south of the mouth. Maybe it's kind of like those parents who, realizing that their teenage kids are going to drink Friday or Saturday no matter what they say, host parties where at least they can keep their children safely at home and under their own sober scrutiny. Yes, Mom and Dad may have to later hold back Johnny's hair while he gets sick in the toilet, but at least he won't drive into a telephone pole or get in the car with someone who might.


Perhaps, in Eger, the mall is a romantic go-to for those wanting to make-out but also wanting to guarantee -- to themselves, to the community -- that all they want to do is make out. In other words, regardless of how chap-faced they may get in front of The Gap, chap-faced is all they will get-- literally and figuratively. 


Maybe that's why the mall is prize-winning.


I know that former President George Walker Bush and his sympathizers believe that preaching abstinence is the most effective form of promoting safe-sex, but I think studies have shown that simply preaching it isn't all that effective. Perhaps rather than sending missionaries to Africa we should have been building malls instead. If Eger is any indications, malls work.