Bite your tongue

There is something viscerally unwholesome in seeing someone licking their lips while shopping in an adult store. It taints my vision like rancid oil on still water.

There may be an entirely benign or innocent reason for the tip of someone’s tongue to travel over the outward margins of their lips, such as chapping or concentration.

Nevertheless, it never carries such innocuous overtones within these walls. Once simply cannot focus on sexually oriented products without some actions assuming some aspect of it. At least for myself, the action of licking one’s lips here puts me in mind of the stereotypical “rain-coater”; face pocked with syphilitic abscesses and dripping greasy sweat.

Perhaps I have seen one too many men shuffling through the shelving, one hand stuffed in their hip pocket, or worse, with their tongues flailing about like salted slugs. Perhaps I have had to weather too many protestations of false innocence when I have told them to leave the premises.

Or perhaps, there is something about that one particular action that taps into the non-verbal portions of our brains. A behavior that within a specific context, can be completely ignored, or convey a languid sensuality or sexual magnetism, but outside of those contexts is unseemly and unhealthy. One of the key features of “Jabba the Hutt”, in the “Star Wars” movies was a large, slimy tongue traversing his wide lipless mouth. It was a deliberate choice for making him all the more repulsive on a gut level.

The sad thing is, I don’t think many, if any, of the offenders I’ve witnessed ever knew what they were doing or the impact it conveyed.