attention heteros!

Tears in his eyes, aflame with Gallic ardor, Lafayette threw his arms around Washington and kissed him on both cheeks. That shocked everyone, because no one ever touched His Excellency. Lafayette rode to Morristown on the tenth. Washington went out to meet him and, Hamilton remembered, his ‘eyes filled with tears of joy… a certain proof of a truly paternal love.’ The young man threw his arms around his adoptive father and kissed him on both cheeks. The marquis heard on the fourteenth that Washington and his party were approaching town. He leaped out of his bed, into his clothes, and onto his horse, galloped full tilt toward his adoptive father, jumped off the saddle, and ran, his arms outstretched, toward the general. Virginia militia major St. George Tucker told his wife that ‘the marquis ‘caught the general round his body, hugged him as close as it was possible, and absolutely kissed him from ear to ear once or twice… with as much ardor as ever an absent lover kissed his mistress on his return.’ Reunited at last, they were both in tears.’