Never Been Kissed Lately
We got tonight . . . who needs tomorrow?
No offense to any of the dudes I’ve kissed lately, but I think we can all agree that none of those kisses was life-changing.
None of us stepped away from those kisses with our hearts aflutter and our loins aflame. It’s not that none of us tried. We did. I probably tried too hard. Maybe that was the problem. I tried too hard to believe we had a spark, when we should’ve just shared some nachos and gone home.
The best kisses of my life have been bold, front-facing moments of truth. Like two divers who have climbed to opposite cliffs and agreed to jump at the same time, we have met in the middle with equal force and flexibility. We have flown free.
Other times it’s been a little too slobbery. Or too dry.
Breath matters, but not as much as you might think. Sometimes you get in there and it’s like the bad breath becomes a flavor and you can share in it. Sounds gross, I know. Other times, it’s like trying to fight through a noxious gas attack.
Closed-mouth kisses can be incredibly satisfying if performed with nimble lips—which brings us to the instructional portion of this correspondence: The second most important thing about kissing is lip and tongue mobility. The most important thing is courage. Are you courageous enough to show up completely? Are you able to both give and receive? Can you respond rather than react or attack? What is this other person all about anyway? What are they made of? What’d they have for lunch?
Great kisses are chemical reactions. Pheromonic symphonies. Soul-free-ers.
Kissing, like any sport, gets better the more you do it. You shouldn’t expect to go pro right away, and in fact, it might take a while before you see your potential. Sometimes you can’t appreciate the skill required until you’ve fumbled through some first attempts. Like learning to swim by watching YouTube videos: You can mimic the movements, but you’ll never get it until your head is underwater.
It sounds like an afterschool special cliche, but the best kisses are with someone you love. Intimacy makes you more relaxed, which is essential to great kissing. Relaxed doesn’t mean low energy. You gotta bring some to get some. You can’t cold-fish your way through. You also can’t fire up the embers for someone else. It takes two to lip-tango.
“Great kisses are chemical reactions. Pheromonic symphonies. Soul-free-ers.”
To that point, a kiss is best experienced as a two-person endeavor. Even if you have multiple loving partners, the kiss is still best shared face-to-face with one other person. You may share your relationship, you may share your bed, you may be having a threesome right now (in which case, your partners probably want you to put down your phone), but the best kisses will always be mano a mano — or labio a labio, as it were. Although when you say it like that, it sounds like an altogether different endeavor.
You may only kiss a person for one weekend, one night, or even one time, and that can be one of the most romantic moments of your life.
There is one kiss that stands out for me. It wasn’t love, although I wanted it to be. It wasn’t a one-night stand, although it might as well have been. The relationship was a shit-show from the beginning, but that first kiss was Jake Ryan and the red Porsche, Dylan McKay and Brenda Walsh, Watts showing Keith how to deliver a “kiss that kills;” it was the culmination of years of waiting, dreaming, wishin’, and hopin’ for that magic moment. When it finally happened, I sizzled for hours after. That kiss was lightning.
But romance is also the domain of tragedy. A kiss can kill and break your heart. A kiss can also heal; it can reach in and touch your coiled-up potential. Just one kiss can really flip your lid. Just one kiss is enough to start wars and survive wars for. How many people would give anything for just one more kiss?
Even though I’ve had some really great kisses, enough time has passed that it’s almost like it never happened, or like it happened to someone else. I feel like I’ve never been kissed (again).
Luckily, kissing is something you can do all your life. There’s still time. But even when you do, you’ll never be able to make it last. Kisses are temporary. Even when you’re totally in the moment, saying, “remember this feeling, remember this feeling,” you’ll never be able to remember that feeling. You can replay it in your mind for hours, days, weeks afterward, but the moment will never be exactly that way again. Those lips will never again be those lips. It will never again be that version of right now. We got tonight . . . who needs tomorrow?
Movies and TV will have you believe the best kisses are fast and furious. You’re supposed to be so swept up in adrenaline that you’re thrown together against your will. The force is too strong to ignore or control. You can’t even slow down to take the keys out of the front door. You’re caught up in a cyclone of lust to the bedroom, the couch, the hallway floor— wherever you can rip your clothes off fast enough to get to the Main Event.
If you’ve ever experienced this then you know how thrilling it is, like an amusement park ride or dancing with a great partner, someone who leads as well as follows, who reads and anticipates your every movement. Like a martial art or a sport, you’re using your whole bodies to communicate.
“But romance is also the domain of tragedy. A kiss can kill and break your heart. A kiss can also heal; it can reach in and touch your coiled-up potential”
Which can be awesome, and/or it can feel desperate, untethered, and lonely. This kind of urgency is rarely a good thing. Anything you can’t slow down and appreciate, anything that comes in that hot, is not going to be sustainable unless it’s taken down several notches. That’s playing with fire. In real life, most of us prefer to keep the fire in the fireplace, where it can still be enjoyed but has much less chance of burning the house down.
That intensity doesn’t have to be all-consuming. It can be a steady fuel instead of an apocalyptic blast.
Good kissing is a nonverbal exchange of ideas. The language of kissing is limitless. You can communicate without words about things your logical mind can’t even understand. Maybe you can’t say, “Honey, please pick up some eggs at the store later,” but you can learn things from a kiss that neither of you would know how to say—things about the soul, about love, forgiveness, trauma, trust, pain, redemption, humor, joy. And once you know someone well enough, you might even be able to psychically communicate about the eggs.
So, find yourself someone to kiss who lets you be your whole self. Find someone who takes your breath away, then gives it back again. Find someone you can flow with. Find someone who will lock eyes with you from the opposite cliffside—wait for your cue—and dive in.
