How To Kiss Well
By Ben Van Heuvelen. Posted on .
My proudest kissing conquest, for example, is my current girlfriend, Sarah. She was the ultimate challenge. When we first met, she didn't like to kiss. She thought it felt phony. If you were feeling so damn passionate, she reasoned, then why weren't your clothes off? Being the lucky object of her passion, I didn't much argue the point—at first. Instead, I just tried to understand how on earth someone could dislike kissing.
To my surprise, I found that Sarah had much in common with the overenthusiastic tongues of my youth. For all of them, kissing was nothing more than an intimation of sex. For the over-kissers, like Julie the tongue-invader, kissing was good to the extent it mimicked intercourse. For Sarah the under-kisser, it was just a step toward what happened next. As a result, she, like other kissing dilettantes, could not see the range of kissing possibilities.
In its fully realized form, kissing is an alternate language in which lovers conduct a parallel courtship—they tease, they connect, they discover an accord. In this second relationship, the kissing relationship, Sarah needed to take it slow. I found that she had no problem with playful kissing. She would always return a peck, and bite back if I nibbled her lip. She could enjoy a kiss that did nothing more than flirt.
For a couple who had initially sprinted past first base without touching the bag, this tentativeness might seem odd. But the body can be a blunt instrument, easy to use as an outlet for the passion of new love. On the more emotional terrain of the mouth, Sarah was a modest girl, wary of committing herself too readily.
After a time, the kisses started to last longer. A gifted if infrequent poet, Sarah began to appreciate how a good kiss, like a poem, suggests more than it says outright, expressing those feelings that lovers can share only indirectly. Her creativity was stirred. She, too, has become an aficionado.
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