The Kiss


During my early teens I was nervous about practically everything, and in hindsight, have no idea why. But when it comes to the subject of kissing, I completely sympathise with my immature anxiety because if someone asked me for advice now, I’d have no idea what to say.

When you actually stop and think about it, what on earth do we actually do when we kiss?!

I’ve been trying to work out what I did with my tongue the first time I ever snogged someone (yes I did just say snog) but I can’t remember. It’s probably down to traumatic memory loss or something. I am however pretty sure I googled “how to kiss a boy” before I’d ever locked lips with a chap. I’m also pretty sure that I got distracted by msn and frantically working out my love percentage with Duncan from Blue, and thus had absolutely no idea what I was doing when it actually came down to it. Shame on me: a hobby I would go on to spend approximately 336 hours of my life practising and I was more concerned with my compatibility with bisexual boy band members. Excellent.

So although I don’t blame myself for my teenage melt down, I’ve realised there’s not much to it. Kissing is pretty much rubbing your lips against someone else’s as you both make accidental (and slightly awkward) slurping noises, right? Wrong. There’s the awkward teeth clash that does in fact happen in real life, there’s the ‘which way are they going to lean’ dilemma, and there are issues of height and even breath. I’m telling you, it’s a minefield of misfortune. In almost any other social situation, putting your face that close to another person’s would result in a head butt. Or a restraining order. So why is it acceptable and why does it feel so good? I’m sure there is some rather boring scientific explanation for why a smooch feels fantastic, but from space, I think it could arguably be perceived as one of our strangest global past times.

Have a look for yourself. Go to any club across the country and you are guaranteed to find hundreds of couples kissing in dark corners, canoodling on the dance floor and people sharing more than a cigarette in the smoking area and I find it hilarious to watch. Let’s not forget though: kissing can most certainly be very unappetising. It’s not always like the movies where one foot lifts off the floor and lipstick (and cold saws) miraculously avoid passing from mouth to mouth. Instead, tongues can wander and saliva can slither, but in the moment, you’re totally unaware until someone publishes a photo of you and Dave from finance snogging outside O’Neil’s on Facebook. Your memory of a romantic rendezvous now looks more like an x-rated episode of Eastenders. But what’s a bit of harmless fun, right?


Although we easily fall for the French who are renowned for being the most skilled of lip lockers and Italians who are known for their passion, whatever you do, avoid pursuing a Glasgow kiss. I’m pretty sure you’ll live to regret it.


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s