Robert Dessaix
‘Bésame,’ she croons with swelling passion, ‘bésame mucho …’ Kiss me a lot. And I think she means it. She sounds lushly Cuban. I’m at breakfast in a hotel in the middle of Java, but even here there’s no escape. In recent years, kissing has got completely out of hand.
When I was a child, the rules were straightforward: on a special occasion, carefully adopting the A-frame position, you might lightly plant a kiss on the cheek of a close relative of the opposite sex. That was it. You didn’t lock lips with whoever opened the front door to you when you went visiting and you didn’t feel obliged to give your wife’s ex-husband a three-cheek chmok-chmok-chmok to wish him a happy birthday.
Free-for-all
Once upon a time you thrust your tongue down somebody’s throat only as a gesture of the warmest goodwill. Nowadays it’s a total free-for-all and even worse at Christmas. The other day while disembarking somewhere sultry, I found myself momentarily wondering if I was supposed to kiss the flight attendant goodbye as I left the aircraft. It wasn’t lust, I was just confused about what was expected. Steaminess always makes me think it’s Christmas.
I’m not against kissing as such. After all, we’ve been doing it for a long time. Are we at root indulging in a mastication ritual when we osculate? Grooming each other? Eating those we desire? Who knows? The point is that it needs to be reined in.
The Indians started it, apparently, as a cultural practice, with Alexander the Great rather taking to it, as you might expect, after observing it at close quarters, popularising it further west where it caught on quickly. In 1896 we started kissing in movies, except, paradoxically, in India. Now everyone kisses everyone everywhere all the time.
In general, for centuries, you kissed equals on the lips, merely pouting cheekwards where there was some doubt about who was precisely who in the relationship. A knight might kiss a knight on the lips, but you would be foolhardy to follow suit.
These days, of course, nobody knows who is who in any sense of the phrase whatsoever. Terms such as ‘equal’, ‘friend’ and ‘blood relative’ have all been rendered meaningless, while ‘intimacy’ sounds like a line in women’s lingerie.
I am just who I identify as being. Consequently, the kissing situation is in total disarray. Pop stars blow kisses and shout ‘I love you all!’ at the audience they cannot even see, acquaintances of any sex at all pucker up and plant a smacker on your face if you so much as drop in for afternoon tea.
At Christmas any pretence of restraint is thrown aside: second-cousins will kiss you, mothers at your children’s school will kiss you, your hairdresser will kiss you, your dental hygienist will kiss you, the man you’ve just bonded with on the plane from Singapore will grapple you tightly to his bosom and kiss you – SPLAT! – right on your bearded mouth. It’s bedlam. It has to stop. We need to bring back guidelines.
The French, who really know what they’re doing in the mouth department, have rules about kissing. It’s called faire la bise. Basically, it’s right cheek to right cheek, then left cheek to left cheek, in total silence – no loud MWAH! MWAH! noises; even the internet warns against this particular faux pas.
A third kiss is mandatory around Nîmes and Montpellier. In Paris go for either two or four bises, never three. At the far end of Brittany one will do nicely.
A kiss on the lips implies intimacy of some variety. A thorough ravishing of the oral cavity (often known as ‘a French kiss’) implies a truly exceptional level of physical intimacy with exciting prospects.
Slobbering
In Australia every encounter is a grab-bag of possibilities. At Christmas, all it takes is one carol and a sip of something festive for someone you’ve only just met, someone who’s just called you dude or darling or gramps, to start slobbering all over your face.
As a rule of thumb, I’d suggest two bises for someone you feel a certain affection for, lips to cheek for someone you love and lips to anything else according to passion or prior arrangement. Otherwise, stand clear.
From the way she’s belting out the final, frantic lines of Bésame mucho, I don’t think la Cubana would agree with me.
- Robert Dessaix is an Australian essayist, journalist, novelist and author of the memoir A Mother’s Disgrace. See more at www.robertdessaix.com.au.
The science behind the smooching
Emer Maguire
Kissing is wonderful – so wonderful that most of us can recall 90 per cent of the details of our first kiss.
Human beings have been preoccupied with kissing for years. It features as the climax of all great Hollywood love stories, and is celebrated by singers and poets alike.
In reality, kissing is nothing more than two people putting their faces together and exchanging spit. How on Earth did something so gross become so appealing? The act of kissing has developed to become advantageous to humans: if it didn’t serve an evolutionary purpose, we simply would not do it.
So what’s in a kiss?
The scientific jury is still out on whether it is a learned or instinctual behaviour. Approximately 90 per cent of cultures kiss, making a strong case for the act being a basic human instinct. I know what you’re thinking… what about the other ten per cent? If kissing were a natural behaviour, surely all cultures would do it? While this small minority doesn’t ‘kiss’ like the rest of us (due to superstitions and cultural beliefs), they may still engage in kissing-like behaviours, such as rubbing noses together.
If kissing is a natural instinct, why don’t animals kiss? Many animals actually do engage in kissing-like behaviours to show affection. These behaviours are so diverse, from dogs sniffing and licking potential mates, to elephants putting their trunks in each other’s mouths.
However, one animal kisses just like we do: the bonobo ape. This isn’t too surprising, considering we share 98.7 per cent of our DNA with this hairy cousin. Bonobos kiss for comfort and to socialise. Sometimes after a fight they even kiss and make up. We humans kiss for the exact same reasons, indicating that kissing might be ingrained deep in our DNA.
– More at britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/kiss-science-smooching.