how hard should you kiss a woman?

on manufacturing devotion

I figure the first word ever written was used to communicate a want. Or a need. Which are the same thing, just separated by enough time to turn the writer desperate.

I’ve got a date tomorrow night after a brief bout with celibacy. I called it a long bout at dinner and my friends laughed at me, because it wasn’t. I think I was spurred out of it by the sudden rise in early-to-mid-20-year-old puritanism I was seeing online. By that I don’t mean the post-election American variant of the 4B movement, smothered in its cradle – just generic puritanism. Calling people sluts for having casual sex, regular programming. I didn’t want to be kindred spirits with those types. Is that a laughable motive to claim as a guy? It must be. I’ve made the unimaginably brave protest, taken the incredibly brave stance of being a man not looking for anything serious. My hair greys with the weight of it.

This piece isn’t about motive. Nor is it about any impending, intentional debauchery. It’s about the days before it, before tomorrow night, when you’re single. Single and touchy, touchy-feely. A feeling that tends to go away when you’re with someone - or maybe that’s just me. Girls leach the passion out of you, and it’s a sacred, beautiful process, but they do. You don’t need to wax poetic if you can just kiss the words into her mouth. There’s no reason to lean against a wall, all alone, nursing your passion like you nurse a drink. Not if there’s a willing dance-partner waiting for you, a willing receiver of your desire. That’s a clinical label, but it’s cheery enough, if you tilt your head just right. Less cruel than ‘a recipient’. Less misogynistic than ‘a receptacle’.

Okay.

I want to be in love, I think. It’s all the pent-up passion. Pent-up passion sounds like a euphemism for wanting someone to fuck, and it must be. I guess you can’t know until afterwards. I think it’s a euphemism for wanting someone to kiss.

How hard should you kiss a woman?

My first kiss was a hard kiss, in an awkward way. We clanked together sloppily. One of the happiest days of my life. I’m sure the feeling of happy disbelief grows scarce as you get older, so it’s nice to have a memory vivid enough to produce it anew. I should have been softer.

My softest kiss was a goodbye peck. The last time I kissed an ex. She was over me by then. Her resigned annoyance with me faded after we broke up, but it was in full force that day, and I’d wilted. I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d kissed her with conviction. If I’d curled her into my arms, squeezed her tight, made a scene. Maybe she would’ve believed I loved her, if I’d acted it out properly. Show, don’t tell.

A kiss after sex depends on the sex. If you’re in love, it’s probably hard. If you slap each other during sex, it’s probably soft - like all reconciliatory things. How hard should you slap a woman?

My favourite kiss was a hello kiss. I think about it all the time. I’d walked into a girl’s living room and she’d bounced over, happy to see me. She’d kissed me on the clavicle (a soft, soft, soft, soft, quick kiss) and whispered hey into my neck. I remember wondering if the happiness was written on my face, and if her roommates could see how stupid it’d made me. It was painfully affectionate and she’d done it as an afterthought, in the way that all people who are raised with love do.

How hard should I kiss a woman, if I want her to feel that way? Do I put my hand by her neck? Not on her neck, but by her neck, as there is a difference. Do I cup her face in both hands, lift her up high onto her tiptoes? Do I, in the lifting, remind her how low I have to bend down to meet her? Do I quietly moan into her mouth, not loud enough to hear, just loud enough to feel?

Dissection is a messy thing, be it a bull’s heart or a kiss you’re tearing to pieces. The viscera is, obviously, quite different when it’s a kiss being dissected. The guts of the thing are learned behaviours, inherent biases, childhood memories. A kiss has reasons, internal organs, as do all living things. It must be dead before it’s dissected and if it isn’t, it soon will be.

Any kiss good enough to manufacture desire will surely be mass-produced. I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t think any woman wants that – a kiss that’s been pulled apart and analysed, shoddily sewn back together. Overthinking an act of desire isn’t a compliment. How hard should you kiss a woman?

As hard as you want to.

I’m writing this last bit two nights after the date. She was gorgeous and tall and we danced a lot. I pulled her in by her necklace to kiss her, and she made a happy sound into my mouth. I wonder if she thought it was hot or well-practiced.

I don’t know if I’ll see her again. She asked for a second date with the fervour of a guy asking you to come back to his place.