wikipedia quoth:
as an expression of romantic affection or sexual desire, kissing involves two people kissing one another on the lips, usually with much more intensity, and for a considerably longer period of time. in more passionate kissing couples may open their mouths, suck on each other's lips, or move their tongues into each others' mouths (see french kissing). sexual kissing may also involve one person kissing another on various parts of the body (see foreplay).
while there’s certainly other types of kissing (e.g., signs of respect/deference; friendship; etc), with valentine’s day in the offing, it seems silly to waste time discussing them.
in the princess bride, a very young fred savage queried with suspicion
is this a kissing book?
kissing is a strange phenomenon. it’s more or less unknown in the animal kingdom. we humans are largely alone in that we do it at all. i’ve always found that peculiar, myself.
i am a kissing slut.
there, i said it.
i love kissing. i truly do. i like sex, too, but you know, for me it’s all kinda secondary to me to kissing.
not for the mere act of it—like so many things, i find the meaning of an action vastly more compelling imaginatively than the act itself. like the old adage “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”, i find that actions are most meaningfully examined in the context of why and what they mean.
no, i like kissing b/c it’s a form of being vulnerable, of choosing to allow someone to draw closer.
those of you who have pets know that they generally don’t like it when you touch their faces: they generally shy away, turn to avoid it when you try to do so, unless you’ve trained him or her to like it.
heck, we don’t like it when someone invades our personal space: when a complete stranger walks within one foot of you, most of us back away, try to maintain some physical—and hence emotional—distance. and that assumes we let them get that close—i would probably back away from such a person. i’ve heard it said that europeans are comfortable with less personal space than americans, which is borne out by my own personal experiences.
in this particular instance, i think that for most, the physical and emotional distances correlate very strongly: the closer we allow someone to get, the closer we allow them to ourselves in both ways.
IOW: with a kiss, we allow someone to draw close to us.
and while that’s certainly true of sex, we all know that when we’re really turned on, we make decisions we might not normally otherwise make. after all, sex can be impersonal—a recent blog entry by sidhe certainly describes how that can be so.
kissing is another matter entirely, however.
see, i believe there’s a reason why a kiss is universally regarded as the platonic ideal of a romantic action, even more than the act of sex. and that’s b/c kissing can say so much more.
a kiss is a very simple act, and like so many simple things, its beauty is found in how it’s done. and what i find is that the best kisses have one thing in common: they communicate love. i suppose in that respect—at least for me—the best kisses are like sex that way.
but by comparison, sex is a limited tool for showing love. you know that wonderful, lazy, happy, post-coital glow that has you floating on a cloud of velvet? it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?
haven’t you ever gotten there with a kiss?
that’s why a kiss will always for me trump sex as an expression of love: b/c it can communicate the same thing but so much more potently.
so am i the only person who’s had that glow from a single kiss, or is this truly—as i believe—a universal experience, or am i just a freak? does sex communicate love better than a kiss in some way that i’ve missed? comment and let me know.
ed
