A kiss is antithetical to a pandemic that spreads through contact.
A kiss is one of the first things that falls away when you don a mask.
Government health advisories across the world have encouraged people to get innovative with sex and reimagine positions, but avoid kissing.
International Kissing Day is a day dedicated to the kiss. It was instituted to remind people of the everyday intimacy of the kiss. Not as a state-approved gesture to solemnize weddings. Not as a preamble to sex. But a kiss for the sake of a kiss. Rather than dwelling on the irony of the day at a time when kissing is taboo, this is a good day to remember what it felt like to lean in and kiss a fellow human.
The memory of a kiss
A kiss is a memory of rains.
When pairs of lovers sat on rocks, benches and promenades along Mumbai’s blustery seaface, sharing umbrellas or with faces upturned to the feathery needles of rain. The crashing waves, the soft diffused light of day—this was the irresistible backdrop for many a stolen kiss—and a public display of affection that was deemed acceptable and in sync with the weather. The only warning issued out was to watch the rising tide—of both passion and the sea.
A kiss is a memory of touch.
In the world we live in today, the present absence of touch lurks in all corners of our locked in lives.
Indoors, it is a phantom that lives with us, reminding us what it once felt like to hug, entwine fingers, lean in to kiss. Outside, it manifests itself as a prohibition. We walk contained within the circumference of our bubbles, always six feet away from the nearest sentient being, avoiding touch.
A kiss is a memory of Paris
In Paris, lovers have kissed in front of monuments, graves and rivers, irrespective of their romantic overtones. Couples arrange themselves and their kisses to get the perfect photograph with the Eiffel Tower in the background. At the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Oscar Wilde’s grave is encased by a glass screen in order to ward off the kisses. Some graves get roses as ributes, Wilde’s grave was imprinted with kisses in red lipstick left behind by his thousands of admirers and fans. Despite the screen and regular cleaning, the marks of kisses old and new remain. Another memorial dedicated to journalist and revolutionary Victor Noir is associated with the kissing ritual. The sculptor ended up creating a….well…a rather generously endowed likeness and a myth built up associating Noir with a cult of fertility. Women place a flower in his hat, kiss his lips and rub the genital area in the belief that it will bless them with a good sex life or a husband within the year!
The meaning of a kiss
A parental peck,
A religious benediction,
A filial smack,
A friendly greeting,
Step one of foreplay,
A rebellion against homophobia
A protest against moral policing
A socialite’s art,
A mafioso signal for an execution,
A resuscitating breath
A symbol of love,
There are as many manifestations of a kiss in practice as there are in politics, art, cinema and literature.
Birds use their beaks, mammals use snouts and humans use lips, saliva, passion and occasionally tonsils to kiss.
Sigmund Freud the great naysayer of the kiss considered it nowhere near as normal as deemed by society and went on to write, “A particular contact between the mucous membranes of the lips of two people concerned, held in high sexual esteem among many nations in spite of the fact that the parts of the body involved do not form part of the sexual apparatus but constitute the entrance to the digestive tract.”
The health hazards of a kiss include influenza, herpes simplex virus or meningococcal meningitis.
Yet most would take a chance on the kiss and all its pupil-dilating joys.
The times we live in remain an exception as a kiss in the times of coronavirus comes with a risk that has an upward spiral.
A lover’s kiss
Although Victorian conservatism was on the wane by the early 20th Century, the English moral framework remained stodgy. They coined the term “French kiss” as a hat tip to the amorous, adventurous and lusty ways of France and so the term stuck.
Endless tutorials and step-by-step manuals across lifestyle magazines, websites and videos break down the art of kissing into steps like “Use your tongue wisely”, “Keep your mouth minty fresh or “Make sure your lips are moisturized” or “Use this as a google map for your kisses”.
While the debate between asking for a kiss and leaning in continues over time and changing notions of consent and courtship, the “lover’s kiss” done right is a dream of the ages.
And not all of it rests in the world of poetry and pop culture alone. For the kiss is also a wonderfully tactile reading of a possible mate.
Many of the sensations related to kissing are rooted in evolutionary biology. American science writer and author of the book The Science of Kissing, Sheril Kirshenbaum writes, “Lip contact involves five of our 12 cranial nerves as we engage all of our senses to learn more about a partner. Electric impulses bounce between the brain, lips, tongue and skin, which can lead to the feeling of being on a natural “high” because of a potent cocktail of chemical messengers involved. A passionate kiss acts like a drug, causing us to crave the other person thanks to a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This is the same substance involved in taking illegal substances such as cocaine, which is why the novelty of a new romance can feel so addictive.”
The poetry in a kiss
It is apt to end with legends and words that translate kisses in all their power and glory.
Charles Bukowski, poet of the city’s seedy underbelly, dark nights, whorehouses and a canny reading of life on the margins, highlights the kiss in “Raw with Love” :
“I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me”
Neruda writes in a poem from a collection put together from his marginalia and notes:
“with the kisses your mouth taught me
my lips came to know fire.”
Italo Calvino writes of the memory of kisses past in The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount
“If a lover is wretched who invokes kisses of which he knows not the flavor, a thousand times more wretched is he who has had a taste of the flavor and then had it denied him.”
And lastly this iconic song by Seal
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July 05, 2020 at 10:18PM
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Remember what it felt like to lean in and kiss a fellow human? - Condé Nast Traveller India
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