Do You Miss Making Out?
Or: the Lost Joy of Kissing
There are many sorts of kisses. There’s the short soft kiss you place on a newborn’s head. (I have a new granddaughter, born Saturday!) There’s the social air kiss, where you kiss near but not on another’s cheeks. There’s the butterfly kiss, where you flutter your lashes against someone’s face. There’s the Eskimo kiss, where the two of you rub noses. There’s the parental kiss, where you sink your lips into your child’s cheek. And there’s the romantic kiss, where you and your lover press your mouths together and open yourselves to each other.
For many women (and a few men) kissing is a keen delight in and of itself, and not just a station on the way to the grand terminal. When I was growing up, my friends and I spent several teenage years making out, not making love, and the kissing could go on and on. Some of us are nostalgic for those days, when we were on a low simmer for so long at a time. Every ten minutes or so, the guy would try to go a little further, and the girl would usually prevent him.
This little struggle was always silent; looking back, I marvel that there was never any talk about what was going on. At no point did I say, “I like when you stroke my neck but you can’t touch my breast.” I just reached for his hand and pushed it away.
But it was great when he kissed me. I loved the whole process, from anticipation to affirmation, to the lips pressing down upon mine. The lips are the most sensitive part of the body and contain over a million nerve endings. It was lovely just feeling his lips against mine, especially if I’d been longing for them. Then our lips would part and the kisses would get deeper. Our tongues and fingers teased each other’s mouths, as we inflamed each other almost competitively. There was licking and sucking and caressing. There was exploration. Sometimes it seemed like we were sharing a consciousness: hence, the term “soul kiss.” There were breaks for breathing and sighing.
I don’t remember these elaborate kissing sessions as being frustrating, but maybe they were for the boys.
I do know that when I grew up and began having sex, the making out that I had known and loved now became perfunctory. Whatever happened to those slow, meditative moments in each other’s mouths? Now I was lucky to get a kiss or two before the interest drifted downward.
Once you have other, keener possibilities for pleasure and satisfaction, perhaps it’s natural to neglect the French kiss. It’s also true that some people adore kissing while other people simply don’t. Just as you can’t teach someone to like olives, you can’t persuade them to love osculation. They either do or they don’t.
The middle-aged characters Cybill and Ben in my new novel Cybill Unbound both like to kiss. Here’s how they first get physical:
On Monday, Ben came into the house and brought her straight to the living room couch. And there they kissed and held each other: nothing more than that. But who would want anything more when kissing him was like entering a warm, moonlit lake? Was it only her feeling for him (smitten!) that made their kissing rhapsodic? His mouth always knew what her mouth wanted most: lip, tongue; pressure, softness; dryness, wetness; rhythm, rest.
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Don’t we all want an intuitive lover?
Click on the link to learn more about the book: Amazon
I think during an encounter women may not want to "be directive." But at some later time, she might like to inform her partner about what she likes most.
We are never too old to resurrect what we liked when we were young!