Do you remember your first kiss?
I honestly don’t. Not my first one. I could have been a minute old. I don’t know.
But I do remember…….my husband’s first kiss.
We had been dating a few months. He actually asked me to marry him before we had our first kiss. I don’t know why. That’s just how it went down.
I was careful about my kissing. It’s a very personal thing for me. Mama always said it was part of sex, so you had to be mighty careful where you went with it. That’s not bad advice. Some people are like kissing fish, who use their kiss for love and war. But I was a little more particular.
I had come back to college after break and realized that Dan was the one I wanted to marry. I worked at a Peruvian Restaurant on top of Lookout Mountain. He would drive me to work and often pick me up in an old green Skylark. I wasn’t always comfortable. It had little to do with him. I had been raped more than once. Sex was a scary issue for me. Maybe more like an invasion, so I didn’t act like the usual girlfriend sitting beside the boyfriend.
On the way up the mountain one day, Dan asked me why I sat so close to the door on the other side of the car. He said they call girls like me ‘door huggers’ and he bluntly asked what I was afraid of, did I think he was going to rape me or something? Yes, just like that, not knowing the weight of his question.
I asked him what he thought about sex. We had a come to Jesus meeting in a way most college kids don’t have. If you are wondering if I told him I had been raped, the answer is no. But I did ask plenty of questions. I had no idea this was making him even more attracted to me. It certainly did me as well, but in a different way, because it meant he was able to see me, not just my outside parts.
I compromised and scooted closer to him. He didn’t try anything for fear he’d lose everything. It stayed that way for the next few months.
Then on that evening he picked me up in Atlanta and as we were rounding a mountain into Chattanooga, we stopped to eat. After we finished, the snow had began to fall and we sat in the old Skylark, talking. He leaned in for a kiss and then flitted back, like he was unsure of himself.
I whispered “I dare ya.” He smiled and started the car. I was perplexed. Now that he had permission, he didn’t want it? He didn’t answer. We drove to the top of the mountain. Overlooking the beautiful lights of the city, with a dusting of snow covering the car, I turned my head toward him to speak and catching me off guard, he kissed me, long, and just right.
He kissed me and I knew there would never be another man I would want like this man. He sealed the deal for marrying me that night.
He says he remembers it like it was yesterday, my pink sweater, my ‘dare ya’ and well, it’s been good for more than 38 years now.
But that’s what a good kiss will do for you. It will outlast every fight you will have. It will keep you through hard nights and crazy circumstances, life changes and incapable moments.
It was several years into our marriage that he helped me process the trauma of my rapes. He was instrumental in my healing and perhaps, in reality, his first kiss was the beginning of that healing.
Science has proven kisses are healing agents, which is why you feel better when someone kisses your booboos.
Smile. A few years ago, I was in the hospital and a young Nurse became one of our favorite. She caught us kissing one morning and confided that she was engaged, but hated his kiss. Dan looked at me with unbelief, then he didn’t hesitate to tell her not to marry him. He said she should wait until she would want to kiss this person forever.
We have not reached the behavior of the Bonobos, who have been recorded sucking each other’s tongues for 12 minutes! We can’t say we are wild as our puppy, who seems to use her tongue for everything. But we still do just fine. There’s plenty of proof that kissing still works very well for us, just the way we do it.
We don’t know if we tilt to the right, like two thirds of us do when we kiss. We hear over 60 percent of us drop a relationship from a bad kiss. We see why anthropologists say kissing is an instinctual connection and we believe endocrinologists when they say that our mouths are an exchange of hormones. (Oxytocin and Cortisol)
We can tell something’s going on! We believe the psychologists who say kissing is a way we interpret our world connections. We even believe the Bible is right about a kiss being holy.
But mostly, we just like how it feels.
I don’t think practicing actually contributes to the true feelings of a kiss. I think that has to do with the person and the moment. A great kiss invites someone into your heart and slams the door on the world. So, the best preparation for a great kiss is being lovable, being clean and being there. Smile.
We also believe the Marriage Counselors who say couples who kiss more often, connect longer and stay closer than those who don’t, meaning your wife is right to panic a little, when you stop kissing her. Smile.
Maybe you could find a little time for that this evening. I dare ya!
Ann Stewart Porter
Kiss Me.
February 11, 2014 by Blessed and Inspired
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