Certain Forms Of Intimacy More Disgusting Than Others

by Alexandra Molotkow

So the times a guy sloshed his tongue all around your mouth? He was trying to reach your brain:

Males, said Gallup, “attempt to, more often than females, engage in open-mouth kissing with tongue contact. Open-mouth kissing with tongue contact is three times more likely to eventuate in sex than closed-mouth kissing.”

Also, saliva contains trace amounts of testosterone. “This may raise testosterone levels on the part of the female that’s in this committed relationship and, therefore, make her more receptive to sexual activity,” he said.

Reminds me of two things:

…and the X-Files episode “2Shy,” in which a mutant man stalks lonely women on the Internet and sucks out their body fat with his goodnight kiss.

“At the moment of a kiss, particularly if it’s an open-mouth kiss, there’s an exchange of bacteria between the participants,” says Gallup. “As much as 80 million bacteria are exchanged between the two parties.”

Why do we kiss, even?? Researchers from the University of Nevada and Indiana University recently found that less than half of cultures worldwide kiss romantically. “The Mehinaku of Brazil, for example, told one ethnographer that they thought kissing was ‘gross,’ asking why anyone would want to ‘share their dinner.’” So kissing is exactly like ketchup, an abomination if you never grew up with it.

At the same time, Sheril Kirshenbaum, author of The Science of Kissing, writes:

Psychologist John Bohannon of Butler University and his research team surveyed 500 people to compare their recollections of a various important life experiences to determine what made the most lasting impression. A first kiss was found to create the most vivid memory and when asked about specifics, most people could recall up to 90 percent of the details of the moment regardless of how long ago it occurred.

I had my first kiss on New Year’s Eve, Y2K, with a guy named Leo on a playground. We were drunk on stolen gin and wine our friend’s brother bought us. Before that, I remember thinking how unappealing it seemed to mash your lips against someone else’s, but I had faith in some magic energy released on contact, the way I once believed, thanks to my bestie, that “sprint” came out of a man’s penis during sex to “make the woman feel sooooo good.”

I remember being disappointed by the blandness of it, though I remember Leo was a pretty good kisser. What I remember most of all is what my friend M. said after the fact: “It looked kind of cool. But mostly weird and terrifying. One second you were two people talking. Then I looked again and, Oh my God. They’re attached.”