Kissing Is Gross

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You’re eye to eye with a huge babe. You have the sneeze feeling between your legs and your lips are magnetic, being pulled by an imperceptible, otherworldly gravity towards the other person’s; slowly, surely unsure. You can feel their hot breath on your cheek, your bottom lip grazes theirs and suddenly you’re pressed together, your tongue lapping against teeth, hands in hair, on knees, across backs.

It’s disgusting. You pull apart and strings of saliva dangle between you like foul, sticky spider webs. Someone else is essentially spitting into your mouth and not only are you allowing it to happen, you’re just as you’re spitting back. Your mouths taste like tacos and whiskey and possibly even cigarettes, but it’s not delicious like it sounds; it’s stale and awful.

Kissing is gross. We do it anyways, because it feels so nice and it’s a good way to instigate sex; more subtle that just cupping a nut, and much more romantic than yelling “Hey, let’s screw!” and dropping a tit out the top of your shirt. Here are some really feral things that sometimes happen when you’re kissing.

You Need To Burp

This happens pretty much every time I’ve ever kissed anyone ever in the history of kissing. I don’t know what it is about kissing that inspires mouth gas, but it’s always a case of having gone a whole day without needing to burp once, then the second I’m kissing I feel one bubbling in my throat. It’s instantaneous; like my gas is just not having it that I’m finally getting some.

If you can anticipate the burp, great; you can nuzzle your face into your kiss friend’s neck and let it go slowly and gently right there. But sometimes they take you by surprise, and you have no option but to burp into the other person’s mouth. When this happens, I just try and turn it into one of those muted half burps adults do at dinner parties (apparently the definition of “adult” is “person who is not proud of, and does not see the inherent hilarity in, profoundly loud burps emitted in social situations”) and then take one of two courses of action.

The first is to pull back away from the kiss and say, “Um, did you just burp in my mouth?” You have to say this very seriously and incredulously, like no other answer other than “yes, I’m sorry, let me buy you a fancy bracelet to apologize” seems like it could be even remotely conceivably possible. When you’re kissing sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s happening where, and you’d be surprised how many people will admit to a crime they didn’t commit just through their sheer confusion at your absolute resolve and certainty.

The second option is to hope they don’t notice, or are too much of an awkward weirdo to bring it up (I kiss a lot of awkward weirdos which bodes well for my proclivity to kiss burp). If they do notice and ask you if you just burped in their mouth, just get really mad. You can either go with “OMG I can’t believe you would accuse me of something like that what kind of gross bitch do you think I am?” cross your arms, and refuse to kiss further, or you can own up to the burp but get mad at them anyway, something along the lines of, “OMG what’s wrong with you I’m just a normal human it was an accident, sheesh, grow up!”

Your Make-Up Is On His Nose

I am very, very pale skinned, and I enjoy wearing make-up. I also have a huge nose. On many occasions after making out with a dude, I’ll pull away and see a smudge of pale foundation on the tip of his nose. This is not something, at the end of a nice date, I want a guy to get home, look in the mirror, and see on his nose. The degree to which this embarasses me is accentuated by the darkness of my fellas skin–there’s no way a black guy with a big smudge of cream colored foundation on his nose is not going to notice, unless he also happens to be a blind guy.

And it turns out there’s no subtle way to rub at someone’s nose with a tissue or your fingers; you can go for some kind of cutesy crap but then you’re just going to look like a moron who not only wears too much make-up, but that does cutesy nose crap to dudes. The only option is to date guys with the exact same skin tone as you, although that feels sort of racist. You could always explain your reasoning for this to guys–it will make you look batshit crazy but at least you’ll prove it’s not because of racism.

A Bit Of Food On Your Back Tooth Becomes Dislodged

This is the grossest. That little bit of lunch that’s just been hanging out on your back tooth, completely inconspicuously, suddenly decides to come out for a stroll. The worst is that you weren’t expecting it; you thought you’d done a fine job picking out all the leftovers from lunch with your tongue/finger nail. Normally, it would be a welcome surprise–a little snack to get you through to dinner–but when someone else has their tongue in your mouth it’s absolutely sickening.

When I was 13 I made out with a guy who had braces and–I’m dry retching as I write this–a little bit of sausage roll that was caught in his braces came loose and went into my mouth. It was the most horrible sexual experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve had my gag reflex get the better of me while giving a blow job. Of course I was 13 so I told everyone in my grade, except that (and I definitely deserved it) I was also crucified–he was the guy with food in his braces, and I was the girl who ate the food out of his braces.

Pash Rash

“Pash”, in the Queen’s English, means “Kiss”. Rash means rash. My “type” is “super hairy”–I’m actively turned OFF by dudes who have hairless chests–and I especially love myself a hairy Jew (just in case there are any reading, call me!). And let’s face it, if you’re in your 20s, or even in your early 30s–who am I kidding, whatever age you are!–if you live in Brooklyn you either love or have to get used to loving men with facial hair.

The unfortunate side effect of this is looking in the mirror after a desperate make-out session to find a chafed mouth, surrounded–from nose to chin and dimple to dimple–in a uniquely patchy red rash. This is what you get when a thousand coarse hairs sandpaper your face for an extended period of time–a mouth that looks like some sort of STI is spreading outwards from it to consume your entire face.

Bad Breath

Morning breath is the reason I don’t have a boyfriend; because when you claim to love someone, you have to kiss them even when their breath smells like rotting shoe. And your breath smells like acid reflux. Then you have to smash those together and mixed them all around. Which is gross, naturally.

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