The Joys Of Making Out

I like to kiss people and I know you like to do it too. After all, making out is one of the greatest joys one can have in life. You can kiss anyone really. You can meet a stranger and start to kiss them immediately. In fact, it happens all the time with drunk people in nightclubs. They see someone they find attractive on the dance floor and think to themselves, “I must feel that person’s tongue and face. Right. Now.” And so they do. They do it in front of everyone. They eat their face and then leave it decaying on the dance floor. We think we don’t owe someone anything when we only kiss them. It’s the stuff that comes later that truly complicates things. This is actually not very true. You owe someone something the second you lock eyes with them.

The thing is that making out often feels more intimate than foreplay or intercourse. Feeling someone’s skin, moving your lips all around it, reaching the depths of their mouth—it’s all truly disgusting and sexy at the same time. You wonder how you could be more inside of this person in the moment, if it would be possible to just swallow their mouth whole. We make fun of the way animals have sex on something like National Geographic, but if another species studied the way we kissed, they’d probably be like, “Um, ew. Why?” I mean, it really is gross when you think about the things we do to each other.

Kissing is intimate and yet somehow very raunchy. People often say that if someone can’t kiss, they’re a goner, and I’m inclined to believe it. When you find someone who fits your kissing groove— who’s in tune with your movements—it can be the biggest turn on. You get lost in their lips and time seemingly stands still. Sex has an end point. When it’s over, it’s over. Making out is different though. It has the option to never end. It doesn’t stop until your jaw gets sore and your lips become raw. It’s like you’ve literally beat the shit out of someone’s face. That’s when you call it a day.

Some of the best make out sessions I’ve had have been with strangers. There was this one boy in downtown Los Angeles when I was 20 years old. I was leaving a warehouse party when he spotted me and just started to kiss me. People were staring as we pinned each other against a fence and started to make out for a solid hour. The whole thing felt very voyeuristic. I immediately learned afterwards that this boy was both ugly and stupid but in that moment, he was doing everything right. I only liked him when he kissed.

The first make out session can sometimes be the best. There’s a tension that has been building and you both know it’s leading up to something. When it finally happens, you just go balls to the wall with them. It’s as if you’ve been starved for so long and you just need to devour them.  I kissed one boy after only knowing him for a few hours. However, my desire to make out with him was so strong that it had felt like I had been waiting for a few months. We ended up kissing against a wall in the hallway of my apartment building and it was worth the four hour wait.

I kissed another boy after a few months of heavy flirting. We were on his porch and everyone we knew had already gone to bed. It was summer and we were both wearing shorts, talking about things you only talk about when you know you’re going to be kissing them in a few minutes—stupid jokes and pointless comments that might as well just say, “When are you going to kiss me? I can’t talk like this much longer.” I was sitting on a rickety chair and the boy decided to get on top of me. In the next hour, we managed to move the chair from one end to the other. After we came to, we were in disbelief that we managed to not only break the chair but actually move it 20 feet.

Kissing is fun. You should kiss someone if you like them. You’ll learn so much about them when you taste their spit. And it will also make you feel young again. No matter how experienced you are, your first kiss with someone always takes you back to that first time with that first person. You’re a giddy teen worrying about doing a bad job. It’s a cute little gift from life—one of the few—so take that shit and make out with it.