When I reminisce about 5th grade, I usually get a gut-throbbing feeling pounding my entire body. It was the first time I discovered the intricate, albeit quite gross world of kissing. My first kiss story lays the foundation for spin-the-bottle shenanigans, otherwise it would had been questionably wrong for an 11 year-old to propose kissing a guy that had just grown his first moustache hairs. Something tells me that spin-the-bottle is just as questionable in itself because fate has an odd way of making you kiss the wrong boy when you definitely have a silly crush on his best friend. Long story short, the kiss was short, disappointing and a bit head-scratching. But most of all, why did it require an audience for me to finally do it?
Fast forward a decade later, I might have an answer for that.
Being eleven among grown-ups who constantly romanticize kissing, you begin to nurture a fascinating curiosity and to experience it yourself. It is a farcical curiosity because you could not admit to your friends that you had never kissed anyone before or that you were inexperienced in this particular excruciating domain for an 11-year-old. 10 years later, you realize it is simply exchanging saliva with someone you are comfortable enough with. The end.
In my humble opinion, you have to slug through understanding why kissing represents a huge deal to some and almost nothing to others. If there was an unbiased description of it, kissing would probably be a physical act through which people may pose their attraction or uncontrollable hormones on another, a ritual which we collectively accept as quite valid or even maybe something we long with substantial passion for most of our young adult lives. Whatever the reason you want to kiss another human being, we can all agree that it makes us nervous and giddy and scared all at the same time. In hindsight, I strongly believe we have put unwarranted pressure on our younger selves to perfect this art of first base when we did not even understand the reason we were holding a bat in the first place. Anyway, that story is for another day.
So, after all of this, let’s say you are in your twenties walking down the street, minding your own unproblematic business, when you are slapped with a 3D live show of two people intensely making out. Saliva, touching, the whole buffet. Somehow, you are not that hungry. You have already grown a thick skin when it boils down to the finessed craft of kissing. These, my readers, are the unrequited consequences of kissing, irrespective of the place where that need gets to you. PDA has entered this busy chat.
Whether we are talking about celebrities being caught in public during their wildest make-out sessions or seeing two love birds being unable to keep their hands off of each other, one must agree that PDA is the devil’s work. As I stated in the beginning, kissing may have started with an audience as proof to our younger peers that we have the guts to kiss a boy, but it does not have to continue like this for the rest of our lives. For anyone heavily indulging in PDA whenever the opportunity arises, I am seriously trying to muster enough empathy to understand when I bought a first-row ticket to someone else’s private moments. However, I am also kind. PDA has its own place in parties, clubs or contexts that encourage such activity.
I am no hypocrite. I did participate in PDA myself when I still thought kissing was only for cool people. Now that I am in my twenties, I want to walk down the street without having to look somewhere else when two people next to me decide to kiss like there is no tomorrow.
PS: PDA, in my opinion constitutes heavy kissing and touching material. I do not include pecks or extremely romantic hand-holding. I want that too, fellas.
With that being said,
xoxo