The Art of Kissing

I never cease to be amazed and amused by my friends the Latinos. They are a very ‘aliving’ culture, as Elizabeth might say. Warm and fuzzy, loud and vivacious, always late but totally tranquila, distinct and cheveri…totally cool. One of the distinctly Hispanic customs is kissing. Before coming here I was one of those sheltered Americans who had never kissed anyone outside of the immediate family, unless of course they were under the age of say three or so. All that changed as soon as I set foot on Venezuelan soil. But there is an art to it. Not just any old thing will do. It’s kind of like learning how to eat with your hands when you go to India.
The general hello kiss is a light cheek to cheek kind of procedure done right after or while in the process of greeting the acquaintance, friend, stranger, enemy, boyfriend, girlfriend, family member etc. with one of the three of so dozen ways that the Spaniards have of saying the English equivalent of hey, howdy, what’s shakn’. I still haven’t learned the significance of all the greetings yet after four months. But if the question starts with ‘como…’ don’t bother giving a quizzical look and asking what it means. Just go right ahead and say good.
Note that the general hello kiss is strictly business. No lingering or monkeying around. Keep the lips dry, no slobbering on the other person or you get excommunicated from the club.
There are other ways of doing it for sure though. The above procedure is in general more for friends and acquaintances. The strangers and enemies fall into another category altogether from the ‘general’ hello kiss. We might call this the ‘illusive’ hello kiss. Or maybe the “barely there’ hello kiss. This one takes even more timing and accuracy than the ‘general’ hello kiss. For one thing you have to be quick on your toes to catch exactly the right timing. These kisses can really sneak up on you some times. When you see someone from this category approaching you, first of all brace yourself with a good baseball stance so as to have perfect control over your balance. The last thing you want to do is loose your balance on one of these kisses and end up toppling head over teakettle backwards in your attempt to execute the ‘illusive’ kiss. Even worse would be to loose your balance on the forward motion and go diving head first into a big, slobbery hello.
Once you’ve got the stance perfected, toes dug in a little for added balance, start moving in towards the cheek of the other person, all the time keeping an eye on the rate of approach of the other individual. This is where very precise timing comes into play. When you are very, very close to the other person…way into the personal space of an average American individual, you make a kind of swooping effect never actually touching the cheek of the other person while quickly reversing your direction of movement. At just the precise moment you pucker up your lips and making a loud smacking noise with as much drama as possible. This usually satisfies the best of them, especially if done with lots of smiling.
Now there is another kind of general hello kiss but it leaves the PG realm and enters the PG-13 category. As I am not sure of the age and experience of my blog viewers I will have to leave off describing this one.

Now you will understand better if I kiss you when I get back to the United States…