Kiss me, quick! The return of legal snogging

Restrictions on personal contact are being eased - thank God, we can get back to locking lips
Young couple on park bench kissing
snogz
Getty Images/Cultura RF

“Come kiss me, sweet and twenty.” Finally, after more than a year of policing our very bodies, the government is preparing to ease restrictions on personal contact between people who know each other, which doesn’t quite merit the flood of headlines claiming the return of casual sex (do they know what casual sex means? Haven’t they ever woken up with no idea of the name of the person lying next to them?). But it does at least herald one longed-for improvement to our sadly denuded lives - the beginning of the return of kissing.

There’s a reason that the kiss is the most eagerly anticipated moment of any romantic film; why Rodin’s The Kiss is recognised across the world; why Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle did so many takes of the final shot of the 1995 series of Pride and Prejudice that she ended up with a bruised mouth.

And there’s a reason why (wow, I’m really showing my age with the pop culture refs right now) that sex-worker Vivian Ward draws the line at kissing Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman. Sex is one thing - it’s possible (sometimes, alas, unavoidable) to emotionally disengage during sex. A kiss though, is the ultimate in intimacy.

The Kiss with a capital K

Anyone who has ever planted their lips gently on the head of a baby or received an awkward smacker from a shy child; shared a puckered peck with frail relative or mashed one delightedly into the cheek of a surprised pal as the ball hits the back of the net, knows that there’s so much more to a kiss than sexual desire (though there is that - who needs words when you can say “I want you” with a meeting and parting of soft lips?). I love you, it says. I’m here for you. I care for you. I’m proud of you. I’ll keep you safe. It’s not your fault. I forgive you. I can’t keep away from you. Look how lucky we are. I’m happy. You’ll be OK. Thank you. I missed you. I love you. I love you.

That’s why we need it back. It’s one of the great joys of humanity, and except within household bubbles (and when was the last time you actually properly snogged your spouse? Like really went for it?) it’s been denied to us for far too long. “Come kiss me, sweet and twenty” is a line from a song in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, but for the last year or so it’s all been quite a bit more “Thus, with a kiss, I die” (Romeo & Juliet). The most comforting, beautiful human act has been made dangerous; too-risky business; a form of “transmission”. Kissing can kill you, we’ve been told, so mask that mouth.

Couples who don’t live together have been forced apart (though if you chat to any Uber driver in London, they’ll tell you that what’s kept them afloat over the last year is at least in part ferrying people around the city late at night for an illegal snogeroony). Single people have had to keep their distance, any cautious forays into dating unbuoyed by boozing, potential snogs missed due to a lack of Dutch courage.

Mother kissing her child
adorbs
Alamy Stock Photo

And what about teenagers? In a year when they should have been experimenting with each other at bus stops they’ve been stuck at home with their stressed parents. Kissing is a rite of passage - whether or not you’d yet snogged someone was a highly important status symbol in the early days of secondary school (a friend tells me a hilarious-slash-horrendous story of a visit with pals to an under 18s disco with the mission of having their first snog - one enterprising lad “offered to snog us all, so basically everyone just queued up to wait their turn. We were all so nervous, and one of my friends said, ‘that was disgusting, and you have to do it ALL THE WAY THROUGH when you have sex’. But then another friend said ‘no, he’s eating a Polo so it’s quite nice,’ which reassured us.”)

First kisses are crucial, but they’re not always great. Another friend recalls her first clinch with her now husband, on the sofa of his shared house, as “absolutely awful, terrible, just completely wrong”. Then though, she adds with a shy smile, “they got better”. The quality of a kiss isn’t always related to the importance to you of the person you’re sharing it with.

One romantic pal’s wife loathes kissing in public, while he’d gladly take her into his arms anywhere from the tube to the theatre. A former boyfriend who I cared for deeply had a distressing habit of involving most of my chin with his roving lower lip - upsetting, but put-up-withable for a good man. An embrace with any given individual in All Bar One in Charing Cross is unlikely to be quite so swoony as one with the same person on a Paris balcony at sunset.

Happy multiracial girlfriends in love embracing
“I love you”
Getty Images/iStockphoto

Kisses carry with them the weight of narrative - that’s why they’re so thrilling when they’re illicit. A snatched snog in the stock room with a colleague you’re secretly shagging; a years-awaited and politically inadvisable clinch with your best friend’s older sibling at a wedding. It’s more complicated than lust, or even than love but in those moments, fireworks happen - that’s why kissing someone other than your partner feels like such a betrayal when they find out. They know.

So all hail the cautious return of the kiss. Of grandparents embracing their grandchildren again; of friends hugging each other tight; of smooching lovers letting the food on their hard-won restaurant table go cold. We need it now, more than ever.

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