The Dying (sometimes Lost) Art of Romantic Kissing

I feel like a shibukombe or the alangizi right as I try to convince myself that I believe the beautiful art of kissing is neglected by many especially the married.

Think back to the days when you and the love of your life (or of the moment) kissed; before you actually had sex – either for the first time ever or the first time for the two of you. Remember how exciting and passionate and raw it was? And how it could go on for hours?

Now compare that to your last kiss today or whenever the last was. Is the passion still there?

Although family members may sometimes kiss on the lips, a French Kiss almost always indicates a romantic relationship. A French kiss – a passionate romantic or sexual kiss in which one participant's tongue touches the other's tongue and usually enters his/her mouth – is often used by lovers to express their intimate feelings toward each other, whether in passing or as a prelude to sexual intercourse (as a part of foreplay) or during the frequent occurrences throughout actual intercourse.  French kissing – also called tongue kiss, pash, hooking up, mugging it up, making-out, necking, getting into, snog, slipping the tongue, popping tongue, sucking face, or deep kissing, getting off – stimulates the lips, tongue and mouth, which are all areas very sensitive to touch. It is considered by many to be both very pleasurable and highly intimate. Unlike other forms of "casual" kissing (such as brief kisses of greeting or friendship), episodes of French kissing – which in essence can also be called a passionate or loving kiss – are highly intimate affairs which will often be prolonged, intense, and passionate and, in a manner of speaking, symbolize a side of the physical love one has for the other.  Because of the intimacy associated with it, in many regions of the world tongue kissing in public is not acceptable to most, particularly for an extended time.

As a youngster, there were times when you were only offered the kiss and nothing more. Surely the kiss in that moment, with all the libido of a teen or young twenty-something guy, was heaven on earth. The imagination that accompanied the kissing meant you were engulfed in the aura of moment, with butterflies in the stomach and your mind floating in cloud nine. Seeing you were not getting “none of some”, you had to make do with second best and in fact second base. I am not sure a married man will make do with a kiss instead of the main course. So many married men even skip the kiss and just go to the sex.

Fast forward many years later and one simple fact about kissing is that after a few encounters, usually when people get married and after years of staying together,  this activity tends to just wear away or you don't work hard at it such that it becomes more of a ritual and even a chore than an art. It gets taken advantage of.

I think the art of kissing would wear out if it is not always part of the art of making love. The problem is that sometimes it has been used, mostly by us men, to 'unlock' a woman to access her cherry, and once its 'open sesame', the kissing is abandoned. Thing is, if it is used to wear down the womans 'Walls of Jericho', when it comes to marriage or long-term relationships, the resistance is not there and that use of the kiss is irrelevant and so it goes. For those who do not focus on the woman's loins alone when making love (or simply having sex for that matter) i.e. know that groping, fingering and kissing spice up making love. They therefore know that the art of kissing can never die because of changes and should not die.

To save the dying art of kissing, for the married like I, the secret is always peck her when you wake up, say bye, meet again etc. Then the actual kissing (snogs, puckers and the works) becomes sweeter when you are playing La Liga at night as it is not a chore! Some sweets, chocolates and the like just make it naughty but less repulsive if there is bad taste or odour in the mouth. Oral health helps too.

I end with some tips on basic French Kissing which one needs to get right before going on to experimenting and trying different styles and more advanced techniques.

1. Brush your teeth, get a good bath, nicely groomed and clean and fresh, before meeting the other person. There's nothing worse than kissing the rear end of a garbage truck.

2. Get into a comfortable position - you can't kiss if your back feels like it's gonna break. Suggestion - Sit side by side on a comfy sofa.

3. Hold your lover, firmly but gently - don't cause pain. Suggestion would be to hold the shoulders, the neck or gently on the side of the face, one side or both sides.

4. Move your faces closer. Don't bump noses. Suggestion would be the guy angle his face slightly so you don't bump noses.

5. Kiss gently, normal closed lips kissing, and close your eyes. Closing your eyes increases the sensations you feel, and also sets the mood.

6. Continue kissing gently. Get comfortable with simple closed lips, lip-to-lip kissing before going anywhere else.

7. If fine till here, tentatively, slowly and lightly draw your tongue across the other person's lips.

8. Chances are from here, if the other person lightly parts her lips, slowly explore the other person's tongue in a light licking motion.

9. The tongue has a very sensitive surface, which is why tongue to tongue is the essence of French kissing.

10. After you've tried lightly licking the other person's tongue, you can try sucking on it, wrestling with it ( see if you can hold it to the floor of her mouth ) and other things like that.

11. Explore the other areas of the mouth. Especially the roof of the mouth. Lightly lick, or tickle the area with your tongue.

12. Don't bite. Whatever you do, don't bite.

13. Don't swing your tongue round and round like a windmill. Explore lightly, don't drill your way through.

14. Breathe through your nose. Breathe through your nose. I say again, breathe through your nose.

15. Follow so far? You can lightly use your hands too, lightly rubbing the other person. Suggestions, along the waist, along the back, the arms, especially the inside of the arm, the neck, maybe running your fingers through her hair. Again, don't cause pain.

16. Continue kissing.

Viva the art of kissing.

I Miss Lusaka's Potholes: They Helped Me to Escape

It wasn't a secret that my car, which I had just bought from South Africa, wasn't cleared by Customs. My neighbour went a step further he notified the police, so I was always expecting their "courtesy call". I didn't have to wait long, and was confronted by a plain clothes policeman one evening as I was doing my weekend shopping at Kamwala. He seemed confident and convinced that what he was saying was nothing short of the absolute truth. He had "recognised" my number plate as supposedly being on Interpol's list of "hot cars" in Lusaka. Sensing danger, I made a hasty exit.

So as not to give away my real feelings, I sauntered to my flashy sport's car, snapping my fingers with false confidence and a not-so-contented frame of mind. Even in this state, I could not help but admire my shiny crimson coloured 1956 Porsche Spyder replica. It was a car in a million a car that did far more than merely please the eye, but also left many at a loss for words. Brand new as it was, I resolved that I would do anything to prevent it being impounded. 

Before I could get to the car, however, I noticed a police car sharply swerve into the road, it's tyres screeching and siren wailing. That is when I remembered that the plain clothes cop had a motorolla walkie-talkie in his breast pocket. There was no time to waste.

I leapt into my car and fumbled for the keys. Somehow, I managed to stab the right key into the ignition lock. Firing the engine, I grabbed the gear lever and slammed it into first. Releasing the clutch pedal suddenly, I floored the accelerator, and the wheels spun madly as I wrenched the steering wheel with all my might. The car took off like a runaway rocket, the engine roaring, smoke billowing and lights glaring. It skidded drunkenly, leaving black marks on the road as the tyres heeled mightily in a smoke producing, rubber burning squeal.

The car jolted as I insanely juggled with gear, wheel, clutch and gas pedal. In the process, much to my chagrin, the door on my side flew open. I had not clipped on my seat belt and was in great danger of falling out. With a shower of sparks, the door scraped the crash barrier on the edge of the road. I fought to close the door and had it not been for power steering, I would have been unable to drive with my free hand. Despite the ferocious speed at which I was moving, well-aligned pneumatic wheels and stabilizers meant I had excellent road holding capacity, and that gave me badly needed peace of mind. The engine responded favourably to my frantic efforts to drive away, and as I gradually eased into formula one mode, Chilumbulu Road became my own.

The car roared with a din that would have woken a deaf man from deep slumber there was no muffler on the exhaust. This, coupled with the fact that the cops were gaining ground, had begun to arouse interest from pedestrians and other motorists alike.

Soon, I came to the first set of potholes, harbingers of what was to follow. I slowed down as I tried to skirt one particular water filled hole. It was at that instant that the panda car bumped into mine. My adrenalin level rose sharply. I stepped on the accelerator and the car pulled away into another puddle filled pothole riddled section of the road. The policeman behind the wheel motioned me to stop. I ignored him and instead, stepped even harder onto the gas pedal. Despite the holes, I managed to inch away, pitching and rolling as I went. The police car, which had seen better days, was in the meantime rattling like a hammer mill. Suddenly, it stopped. Much later on, I learnt that it's front axle had broken, but at that moment, I dared not slow down to see what was happening.

My car is now safely tucked away in a shanty compund where it can't be found until I raise enough money to pay customs. When I heard that Chilumbulu Road, famous for it's vast and ubiquitous potholes, was being patched and resurfaced, I felt a little sad. It had saved my bacon, and I owed those potholes a lot.

~~~

(The above work of fiction won the first ever short-story competition in the Lusaka Lowdown Magazine and went on to be published in 4 countries including in New Zealand where it is still immortalised in this blogpost here.)