Q Dear Miss Abigail:
OK, first off I am writing from an email address I just made so that I can have lots of assured privacy. But my question is: I really like this guy that goes to my school (I am twelve and he is sixteen) and I know he likes me. I want to kiss him. I don’t mean just a regular kiss, but a French kiss. I don’t know what I should do, though. What do you think I should do?
Signed,
daebyrd
A Dear daebyrd:
Wow. I think I was just realizing I had lips when I was twelve, and food was the only thing that touched them until embarrassingly later in life for me. So I’ll sternly say ~ and you’ll probably think me terribly old-fashioned ~ that I think you should maybe find someone your own age to practice kissing with. Or, you know, like wait until you are like fourteen or fifteen to start smooching with boys?
Now onto the kissing problem, because even if you do wait, I’m sure you’ll still be wondering. Here’s some advice from Barbara Lang’s Boys and Other Beasts, published in 1965.
1965: Yes Please
Once in a great while, you might want your date to kiss you good night even though the idea has not occurred to him. Now if there is a paucity of literature on how exactly to avoidbeing kissed good night, there is not a word anywhere on just what you can do to get kissed. In fact, the only people who will tackle the question at all are the soap, deodorant, and mouthwash companies, and their approach is really rather a negative one. It’s also pretty eerie. If I ever saw my romance fade, fade, fade away and dissolve into thin air, I wouldn’t reach for a toothpaste, I’d apply for the booby hatch.
But to go back to the problem of what to do on those rare occasions when you would like your date to kiss you good night. The people who know how apparently aren’t talking. The most you get from them is a suggestion that you lean toward him and look up expectantly. I did that once and my date offered me a cigarette. A dreamy, yearning look is apt to provoke a comment such as, ‘You okay?’ or ‘Hey, do you wear contact lenses?’
I can think of only one thing to suggest, and I can’t tell you why it has worked once or twice for me. The thing to do is to look at his lips ~ not from across the room, but standing fairly close to him. This seems to remind him that they’re there and may provoke him into touching them to yours. On the other hand, a self-conscious boy is apt to take out a handkerchief because he guesses he has mustard on his mouth from the hot dog he ate at the game. Even if he does that, keep looking at his lips. He may still give in and kiss you. (On the other hand, he may break out in fever sores.)
That’s really the only slightly subtle approach I can suggest for this problem. There are of course other more obvious moves you can make. You might, for example, ask him, ‘Do you like this perfume?’ and then collapse against him so he can smell your neck. Be prepared for him to wrinkle up his nose and reply that it smells like A-1 Sauce. Boys are not too bright at times like this. At least mine never have been, but I wish you the very best of luck.
Source: Lang, Barbara. Boys and Other Beasts. New York: Pocket Books, 1965.
~ pp. 181-82 ~