Maybe Maimed but Never Harmed

Flickr photo by dirtyfeet used under a Creative Commons License.

Kissing seems to have been a popular topic to write about the other day. Both Ilya and Dev wrote about kissing on the same day, and both entries are interesting. Ilya spoke about her disinterest in kissing, and about social pressures that have made one’s first kiss a sort of “right of passage.” In a similar vein, Dev wrote about her revelation that kissing is only interesting if done in a certain way, that is, if she’s on top.

Both posts have struck a strand of truth in me, but not a full chord. My take on kissing is rather different. I like kissing a lot, though my enjoyment from the activity is not the same as other forms of sexual touching. Kissing is different because for me it usually acts as a sort of lens, focusing whatever other forms of sex are happening at the moment, or serving as a physical signal that the mood or the feelings have changed. Maybe because of this, it is also the kind of sexual touch I find to be the most malleable, almost chameleon-like in its ability to be easily subverted for whatever purpose I want to use it for; expressing being a top, a bottom, a dom, a sub, a man, a woman, or something else entirely can all be accomplished by kissing a certain way.

Sometimes this is subtle and sometimes it’s not. Kissing is excellent foreplay and, indeed, that’s what it usually is for me and Eileen. Typically, Eileen will be the one who initiates a sexually-charged kiss and, like Dev, she is typically on top (literally and figuratively) when she does so. I like this because, unlike many other forms of sexual expression, this is one kind of activity that I have not found men to find awkward as a receptive partner, so being kissed passionately never gives me that twinge of “I am not a ‘normal’ man” discomfort that other kinds of sex acts (like getting pegged) sometimes do.

When either she or I feel that the moment is right for a switch from foreplay to something else, or from a switch in mood to another mood, changing how we are kissing is often how we communicate that non-verbally. A common motif I think most people can relate to is beginning to kiss one another on the lips and then moving to kiss the other elsewhere. In this way, it’s a natural segue-way into other orally-based activities like cunnilingus or fellatio, or even nibbling, licking, and biting. Biting in particular can be joyously erotically cruel for me, because it’s one of those things I don’t actually enjoy the experience of, so kisses interspersed with bites of my lip immediately put me in a submissive mindset.

One interesting fact I seem to recall about kissing, and I wish I could remember where I heard this so I could cite the source, is that kissing the average person on the lips will stimulate approximately thirty percent of that person’s directly sexually-responsive nerves. I don’t know how to verify the validity of that claim, but I know that kissing well is a major physical turn-on for me. In fact, I am physically aroused whenever I feel soft pressure on my lips it regardless of the source. Another person’s lips is, on a physical level, simply one of those sources.

Sometimes, in fact, such other sources of lip-stimulating sensations can be even more arousing than a simple kiss. One such example are the times when Eileen will run a single finger across my lips. This, I discovered after some thinking, is probably because the activity of placing one’s hands near another person’s mouth is heavily steeped in power dynamics and a display of dominance is, to me, far more arousing than the act of being touched.

Another part of why I like this finger-over-my-lips thing is because it makes me feel sultry, as though she is admiring me as if I were sexual art. It is objectifying in a satisfyingly primal way, a way that tells me I am wanted because I have some kind of sexual value to her. It is depressing and angering that in the pervasive representations of male sexuality I can find, this way of valuing men is actively rejected; both the typical representations of male submission in various BDSM cultures as well as the hegemonic view of masculinity turn men into sexually obsessed consumers of another gender’s aesthetic qualities.

In any event, with that much potential for sensitivity stored in the lips, it’s also easy to see why kissing can easily become the main attraction in a sexual encounter. Make out sessions are fun in their own right, and sometimes the mystery and anticipation of whether or not they lead to anything beyond is part of their fun as well. Also, kissing someone doesn’t just engage the mouth, it engages many of one’s other senses, like smell and sight, to an arguably lesser extent, sound as well since all of those sensory organs are near the mouth. Kissing is one of the most complete sensory sexual experiences you can have. Little wonder kissing, whether you’re kissing your partner’s lips or kissing their genitals, can be so much fun.