THE FIRST KISS

“This was how a kiss was supposed to feel—electric and pulsing and smoky all at once, like you’d discovered a new source of fuel that could warm you from within.”
― Katharine McGee, American Royals

“Where should one use perfume?” a young woman asked. “Wherever one wants to be kissed.” ― Coco Chanel

“A kiss may ruin a human life” ― Oscar Wilde

Chimpanzees kiss and hug for reconciliation; bonobos kiss with the tongue because they are sex-crazed creatures, and sex is like a handshake among them. Is it unreasonable to speculate that the ancestors to the chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans, known unromantically as CHLCA (Chimps Humans Last Common Ancestor), were the first kissers?

If that is the case, then kissing is a gift from a distant ancestor from whom we lack conclusive fossil evidence—a quirk in its DNA that allowed the touching of lips to other lips or elsewhere—sexually and nonsexually—to be an acceptable way of communication.

Guy de Maupassant may not have imagined the timeframe when he wrote:

“The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.”

A GIFT FROM THE PAST

“A kiss may not be the truth but it is what we wish were true.” — L.A. Story

Less than half of all cultures kiss romantically. Kissing as a sign of respect or affection between parent and child is more common. The earliest known reference to romantic kissing comes from a Hindu Vedic Sanskrit text which describes it as inhaling the soul. Scientists who study kissing—philematologists— suggest it is a good way to smell your mate, make sure they have the right pheromones. Women are attracted to the smell of genetically different men and apparently can sniff them out.

Is kissing more prevalent in societies where choosing a mate is likely an individual endeavor, an improved way of selection? Trying out one intimate behavior before going on to the behavior that carries much greater consequences? Of course, I have to ask myself as a man fortunate in my marriage but not always fortunate in what led up to my marriage, was it my smell that made the difference between the recipient of my attentions reacting like a post with lips or butter on a hot day?

To quote Google: “Bonobos are the most promiscuous non-human species—up to 75% of bonobo sexual behavior is purely for pleasure.”