"This kiss, this kiss" --Faith Hill

[The rare back-of-the-ear kiss.]


How do you tell someone you don't wanna kiss?

Before you jump to conclusions, let me say, my marriage is on solid ground and Hubby is a great kisser. (To the relatives who read this: sorry, if that's TMI.) Kissing him is fine, indeed. But this is the man to which I have cleaved my troth*. Even giving the relatives a peck on the cheek and receiving likewise is okay. These are blood relations or blood relations of the cleaved troth. (trothrodyte?) Anyway, there's a very established bond here.

My issue (and let's face it, I have a lot of issues***) is with friends. I am blessed with lots of wonderful friends that I dearly love but don't feel the need to kiss. I'm fine with hugging them but I'm not so much into the kiss-kiss cheeky thing. Fergawdssake, we're not French! But I have yet to come up with a graceful way to say, "Erm, let's skip the kissing part and just hug."

Yes, yes, I am a cold, unfeeling thing. No argument. If you've spent any time here at all, you've already picked up on that.

I hear you saying "What's the big deal?"**** Where this may seem strange to you, avoiding public displays of affection is quite the norm for me. I come from a long line of cold, unfeeling things. We are distant. We are standoffish. We are formal. We are private.

I've tried just refusing to reciprocate but that doesn't always get the message across. And, when you're in the clinch of a hug, it's hard to avoid a kiss. And sometimes avoidance maneuvers become dangerous to try because, sometimes, those avoided kisses land in weird places. Yeah, I've had my ear kissed, my neck kissed, my eye kissed... that's even weirder than just letting them plant one on your cheek.

I feel certain the "knee to the chest" maneuver they recommend for training dogs wouldn't be received well. I don't want to actually offend these lovely, caring people. I know this is my issue. Still...

Does anyone else come from a long line of automatons? Is there a way to bypass the kissing?


* You're eying my troth right now, aren't you?! Cheeky monkey.**

** And when I say "cheeky monkey", unlike the NY post, I say it with true affection and a hat tip to Mike Myers' Simon character.

*** You could simply decide to find the fact that I have so many issues charming. Endearing, even. *cough*

**** Your voice really carries.