Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me

Of course I wasn’t bad in bed, how absurd of me to even think that. I’m great in bed, I know it!

Not only have I been told so many times but they also keep coming back for more. My ex-lovers seem to find it very hard to let go completely. Even if they’ve fallen in love with someone else and are quite happy in a new relationship, they still slip once in a while and call, text or message: ‘Dreamt of you last night’ or ‘I just saw someone wearing a pink scarf and it reminded me of your pink corset’ (a bit far-fetched, wouldn’t you say?)

And sometimes I bump into them somewhere and they suggest there and then we take a spin for old times’ sake. Or call within 12 hours to say how nice it had been to see me, how good I looked and how they had just remembered that time we were in the shower together and...

So yes, I seem to do that bit right.

I’m also a great kisser; everybody says so. And by everybody, I mean everybody. Even my girlfriends. Because girls sometimes French kiss each other, yes, just to check it out and rate each other or even give advice on how to improve.

I wish guys would do that too, there’s hardly anything more disappointing than the apparently perfect guy ending your date with a terrible kiss. And you can’t say anything because you don’t know him that well yet; you don’t want to crush him, poor thing.
But the thing is, the bad kissers are usually the ones with the greatest confidence! They go in there, fill your mouth with their incredibly fat tongue, count all your teeth with the tip of it and then try to see how far down your throat they can reach. Once they know that, they start whirling it around, as if they’re trying to froth up your saliva, mixing in a fair amount of their own.

And then finally they withdraw and look down on you ever so proud, thinking that your silence means you’re overwhelmed by their passion and struggling to compose yourself. Which is sort of true, you need a moment to recover from a horribly bad kiss while thinking whether this guy’s worth trying on for longer.
If they’re as old as the men I usually date, it’s practically hopeless. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

When I was in my twenties, though, I fell hard for a forty-year-old divorcee. Expecting him to have enough practice after a long marriage I was somewhat disappointed with his kissing skills. He was good at everything else, but he just wasn’t a great kisser, despite having such tempting, kissable lips. He wasn’t exactly a horrible kisser either so I hung on. After all, I was in love.

Soon into the relationship - as I was trying to enjoy one of the perks about it: canoodling - he explained to me rather firmly that he didn’t particularly like kissing. I was baffled; how can anyone not like kissing? But no, he didn’t see the point in just kissing for ages without it leading to sex, or sexual intercourse that is.
And I realised, he was being serious. He had never kissed me passionately except as a part of a very short foreplay, followed immediately by removal of clothes. Which was probably why he was such a lousy kisser, he’d never taken the time to practise.

For a while, I managed to convince myself I could live without all that kissing. As long as I had this (what I thought then was a) wonderful man in my life who could satisfy me in the bedroom, I didn’t need kisses. Kissing was overrated. It was juvenile, just something teenagers do for hours on end while refraining from having sex. We were grown-ups, we didn’t need to suck on each others’ faces all the time, that’s just silly.

So I accepted the terms; no kissing unless sex was to follow within a quarter of an hour.

I lasted for about two months. By then I had started gazing at men’s lips everywhere around me, pouting subconsciously, longing for a good, deep, loooooooooong kiss. I got obsessed about lips, they’re colour, texture and shape, moist or dry, whether they were kissable or not, what they would feel like and how they would match mine. I even found myself gaping like a fish out of water in public, not grasping for air but for a kiss, any kiss.

That was it. I’m a great kisser and I need to be with a great kisser or no one at all. Simple as that.

Smooch!

What Did I Do Wrong?

Where should I start? We kept messaging each other and on Thursday, I had become a little restless. Knowing he was back in town, I invited Jonathan over to dinner.

Which was all very nice, the food was good and the atmosphere cosy, we talked and talked...and eventually I kissed him, because I needed a snog badly. And it wasn‘t a bad snog at all. Jonathan even pointed out what a great kisser I am, something I‘ve often been told but actually, it takes two so obviously he wasn‘t too bad at it himself.

In fact, we were so good at it that we didn‘t stop until noon the next day, as we both had Good Friday off work. And he only had to hurry home because of his dog, otherwise he would have been up for round four. But he had to go, thanked me for a ‘wonderful night’ and gave me a long, sensual goodbye kiss, saying ‘I‘ll call you tonight’.

My phone was not busy, silent or out of battery on Friday night, yet there was no phone call. Eventually, around 11pm, he texted asking how I was doing? I truthfully replied, ‘Tired’ so the second message was simply ‘Good night!’
I thought it was a little strange but since we had already agreed that this could never become anything serious, I didn‘t get too bothered about it.

But then, I didn‘t hear from him at all.

Jonathan works in IT so he‘s always online, either on his computer or his phone, plus he‘d sent me e-mails or text messages a few times a day since we started chatting. Now there was nothing. And no belated phone call.

Again, strange but didn‘t ruin my day, or weekend. I went out with friends last night, had a lie in this morning and then went over to my sister‘s for a big Easter brunch. No messages from Jonathan, not even to say ‘Happy Easter!’

This evening, I finally caught him online. Without further adoo, I asked him whether it was his habit to stop entirely talking to a girl after having slept with her. ‘No, no, it‘s nothing like that. I just don‘t know how to act, you‘re the first woman I‘ve been with since the divorce.’

WHAAAAT??? He had assured me otherwise when I asked him in the beginning, remember? I didn‘t know what to say so he kept going:  ‘Also, I‘m not ready for a relationship but in any case, I don‘t think online chatting is the best platform to discuss this.’

I was absolutely flabbergasted. I couldn‘t even begin explaining to him how he had exposed himself as a liar.
So I just reminded him that I wasn’t expecting a relationship out of this, that it had been clear from the beginning that we were just having some fun together, but I’d found it strange not having heard from him since he left my apartment.

Then I signed out. If he wants to talk to me again he’ll have to contact me first.

But I wonder, did he think I was that bad in bed?