A bit of spit and polish

Isn't snogging weird?

I'm off on one of my obscure psycho-social inspections.

I don't get it. As a Brit we get taught at a very young age not to touch people unless it is absolutely necessary; and even then to ask permission first. You certainly don't talk to them. Not even after sex - you simply roll off and go to sleep. But even by that stage we have usually gotten to a socially acceptable understanding - you will have gotten comfortable being in their presence after having a number of conversations. Or beers.

Even then sex seems a bit ridiculous. It's mucky, wet, sticky, sweaty and incredibly invasive. And all that just for a bit of ooh and ah. You see what our natural reaction should be when you explain it to a child: "You put what?! In where?! Yuck!" And quite rightly so.

And yes, this is coming from a gay man whose sex involved doing people up the wrong'un because... well, there's one fewer holes to stick it in. It has to go in somewhere and it's either up the bum or in the mouth.

But snogging? Why would you want to do that? Firstly you can, and do, get diseases. Secondly, you don't get the 'ooh ah' you get with sex. You barely get anything more than you get when you just get a smile from someone pretty. Thirdly, it leaves you entirely unprepared should someone try to come up behind you and hit you with a large bit of wood.

And yet we continue to do it. Socially, it is very excluding. But that is why it works. You are excluding all other people from the relationship - you have your entire concentration on the person you are snogging. Well, unless you allow your mind to wander, but by the mere act of snogging your tongue certainly can't wander onto anyone else - well, unless you are a very unique person. And if your hands do a wander, again it is (or at least should be) confirming to that person that you just can't get enough of them.

Ordinary the idea of spitting into someone's mouth would revile us. This is a bodily fluid for goodness sake. Our bodies go to an incredible length to produce the stuff for ourselves, we shouldn't be going about dishing it out willy nilly. But again, maybe that is why snogging is so good - it is very very intimate. Not only that, but it feels like it should be wrong. You're stealing something that was meant for someone else. How very deviant!

And it's not as though our faces have been made for it either. We've ended up with huge great big hooters in the middle of our faces, almost perfectly designed to stop our lips touching someone else's. We end up having to twist (and in my case bend) to achieve a good, water-tight seal. And then your eyes become so perilously close that you are forced to close your eyes, otherwise you will get one of their eyelashes in your eyeball. Presumably we have now decided that closing our eyes was all lovely and romantic. It's not, it's just a physical necessity. And then there are the tongues - we have to thrust these in and perform a washing machine action, whilst they are trying to do exactly the same in what is actually a very narrow space.

Ah well, I shall go out this weekend and exercise my very best twist and bend washing machine manoevre. Afterall, it's just ever so slightly more fun than holding hands.