The First Kiss

My palms were sweaty with nervousness as I walked her down Charring Cross road to the tube station. It was the end of the first date and my mind was ablaze with anguish. Were we going to kiss? We moved closer as we reached the tube, shortly to go our separate ways.. I could feel my heart racing inside my chest as I leaned to place a kiss on the lips of the goddess standing before me…. Only to be crushingly shot down moments later as she offered me – her cheek.

A lot has happened in the twenty years subsequently. The Soviet Union has imploded, the Berlin wall has come down, and my mother no longer cuts my hair. However, sometimes as with recent celebrations in Berlin, one gets to revisit certain memories. This happened to me this week when a work colleague told me the story of a first date he had just been on where, after a nice evening out, he had convinced himself that, in true heroic style, he would get to kiss the girl at the end of the evening. Needless to say, that in tragic Mr Bean style, he didn’t.

“She wasn’t giving off any signals and so I just asked her if I could kiss her” he said. Apparently she smiled, kissed him on his cheek and said “Thanks for a nice evening” .It wasn’t the result he was looking for and wondered where he’d gone wrong. I mentioned this to G, (who traumatised my credit card in the recent house plant extravaganza) who then proceeded to inform me that his fatal error, as Alan Sugar might say, was to ask for permission. “He should have tested the water” she said “He should have been a little bit tactile earlier on to see how she responded or even just kissed her without asking”.

It is small wonder really that guys like my colleague are anxious over how to proceed over seemingly trivial issues such as a first kiss. Feminist emancipation has a lot to answer for in some ways. Watching none other than former 007, Pierce Brosnan on television, telling his fellow men how much they are worth it is arguably evidence that the emasculation of men has gone far enough.

At the end of the day though, we men just don’t do hints. It is not good enough for an adoring girl to look at us and assume that we get the message – we don’t and we never will. So here’s a plea on behalf of my colleague and similar hapless chaps, brow beaten into a life of feminised domesticity. Try and make the first move at least half the time. You never know, we might not give you the cheek.