I grew up in a civilized country (viz, America) where everyone feels like they have plenty of space, so people don’t crowd around and touch each other that often. When they meet each other, they stand back and stick out their arms for a handshake, but they make sure to do it in such a way that they could easily turn around and run in the opposite direction if the interlocutor happens to be armed or just foul-smelling. Really only close friends and lovers greet each other with hugging, kissing and the like.
Similarly, my family was rather dour and I almost never saw my parents touching each other or their friends or other family members in public, let alone kissing, which they would have considered prolish (though they’d never use a term like that, because doing so would be snobby – another term they’d never use). People who, upon meeting each other, hug and kiss each other’s cheeks would not be role models: that sort of behavior is best left to the filthy French or to the much, much filthier Arabs. NB: my mother lived in France for some time and speaks French fluently, so she doesn’t mock the French vainly. Also, she had business dealings with Arabs for many years and despises them based on her personal experiences, not out of prejudice.
Alas, I live now in a thoroughly uncivilized society, or a decivilized one, depending on your perspective, where people have no respect for each other’s personal space and they regularly bump, grind, push, shove, squeeze and do all sorts of other vulgar and inappropriate maneuvers. Among these is the classic Hey-how’s-it-going hug-and-double-kiss, which was previously mastered by the Yasser Arafat and Jacques Chirac duo. I’ve lived here for five years and generally stuck with handshakes (or, if I’m meeting religious-looking females, a modest wave).
Recently, however, I’ve come to discover the Nice-to-meet-you kiss. I’ve used it several times lately with girls I met online and arranged to see for coffee (ie, we were actually encountering each other for the first time), and for girls I met in person and called to ask out (ie, we were meeting for the second time, but first date). If I were a girl, it would strike me as quite presumptuous, and I think I’d perhaps be a bit offended, if a guy who had never met me before, or who’d met me only for five minutes, leaned in, even for a totally innocuous kiss on the cheek.
And that’s what these kisses are; it’s really only a cultural thing that weirds me out about it. That being said, I’ve come to understand now that it’s no coincidence that I find the Nice-to-meet-you kiss a bit weird and girls don’t mind it at all. In fact, they like it and respect me more for it precisely for the same reason why I think it’s slightly creepy – the invasion of personal space. For girls who expect to be dominated by men – and I’m not saying this is all girls, but I believe it’s most of them – their personal space must be invaded so physical contact can be established. And it’s better established early in the relationship, or even before there is any relationship at all, when two people are just meeting. That way, the comfort is already present and they can feel like I’m a guy who knows what he wants and takes it, rather than someone who sits back in his chair and wonders if he can or should do something.
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