I’ll never forget a conversation I had in college with a friend of mine. She and a young man she was interested in had been doing “the dance” that is courting one another, and in the midst of meeting up for cheap dates that young and broke people like to partake in, she let me know that she was really into him. And why wouldn’t she be? He was MAD cute, really sweet, and had one of the nicest pair of lips I’d seen on a brotha in a while…

Sorry, I trailed off at the thought of those things. *Shudders* Anyway, with all that and a good head on his shoulders, she saw a lot in him that she liked a lot.

But that was until they kissed.

“He can’t kiss, like he’s horrible,” she told me while laughing during one of our many lunches together. She talked about him in almost a pathetic way (hence all the laughing she was doing) while I was more heartbroken at the fact that a man with lips like his didn’t know how to use them. But I guess that’s the same thing as a guy having a nice “package” and not knowing how to work it. Instead of being sensual, she damn near felt like she was drowning in his puckers, and to add insult to injury, homeboy thought he was killing the game during their makeout sessions. Fail.

Sadly, all the good she saw in him seemed to go down the toilet as their lip lock sessions got worse and worse. All of a sudden, cute wasn’t enough to make up for his horrid kissing skills, and all of a sudden, she started nitpicking at his bad qualities. Their communication was too wack for her (“He’s one of those guys that texts you saying, “Hi” and that’s it.”), he was awkward when they hung out alone, and he wasn’t as smart as she thought he was. One bad thing (his lack of kissing skills) tainted everything else about him for her, and there was no turning back since she wasn’t looking to work with him on it. She decided to stop talking to him, and did so in probably the most immature way possible: she ignored his texts and avoided him. What can I say? It was college, folks were young-minded.

Blame it on the fact that we were in school with a flurry of options that made her dump him like a plate of food with hair in it, but in my opinion, it might have been because she really didn’t like him as much as she thought she did. But what happens, like her, when you start dating a guy, like him a lot, and finally have that heated makeout session, but it’s like kissing a dead fish? Or even worse, what if those gorgeous lips of his go all over every place on your face BUT your lips? There are some men who just have it when it comes to laying a kiss on a lady that will have her opening her eyes second because she was hoping for more and leave her lips tingling. There’s an art to it all, you know?

Well for me, I think it should be like this when the guy goes in for a kiss: Never start off too hard (that ish can hurt, light kisses are a great start), never go in immediately with tongue (that’s creepy), and when you finally do bring your tongue into the picture, don’t jam the whole damn thing down people’s mouths. If a guy follows that, things should be smooth. But there are some dudes who just happen to be very bad at it all and folks haven’t let them know and instead tried to adjust to their wackness. These guys leave your whole mouth covered in moisture, want to kiss your a** with onion breath and literally look like they’re sucking the life out of the hole that is your mouth. *Shudders* I once had an ex-boyfriend who didn’t know what to do with his tongue and early on in the dating stage, before we got into a relationship, he was finishing up a stint with braces (again, college) and was a little to crunk to makeout. Therefore, he wound up cutting my top lip up. He wasn’t the only sloppy kisser I had (NOTE: I don’t go around kissing any and everybody if that’s what you were thinking). I’ve kissed men since then who are just too stiff or too eager. But at the same time, I’ve kissed a few whose technique was perfect, but I’m sure they didn’t get there without some practice and going through a few horrid makeout sessions of their own.

When you like a fella, it’s definitely something you should work on before you let it bother you too much, or worse, let it be something that drives you away. That brace-wearing boyfriend? After one or two cuts, I had to get him in check before we could move forward. Just as people communicate their needs and wants when it comes to sex, you have to be vocal about what you want when it comes to kissing, and do so without being rude or making people feel like they’re inadequate and are being rejected. Things can only get better if you’re interested in being a good teacher. Slow him down and take ‘em to school real quick…

Have you had to work with a bad kisser? How did things turn out?

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