- Do not lunge. Approach with care.
- Do not approach with open mouth.
- Begin the process of kissing with a closed mouth, gradually moving to open mouth.
- Do not drool or salivate excessively.
- A proper lady will reject your advances, either because she is repelled or because she feels she must do so for propriety's sake. Approach again. She may draw away or she may succumb.
All but the last suggestion should be posted as a public education document for all men. Maybe even printed and posted in buses, bathrooms, and bars.
ReplyDeleteIt's the worst when a man lunges in for a kiss with an open mouth- I always used to have the strange sense that his jaw would detach and he would eat my head. Like an alligator attacking a gnu.
Aahahahahahha gnu. love that word.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the research conducted by Anastasia Pavlova in the 19thC, which has so often been overlooked due to the international fame of her brother Ivan Pavlov. Ivan in fact STOLE the idea for his celebrated research programme on conditioned reflexes ... from his sister.
ReplyDeleteAnastasia trained her male research subjects by ringing a bell before kissing them. Soon all she had to do to fill her swimming pool in her summer lab at Odessa was to line her men up around the sides of the pool and tinkle her windchimes.
Anastasia Pavlova disappeared during the Civil War; an "inquiry" by the local Soviet officially concluded that she had been eaten by her pet alligator after slipping and bumping her head in her pool. In fact, however, there was no evidence to support this claim. Nobody really gnu what had become of her.
In Paris during the 1930's, a thin bejeweled Russian emigre came to the attention of the press -- claiming to be the true Anastasia Pavlova. She explained that she had been condemned to the firing squad on trumped-up charges of scientific hysteria initiated by her jealous brother, but that she escaped with the timely aid of emergency jinglebells hidden in her handwarmers. The jingling caused the soldiers of the firing squad to drool all over their antiquated flintlock firing mechanisms, wetting the flashpans and rendering them unfirable.
After her death, the identity of the putative Anastasia was confirmed by a rumpled sepia print found in her Parisian walk-up. It depicted a man wearing a Ushanka and bell-bottomed trousers, kissing a dog of somewhat questionable breeding. Scribbled on the back of the photo was an anguished plea: "Annie, what am I doing wrong? Please help! Your loving Ivy"
(signed) Pavlova's Client