What's with hugs and kisses?

By LINLEY BONIFACE

It was chilling to read a recent report in this newspaper about Gail Schwartman, a Chicago woman who suffered "the kiss of deaf" when her four- year-old daughter gave her such a powerful kiss on the ear that she was left with permanent tinnitus.

It's a cautionary tale, brightened only by the suggestion by United States audiologist Levi Reiter that the incident should prompt a "review of kissing etiquette".

If only.

There was a time when New Zealanders greeted and farewelled each other with nothing more effusive than a casual flip of the hand, preferably conducted a paddock's distance apart.

Now the notion of personal space appears to be dead, and we're all expected to smother even the most casual of acquaintances with a volley of kisses and hugs.

This is all very well in countries where people have a long tradition of saying goodbye with a kiss on each cheek.

In New Zealand, however, it's a cue for so much confusion and embarrassment that the only way of being certain of leaving a party with your dignity intact is to feign a heart attack and be carried out on a stretcher.

For those of us with a complete absence of physical co- ordination, social kissing can be as gruelling as a fist fight. My tendency is get it all over with as quickly as possible, which usually means I lurch forward like an enraged panther and kiss whichever part of the body I can latch on to first. Thankfully, it's usually on the upper torso, though there have been unfortunate exceptions.

Tall men are always a challenge.

At a recent dinner party, I farewelled a tall friend by leaping as high as I could and lurching forward to land a kiss on his cheek. Overshooting the mark, I ended up not kissing his cheek but, somehow, sucking his collar – a social gaffe I found it difficult to recover from.

A German study found that most people aim for the right cheek, presumably because they're right handed. Perhaps that's why so many left-handed people like me end up delivering a head butt, rather than a kiss.

Also, what's the etiquette if your kiss leaves someone smeared with lipstick? Are you allowed to spit on their cheek and wipe it off with your elbow? Or should you just ignore it, and leave them to be baffled by the jocular glances of passersby for the rest of the day?

Even the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles kiss each other on the cheek in public, which is the best argument for a republic that I've ever heard of.

Many New Zealand men opt instead for the bend-at-the-waist hug followed by a hearty, passive-aggressive back-slapping session, usually accompanied by a couple of lines of conversation about the rugby to prove how thoroughly hetero they both are.

Hugs, though, are almost as problematic as kisses. Someone once told me that the ideal hug lasts for three seconds. Now, while I'm crushed against some stranger's coat, inhaling cat hair and tiny particles of discarded muffin, I survive the experience by chanting, "one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus" and forcing myself free as soon as the three seconds are up.

I yearn for the return of the brief, impersonal handshake, which sends out the clear message: "I don't know you from Adam, and I really don't want to get within a metre of you, thanks very much." This is the way most of us feel about just about everyone else, and there's no reason why we should pretend otherwise.

Besides, the handshake still offers plenty of room for individuality. Helen Clark has such authoritative body language that her handshakes look like the prelude to a full body search, while John Key adopts a peculiar crouching stance rarely seen outside martial arts films: I always expect him to propel himself vertically up several metres in the air, flip a 360-degree somersault and whip out a sabre to chop the heads of a couple of ponytailed villains before adroitly landing on his feet again.

Say what you like about bird flu, but the threat of a pandemic may be our only hope of freeing ourselves of the social kiss. The sooner we farewell others by clamping a handkerchief to our mouths and spraying a fug of anti-bacterial air sanitiser around the room, the better.

- © Fairfax NZ News