Kissing. I mean writing about kissing.
Here's the problem for every self-respecting writer trying to craft a decent love scene: the English language, as glorious as it is, has very few words for "kiss." Or to be specific, very few words that I'm willing to or interested in using in place of the word "kiss." It's a serious problem. What is out there, really, other than that four letter word that begins with "k?"I have searched on-line and in my old hardback thesaurus and have come up with nothing satisfactory. The choices are dreadful.
For example, I refuse to even consider the word "osculate." It sounds more like something a doctor would do in a yearly physical. It's clinical. Cold. Sterile. It calls up images of metal examining tables and paper gowns. Not the warmth of a candle-lit room with Barry White singing in the background. Even a doctor in the throes of a passionate embrace with the woman he's proposing to doesn't osculate. (Don't ask how I know. Let's just say I've been there and done that.)
No, the only way "osculate" would get into something I was writing would be if I were to describe two people bringing into contact the flesh covering their orbicular oris muscles. Then it might work. But I'm not aware of a great demand for that type of anatomically descriptive love scenes.
"Neck," which Mr. Gates's prompt tells me is a synonym, gives me a different image--a warm summer night, a car and the gearshift getting in the way. Or, if one is writing for a younger audience, with the whole vampire thing that's going around, it calls up images of fangs and blood. Neither is what I write.
"Canoodle" is what celebrities do in the back booth of a restaurant in Beverly Hills so they can get caught by some reporter and make it on the entertainment shows on TV. "Peck" is what one does on the cheek of a friend to greet her. "Smooch" is loud and rude. "Smack" has too many other meanings, none of them good.
And "buss?" This is truly the worst of the lot--well, after "osculate." How in the world did a word that sounds like public transportation become synonymous with something emotional, passionate, loving, sweet, tender, sexy? I mean, "he bussed her." Really? Was she part of a school desegregation program? Run over by a Greyhound vehicle? Ridden out of town on a Trailways?
Janet Evanovich is supposed to have switched from romance writing to mysteries because she ran out of ways to describe the love scenes. I'm beginning to have some idea of what she meant and I'm just on the kissing. Maybe I'll use my translation program to find out what the word is in other languages. I bet the French have a ton of words for "kiss." I mean, they're French, after all.
Do you suppose they call it French kissing?
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