Kiss & Tell

As Mary Beth Kime sat back in the dentist chair, she gazed into the eyes of the oh-so-attractive dentist leaning just inches away from her face. While he performed a routine inspection of her mouth, Kime realized she wasn't the only one who felt the chemistry between them. \nIn a moment their lips locked, but it wasn't long before they fell to the stage floor, groping each other passionately in a very public display of affection in front of the more than 500 in attendance to watch the demonstration of what author Michael Christian calls the "fantasy kiss." \nKime, a freshman, and her kissing partner freshman Kyle Alexander are one of the four volunteer couples who bravely took to the Indiana Memorial Union's Alumni Hall stage Thursday evening for the Union Board's "Art of Kissing" presentation based off of the international best-selling book authored by Christian, with the aforementioned title. In a comical choreographed skit hosted by Christian, couples demonstrated 30 different kisses, ranging from the basic French kiss to the perhaps lesser known "South Pacific Kiss" or the "liposuction." \n"I just wanted to do something random and spontaneous, and I figured this was the chance," Kime said. "I was really nervous earlier in the day, but once I got here and learned the skit, it wasn't that bad." \nChristian, who goes by the pen name William Cane, tours college campuses across America and gives speeches on subjects such as proper French kissing, the proper tongue use in various kisses and what women and men prefer the most from their kissing partners. He wrote the book after compiling 100,000 surveys that were distributed across the United States and in 23 foreign countries. \n"I wrote the 'Art of Kissing' to try to improve my sex life, but it didn't help," he said jokingly to the crowd. "Now when I take a woman out, they say 'you wrote the 'Art of Kissing' and this is all you can do?'" \nThe Union Board put together the event to help people who might be uncomfortable with kissing or want to learn how to do it better, said freshman Elaine Gilbert, who worked on the Union Board committee that organized the event. \n"Last year during a meeting we were talking about things we liked to do and someone said making out, so we pursued it further and decided to bring in the person who wrote the book on it," said sophomore Caitlin Oldenkamp, a member of the same committee. \nAfter sharing some first-kiss horror stories people had sent to him, Christian outlined the do's and don'ts of a successful kiss and shared related statistics compiled through his research. For instance, he found only 8 percent of men like the taste of flavored lipstick, 66 percent of women would prefer their men to shave before locking lips with them and 10 times more women enjoy being kissed on the neck than men. \nThe four couples began with simple pecks and tension-packed dentist and barbershop role play scenarios, but they quickly advanced to more risque varieties of kissing, such as the sexually-suggestive "finger suck" or the "inverted upside down kiss," during which couples "vacuum" the air out of each other's lungs. \nThough he and his partner spent more than an hour kissing and acting out various sexually under-toned scenarios, Alexander said they are nothing more than casual acquaintances. \n"One of my friends on Union Board asked if I wanted to volunteer to do this, and I said sure why not and called her up today," Alexander said. "We've only hung out a few times and hadn't ever kissed (each other) before."\nA second couple maintained they are just friends, while the other two were engaged to be married. \nAudience laughter never ceased during the presentation as the ecstatic Christain guided the couples step-by-step through the entire endeavor with witty banter and comments that flirted on the border of sexual innuendo. \nHowever racy some of the demonstrated kisses might have been, Christian still contends romance is the essential element in a kiss. \n"Romance is the key to any good kiss, and I am 100 percent romantic," he said. "It's all about that connection"