THE GREAT KISSING EPIDEMIC

By LANCE MORROW

There are many variations. A classic: the perfectly executed "air kiss," often performed by two women who dislike each other, who wear makeup they don't want smeared and who both resemble Bette Davis in her middle years. They approach, incline the planes of their cheeks. Three to four inches from contact, they close their eyes in a split-second transport of fraudulent bliss, and smack their lips minutely upon nothing, as if releasing little butterflies. A somewhat rarer treat: the "hair tangle," which requires a tall, long-haired woman and a shorter man; woman inclines head to offer cheek, man goes to peck cheek, woman's hair falls in way, man ends with lips and glasses entangled in hair. Rapid disengagement follows.

One chemist thinks that it all began when cavemen licked their neighbors' cheeks for the salt on them. Whatever its primal origins, social kissing seems to be resounding with greater frequency around the nation. Anyone who watched Jimmy Carter's Inaugural receptions would think that the entire capital would be down with mononucleosis by now. For a man once regarded as remote behind his barricade of teeth, Carter is a formidable social kisser, somewhat more subdued about it than Lyndon Johnson, but just as relentless. During his Inaugural parties, Carter gave a virtuoso performance, clutching women one-handed or two-handed as he delivered his kisses of greeting.

Some Northerners attribute the new President's demonstrativeness to Southern ways. But an Atlanta public relations woman, Joanna Hanes, declares that "social kissing is more a Northern, sophisticated fad that seems to be moving south." In fact, like the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century, the epidemic of social kissing has persisted for some years and touched almost every section of the country. In Boston, Beacon Hill ladies can be seen rubbing cheeks at their clubs. Among usually subdued Midwesterners, the custom is growing, although one partygiver in Chicago admits: "Once when I kissed a fellow on the lips, he nearly had a heart attack. He was afraid of getting germs and he wiped his mouth afterward."

Perhaps nowhere is kissing more widely and elaborately practiced than in Manhattan, whose nervous system, from SoHo to Sardi's and on uptown, handles an immense traffic of social signals. But social kissing is also rampant in California, usually in the form of a double peck on the cheeks. Many believe it has gone too far. Says Los Angeles Social Leader Betsy Bloomingdale: "I find myself kissing and wishing I hadn't. You risk being rude if you kiss one person and not another. And there are awkward moments when you don't know whether to kiss or not to kiss. Usually, you kiss just to be safe."

In one form or another, kissing has been prevalent since primitive times, but has developed mostly in the West. Among the Greeks and Romans, parents kissed their children, lovers and married persons kissed each other, and so did friends of the same or different sexes. Martial complains in one of his epigrams: "Yet, Linus, thou layest hold on all thou meetest; none can thy clutches miss; but with thy frozen mouth all Rome dost kiss." The early Christians obeyed St. Paul's injunction to "greet one another with a holy kiss" until the symbol of fellowship degenerated sometimes into sexual scandal. In the Middle Ages, knights kissed before doing battle, just as boxers touch gloves. The varieties of kisses are numerous: the kiss of treachery (Judas' example), the Mafia kiss of death, the kiss of reverence with which rabbis don their tallithim and priests their stoles. Children hold out a hurt hand for a kiss "to make it well."

The French, who have had some practice, have turned kissing into a fine social art, although even they are not always sure when or how to do it. The French double kiss is routine, whether on the occasion of being accepted into the Academie Franc,aise or greeting a friend. Lately, the French have taken to kissing one another three times, alternately. Sometimes it goes on even longer. Says Regine Temam, a French librarian: "I never know when to stop now, so I just let whoever is doing it decide how long he wants to continue."

Kissing or not kissing can be genetic, but not entirely so. Even the somewhat prim Swiss have begun to kiss socially. Italians are enthusiastic kissers and have been for generations; the same is true of Slavs. Arab men greet one another with kisses, as do Arab women. The British remain reticent about social kissing. The Japanese, along with many other Orientals, regard kissing --at least in public--as a Western custom, highly unsanitary and offensive.

Why is there now such an outbreak of kissing as a social gesture? According to Sociologist Murray Davis, of the University of California at San Diego, "Increased kissing is part of the general inflation of intimate signals. We kiss people we used to hug, hug people we used to shake hands with, and shake hands with people we used to nod to." Not to kiss or hug means one is "not relating." "Isolated individualism is out." says Davis. "Today separations are not allowed. Everyone is expected to kiss everyone else." The human-potential movement has occasionally made a travesty of E.M. Forster's "Only connect!" From the hot tubs of Marin County to the baths of Esalen, the rule prevails: Whoever kisses you, you kiss back, lest you be thought to be uptight. At times, kissing carries a political message. Some feminists kiss other women on the lips in order to prove something about transcending sexuality. American men rarely kiss other men, unless they are father and son, or unless they are homosexual, in which case a public buss on the cheeks or lips is becoming more common.

Social kissing takes much of its inspiration from show business, where for years an oscular promiscuity has prevailed. Kissing appeals to show people in part because it is inherently more theatrical than, say, handshaking or nodding. Kisses can be invested with any emotion from the most fervid passion to a hydrochloric malice. They play well. Singer Linda Ronstadt explains it in another way: "The business consists of people who are so desperately insecure and lonely, and they have to have contact: we're all affection junkies."

Satirist Tom Wolfe sees a connection between show business kissing and the new campaign law. The new $1,000 limitation on contributions means, says Wolfe, that "more than ever, people in show business have a tremendous role in campaigns. Through concerts and other entertainments they can deliver a million dollars in a single evening, and in show business, this kissing has become even more rampant than it ever was. Jimmy Carter has to kiss at least 3,000 rock stars--male and female--in the next four years to pay up his debt."

Many Americans get their ideas of social kissing from the television talk shows, which are orgies of lipsmacking. The rituals can be intricate. On Johnny Carson's late-night show, for example, female guests almost invariably kiss Carson: they then confront the question of whether to kiss Announcer Ed McMahon as well. Usually, they do, since McMahon has been elevated over the years from the status of hired help to that of deputy executive star. But what if Doc Severinsen is sitting in?

As the custom of kissing has spread from showfolk to the general population, it has raised innumerable, if minute, questions of rite and protocol. Who initiates the kiss? In a kiss between a man and woman, quite often it is the woman who makes the first move -- offering her hand, inclining her cheek. But if the man is, say, the woman's boss or her husband's boss, she may wait until he leans forward into that critical distance with in which the kiss occurs.

If two or more couples meet simultaneously, the cross-kissing begins to resemble the start of a football game, when multiple captains of the two teams must go through all permutations of the hand shake. Sometimes habitual non-kissers avoid kissing the hostess as they come to a party, but will have several drinks and, thus mellowed, will kiss goodnight as they leave, muttering later, "Why did I kiss that woman?" The converse also occurs: people kiss in a warmth of expectation as the evening begins, but then part with awkward handshakes.

Timing is crucial if one is to avoid clumsy lurches and even broken teeth. Aim is vitally important. In social kissing, the lips can strike anywhere from behind the ear to the center of the mouth, depending upon the kisser's fervor or sobriety. Sometimes a talent for evasion helps. Shirley Temple Black, just retired as a U.S. diplomat, says that over the years, "I have developed a dart-and-dodge technique to avoid the kiss on the mouth."

Mrs. Black has the advantage of her foreign experience. "In diplomatic circles." says she, "there is a lot of hand kissing." Men are gingerly with her hand, however, since she bought an Iranian ring with two stone-encrusted tigers on it. "I remember a reception in Bucharest in 1972," she relates, "when a Rumanian with a huge red beard bent over to kiss my hand. He was bent over for the longest time and when he finally made it up, there were two long red hairs in my tiger ring."

Viewed with a clinical, alien's eye, kissing can seem a rather odd thing for people to do. The Chinese have even believed that it had associations with cannibalism. Kissing, of course, is not all that bad. But the present excesses have undoubtedly served to debase the currency, sometimes leaving people at a loss for ways to demonstrate degrees of affection, as well as making them unnecessarily nervous about the flu.

Columnist Art Buchwald is in favor of the sport, especially the two-cheek variation he learned in Paris. Says he:

"Women love to be kissed on both cheeks. They know they're getting a French kiss without all the trouble that usually goes with it." Ultimately, the social kiss, however promiscuously inflicted, is unlikely to do any permanent damage to civilization. The threat can at least be kept to a minimum if, as the old sorority house rule dictated, a couple keeps a total of three feet on the floor at all times.

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