According to good old reliable Wikipedia, kisses can be divided into several different categories; love, affection, peace, respect and friendship, with obvious amounts of overlap. Personally I am a big fan of all five. Also worthy of a mention are butterfly kisses, using your eyelashes to tickle someones cheek, and eskimo kisses, which involves the rubbing together of noses.
As a very tactile person I often have to check myself and remind my wondering hands that not everyone shares my feelings on this topic. I have so far avoided being punched or arrested for being inappropriate with the wrong person at the wrong time, but neither would surprise me all that much. I’ve always considered kissing to be just as intimate (if not more, somehow) than sex, and I’ve never really understood the concept of going out on the town of a Friday night and seeing how many strangers I can swap saliva with. But that’s a mixture of being a diehard romantic and slightly OCD when it comes to germs. Mostly the germ thing…

Some need-to-know facts about kissing that will change your life (maybe);

• Under the Hays Code (1930-1968), people kissing in American films could no longer be horizontal; at least one had to be sitting or standing, not lying down. In addition, all on-screen married couples slept in twin beds…and if kissing on one of the beds occurred, at least one of the spouses had to have a foot on the floor. Because, y’know, that way you can be sure it’s not going to lead to any funny business.
• When two people kiss, they exchange between 10 million and 1 billion bacteria. Yum.
• The insulting slang “kiss my ass” dates back at least to 1705.
• Two thirds of people turn their head to the right when they kiss.
• On average, we spend about 20,160 minutes of our lives kissing. That translates to about 336 hours which is 14 days. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but imagine nonstop kissing for 14 days straight.

Kissing another person’s lips has become a common expression of affection in many cultures worldwide. In some situations a kiss is a ritual, a formal or symbolic gesture symbolising devotion, respect, or sacrament. Other times it’s a couple of horny teenagers going at it hell for leather in the back of a Ford Focus. Both are important. Both matter. I’ll certainly never tire of either kind.