How to Kiss: 5 Tips on Locking Lips

Everybody yearns for a little gay kiss — but what if you’ve never locked lips with anyone before?Learning how to kiss, much like painting, sculpting, or dance, is an art that requires a lot of care and practice. If you’ve never done it before, or just don’t feel like you have the technique down, it can especially feel like an uphill battle. Not to mention, getting it right doesn’t always happen on the first try – and that’s OK!What’s important to keep in mind when you’re first learning how to exchange saliva is that everyone has different preferences for what they consider a “good” kiss. In fact, there isn’t really a definitively bad way to kiss — it’s just all about if you and your dance partner are comparable and can make adjustments to better suit each other’s kissing style. Feeling it out, being able to read the body language of the person you’re smooching, and just adjusting with the flow of things all go a long way in learning how to kiss “well.” That being said, it can still feel overwhelming to go in without some pointers if you’re just starting out, much like anything from learning how to flirt or how to finger. After all, popular depictions of kissing — good or bad — all depict so many variables that can go wrong: how much tongue is too much tongue? What is a French kiss? Is biting ok? What if you’re grossed out by spit? God forbid, what if your teeth knock together? And, if you’re a Love Island stan, what the hell is turtle tongue and how can you avoid it? All of these questions can be especially overwhelming for young queer people, who don’t even have nominal sex education classes and heteronormative scripts to fall back on. Who is supposed to make the first move? How does one assess if it’s the right time to lean in? Queer teen media like Heartstopper and Sex Education might make it look easy, but these first-time experiences can be awkward and feel embarrassing! Below, we answer all of your burning ques