The post-stranger-snog cigarette is one of the best cigarettes you’ll ever smoke; however, if you’re on your way to snog another stranger, it does leave you with a less-than-inviting mouth-scent scenario. But I’ve always brushed my teeth before every snog, and here I was again, scrubbing at my molars, with a bottle of water and a tube of paste in one hand, down a Central London side-street, before stepping in to the snog breach once more.
It all started after my last relationship ended.
It ended badly and I was hurt and confused for quite a long time (I still am, somewhat). Eventually there came a stage where, though I remained in no mood for anything serious, I knew I wanted some meaningless affection – I craved the shot-in-the-arm for the ego that comes of non-committal snogging. So, under the guise of an experiment, I set out to get me some; this is how I came to snog five perfect strangers one Friday afternoon.
My premise was that strangers are seemingly always snogging on television and then just walking away again – it’s the quintessential Diet Coke moment, no? Snogging a perfect stranger on your lunch break and then walking off, fulfilling a fantasy before returning to your desk. It all looks so much fun, but how to make it happen in reality? I’m sure there are people out there who just snog strangers in the street, but I was certainly not one of them – and, anyway, that scenario seemed fraught with both consent issues and plenty of potential for public rejection.
So I decided to employ a dating-website middle-man. It was free and seemingly populated by fairly genuine people – more like a social media site than those promising eternal happiness in exchange for your hard-earned. I carefully crafted a message that was designed to introduce the idea that snogging a stranger could be a fun thing to do, before moving on to the suggestion that we actually do it. It was all very light, and the crux of the message read like this:
So I was wondering: would you like to meet me for a no strings attached snog? If I saw you on the tube, I think I’d definitely want to snog you. The way I see it, a day with a snog in it is almost always better than a day without. And snogs are good wholesome fun – no mess in your head or your bed.
We could choose a bridge in London and each walk from the opposite side to meet in the middle at an arranged time. Then we’d smile at each other, say hello, check that there’s some physical attraction (you sort of instantly know, don’t you? If there’s nothing, we can just turn around) and then have a snog.
I had no idea whether it would work: I suspected it wouldn’t. So I sent it to literally hundreds of women – just in case, y’know? By far and away the most popular response was no response, followed by “how many people have you sent this to?” and “does this actually work for you?”. Someone responded simply with: I HATE THE WORD SNOG. But there were also some more positive responses in amongst them: a few shy souls said that they thought it was a good idea, but they’d never be brave enough to actually do it.
Eventually I heard from someone who actually wanted to do it. And then another; and then another. All in all, I had five responses from total strangers who wanted to meet me for a non-committal snog on a London bridge of their choice. I was as excited as I was utterly terrified, so I did the only sensible thing: I lined them all up for the same Friday afternoon. I was going to feel the fear and snog her anyway.
I’ve called this thing an experiment, but I’m sort of figuring out what it proves – if anything – as I go along.
So far, I’ve snogged a total of seventeen total strangers in the space of two years. That first Friday, when I snogged five in a day, was more people than I’d snogged in at least two years previously. One of the people I’ve snogged turned out to be a sociologist and she wrote up our snog date for a fancy journal. It’s hard to say what success looks like when your experiment doesn’t really have a point, but I can definitely say that 100% of people have walked away with big fat idiot grins on their faces after meeting up for a (sort of) spontaneous snog. And from that it does seem difficult not to conclude that a day with a snog is almost always better than a day without…
