Bloody Bises

We all know the French stereotype who rushes up, beret on head, baguette in hand, to plant a dramatic kiss on each cheek as a greeting. Mwah darling, mwah, mwah, mwah. But surely they don't really do that in France?! Surely that's as real as strings of garlic around necks and zee comedie accent? Except zee comedie accent does exist, and so do the kisses, or the 'bises' (pronounced 'bees' as in 'the bees' knees') as the French like to call them. To us English, with our strict unspoken rules of personal space, stiff upper-lip maintenance and hygiene, this habit of kissing one and all is somewhat alarming. Fantastic if it's a particularly attractive friend, but generally really rather awkward.

So far I've had several highly embarrassing moments with the bises, and I'm sure there will be more to come. As you can no doubt imagine, problems include:
- Who do you kiss?
- How many kisses?
- Which side do you go for?
- What if you're faced with someone's partner?
- What if the other person smells funny?
- What if you're about to sneeze?
- What if you've got a gobful of chocolate eclair?

And so the list continues.
Perhaps fortunately, Frenchies are generally a lot more spontaneous, so there's rarely time for more than one of these worries before someone's lunging towards you, lips a-pouting, moustache a-quivering. If only I were equally spontaneous and could just embrace the intimacy and plant a smacker on a stranger's cheek. Unfortunately, years of training in British neutrality have resulted in the instinctive reaction of revulsion. My whole body leans backwards, my hands come out to push the other person away, and my face apparently resembles someone who just saw a naked Gordon Brown dancing The Birdie Song, nipple tassels a-twirling. For some reason, this tends to offend the prospective 'biseur' and has probably ruined many a potential friendship.

Other times, I don't realise what is going on and conduct a merry dance around a room, with a Frenchie lunging towards me, and me nervously edging backwards, until finally, cornered against a wall, I have to give in. It's not that I don't want to do it - I think it's much nicer than a distant handshake. It's just not a built-in instinct. It would be fine with friends, but with colleagues and strangers it really goes against some deep-grained instinct.

The worst times are when I should be taking the initiative, but bumble along in my own little fuzz of ignorance and slight offense that everyone else is ignoring me. Once, on a climbing trip, we stopped at a car park to organise lift-sharing. The woman who was taking me got out of the car, enthusiastically greeted everyone and started kissing them all. It was all lovely: hugs, embraces, laughter. I stood there like a lemon waiting for her to introduce me to all her friends. We all got back in our cars. I tried not to be offended that I hadn't been introduced, reassuring myself that I'd never have remembered all their names anyway.
"I can't believe you didn't do the bise with them" said the woman.
"Oh...well, I don't know any of them. In England the person who knows both parties usually introduces them to each other," I said, half expecting an apology.
"Oh, I've never met them in my life!" she said. "That's how you introduce yourself".
"By kissing as if you're long-lost friends?"
"Of course!".

Of course.
The conversation continued and she very helpfully explained the importance of doing the bise at the right time.
"But what if you're leaving a party and there are 50 people to say goodbye to?" I asked, thinking I'd finally found a reasonable occasion to duck out of the lip action.
"Then you kiss every person goodbye, or you publicly announce why you're not going to," she said.
"But doesn't that take forever?"
"Well, I suppose it does, but it's normal for us."

The woman was very friendly and had spent time in the UK, where she had suffered the opposite problem of offending female friends upon kissing their boyfriends, and was frequently seen as an overaffectionate lesbian. She ended with a description of her American friend who had come to France a few years ago:
"She met my French friend for the first time, and the French friend went in to kiss her. My American friend stopped her at the last minute and said she wouldn't do the bises because she had an awful cold and didn't want to give it to the French lady."
"Well, that's fair enough," I said, busily concocting plans to 'have a cold' whenever meeting new people. "So what happened?"
"The French lady never spoke to the American woman again."
"Oh."

Bloody bises.