It happened late one night outside a bar on East Colfax.
Elizabeth Hauptman had offered a guy a lift home after their second date.
From the driver’s seat, she turned to look at him. And that’s when he busted a move that still ranks as the most disarming in her 39 years.
“He swooped in with this amazing kiss that caught me totally off guard,” she said. “It was just so sensual and passionate and really, really sweet. I felt so lightheaded that when it was over I remember saying I didn’t know if I could drive.”
Kissing — specifically, kissing well — is important to Hauptman.
So important that she would happily forgo Valentine’s Day business at Hysteria, her feminist pleasure store in Denver, if she could convince her customers to give a gift that’s absolutely free:
“A commitment to finding new ways to connect by kissing like they’ve never kissed before.”
That’s my kind of sex-shop owner.
What qualifies as successful smooching was the topic of much chatter Monday while staffers spiffed up sex toys at the checkout counter of Hauptman’s Broadway boutique.
On this point, the women of Hysteria agreed: By the time most folks are old enough to drive, they can recognize bad kissing.
You know the litany of back-seat infractions: knocking heads, bonking teeth, bad breath, lipless wonders and, of course, too much spit.
“There was this guy in seventh grade who had a really fat tongue that he just laid in my mouth like a dead fish,” recalled clerk Elisabeth Long.
Co-worker Sara Miller chuckled at the memory of a 13-year-old named Todd whose technique was straight out of “Alien.”
“He had this darty tongue that he would flick it in and out,” she said.
Theirs was a conversation I could’ve listened to all day.
But it was time to head across town to the home office of “love, pleasure and intimacy coach” Ellie Pope, who teaches kissing workshops at Hysteria.
“The truth is most of us have never considered how to kiss,” she said. “We learn on the job and don’t get really educated on how we do it better.”
The excitement of something as intimate as kissing can wane over time.
“Partners build up all sorts of stuff that makes it hard to be vulnerable with each other,” she said.
It helps to curb what Pope calls “Tongue Fu” kissing, the old make-out move we learned playing spin the bottle.
“I’ve found it can get a little competitive in there, fighting for space,” said Candie Powell of Northglenn, who brought her 23-year-old daughter to one of Pope’s kissing classes.
Pope teaches to slow the process by switching between kissing and being kissed. She encourages students to keep their eyes open and experiment with “modalities” such as nibbling and licking their partners’ mouths, ears and necks — all the while mixing tempo and intensity.
She guarantees that will make knees buckle even among partners who, for better or for worse, have endured years of morning breath.
“Too often, you just want to get down to the meat and potatoes and skip being sensual,” said Pete Yribia, Hysteria’s co-owner. “You have to recalibrate your brain sometimes and allow yourself to just lay back and be kissed.”
Take Yribia’s word for it.
He’s the guy who planted that kiss on Hauptman that long-gone night on Colfax. They celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary in June.
Susan Greene writes twice weekly. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
