Where Have You Kissed People?

A kiss during a 1970’s honeymoon at the beach.

Where have you kissed people? Photographer Sara Macel asked dozens of people that question, and then she photographed their kissing spots — like woods, rooftops and restaurants.

“It’s like the opposite of a crime scene,” she told me on the phone. “It’s also amazing how little of a prompt you have to give for someone to tell you the most intimate details of their life.”

A kiss at the Natural History Museum during a school trip.

A kiss in a car after working a shift at the diner.

Her project spoke to me because places can be such a key part of an experience. When I walk around the city, there are so many random places that feel significant — a kiss years before, a break up, a moment when I couldn’t help sobbing on a street corner. Sometimes experiences are as much about the place as the person.

One memorable kiss story from a past life is when I went with friends to a restaurant on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Beforehand, one of the guys and I had gone out three separate nights alone — to a band, a movie and a bar — but no kiss had happened. Finally, at the end of this group dinner, he said, “Sorry, guys, will you wait a second? We have to go over here and have our first kiss.” And we walked around the corner and did just that.

What about you? Where have you kissed people? I’m so curious…

P.S. Crying in public, and my sister’s awesome dating tip.

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Twyla

June 2, 2016 9:36pm 9:36 pm

This is such a genius premise for a photo book! I’m sad I didn’t think of it… Also sad they’re sold out.

Rachel

June 2, 2016 9:09pm 9:09 pm

I just unearthed a wonderful memory from a previous life, thank you! What a gift.

Katie

June 2, 2016 8:51pm 8:51 pm

I was going on 21 when I had my first kiss with the boy who would become my first boyfriend. We worked together over the summer, and had begun talking and spending time together. I thought he was just so cute. My roommates and I threw a big party, and he stuck around after everyone had gone home. We planned to stay up for the sunrise. We spent the night watching Jeopardy! reruns and talking in my kitchen. Close to sunrise, we drove to a building on campus and climbed to the roof for the view. We talked, the sun came up, and he hadn’t made any moves. I was getting impatient so I told him I thought he should kiss me and then take me home. He was taken aback but gave me a good solid kiss and I was satisfied. We spent 3 sweet years together.

ACB

June 2, 2016 8:36pm 8:36 pm

GREAT topic because there are some kisses that you never forget…just because of where they happened. I had one in the parking garage of The Grove in LA. The guy I was dating said he wanted to kiss me in the elevator but didn’t (there was no one else in it! I guess he just missed the moment)- and I will forever remember the sexual tension building in the elevator and then the kiss when it finally happened next to his car.

Ramona

June 2, 2016 8:18pm 8:18 pm

Well my “first” kiss was when I tackled Jimmy Miller when I was in third grade. (Never led to anything else, but I’ll never forget it!) When I was in fourth grade, we moved out of town. Moved back when I was a sophomore…and my parents bought his parents house! Just a coincidence. Still never led to anything else.
My first kiss with my husband was on our first date. We went to the high school Christmas musical. We went on a private intermission in the hall. While sitting on the steps, he kissed me so sweetly on my forehead. I fell in love with him that night. Twenty years later, we reenacted that kiss. And this past year…we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary!

Nyambura.co

June 2, 2016 7:50pm 7:50 pm

Such a beautiful project :) Life is all about our good memories after all

Shruthi
http://nyambura.co

Ileana

June 2, 2016 7:48pm 7:48 pm

I had been on a few dates with this guy and we hadn’t kissed yet and I was starting to think I had been friend zoned. Then one night we made dinner together at his house. He had started to clean up and I got up to help him and he said “No, let me!” and I was arguing with him about it and grabbed a plate and started washing it and then he grabbed ME and kissed me. And then we made up for lost time!
He ended up being kind of a dick and things didn’t last between us, but to this day it’s my best first kiss.

leticia

June 2, 2016 7:47pm 7:47 pm

In a cold cold night, in front of the stairs of Delancey st station

Natalie

June 2, 2016 7:30pm 7:30 pm

One of my most memorable kisses was on Bourbon Street in New Orleans during a torrential downpour. I was visiting the city for a friend’s Bachelorette Party and met the man at a karaoke bar on our last night. All night, he spun me around the dance floor, with our last dance taking place outside the bar as rain fell in every direction. We went on to have an exhilarating eight-month relationship.

Lisa

June 2, 2016 6:56pm 6:56 pm

I have three very memorable ones.

The first was pre-husband. I had a crush on the drummer of a band I was friends with. The evening was one of their farewell gigs at a venue which is sadly now an estate agents in Shoreditch (London). It was a fun night – they had a great gig and we hung out in the private band area afterwards. He took the bus home with me and missed his stop so he could kiss me good night. The relationship didn’t go much further than that (he went back to California a week later) but it was just one of those great kisses.
The second was my husnand – we were still dating and he went on holiday with his family for a week. The plan was to meet in Paris (so already pretty romantic …). It was December and the weather was crazy – very heavy snow, the Eurostar and flights had been cancelled but we both made it. We agreed to meet in a coffee shop in Places des Vosges. I took the stupidest route from the metro so ended up walking for ages in the cold, dragging my suitcase through snow. I finally arrived and it was just one of those amazing kisses; I was tired and had missed him so much it was such a relief to be with him again
And the third is multiple kisses. In my third trimester of pregnancy, I dreamt that my baby was kissing my cheek (in the baby style, i.e. slobbering all over you). Now he does it in real life and my half just bursts when he does (though my cheek is drenched)

Jennifer

June 2, 2016 6:55pm 6:55 pm

Oddly, on two separate occasions (and in two separate states), I have made out with a guy on a riverbank. Not even a guy I was dating, just a guy who had previously been a friend. When I tell stories about the past, my husband often asks, “Wait…did you make out with this guy on a riverbank?” It is so random, but quite enjoyable at the time. :)

June 2, 2016 6:49pm 6:49 pm

On my first date with my now-husband, he was pulled over for rolling a stop sign outside of our college bar and arrested on the spot on suspicion of drunk driving. I walked home in tears! Once at the station, he blew under the legal limit so was released. However, he was so embarrassed about how the date ended that he wouldn’t return my phone calls. Because it was around Valentine’s Day, I sent him a valentine that said “Still waiting for my goodnight kiss.” That got his attention, and we made plans to watch a movie at my apartment. When he arrived he said “Ok, I need to kiss you right now,” and the rest is history.

Laura Mitbrodt

June 2, 2016 6:22pm 6:22 pm

That Diner is so cute! I love this post
xo
http://www.laurajaneatelier.com

Surabi Muncie

June 2, 2016 6:03pm 6:03 pm

It was a private lane in our neighborhood just a few streets away from my home in Hawai’i. He was 17 and I was 19, we had been friends for about 2 years but we both knew we liked each other what with all the flirting and midnight messages. He messaged me and told me he was around the corner so I snuck out and met him down this private lane. I was super anxious I wouldn’t know how to kiss and it would be so awkward and embarrassing but once he finally cornered me with all his teenage hormones it was like an explosion of heat and heart and that feeling and memory of our first kiss still takes my breathe away. I married that man 4 years later and now 14 years later I still drive past that little lane in our little town and and it makes my heart jump.

Carrie

June 2, 2016 5:56pm 5:56 pm

My first kiss was in the band room at my middle school. It was this tiny room tucked away up some narrow stairs in the back of the gym. Some of the boys in class found me on recess and told me to come with them, that my crush was waiting for me. I followed them, and a few minutes later the two of us are surrounded by a handful of goofy middle school kids all watching and waiting… I was so nervous I looked at him and blurted out “you better not french kiss me”….he didn’t ;)

Jessica

June 2, 2016 5:56pm 5:56 pm

My first kiss was an epic fail! Had this huge crush in 7th grade on a guy from Switzerland who was attending our school in PA for a year. After months of pining (on my part!) my friend and I met up with the boy and his buddies. We were all on roller blades and started a game of street hockey. Halfway through the boy asked me to talk a walk (or roll) behind some houses, of course I agreed! We somehow ended up on a hill and he kissed me, I was ecstatic! Until I lost my footing and immediately started sliding down the hill on my stupid roller blades to the sound of laughter (unbeknownst to me the other boys were watching!). It remember it was hard to know how to feel – I was so happy yet completely mortified! Haha.

Blythe

June 2, 2016 5:49pm 5:49 pm

When my husband and I were first dating, our first kiss happened in a crowded bar. We’d been dancing and dancing and dancing and I was just waiting for him to kiss me. We were taking a break from the dance floor and en route to our group of friends when he pulled me aside and said, “There’s something I just need to get out of the way.”

And that was our first kiss!

Jenna

June 2, 2016 5:36pm 5:36 pm

Throughout all of middle school and high school, I had a crush on a boy in my grade. We went to prom together but couldn’t date because he wasn’t allowed to until after high school. So then when we did finally date during college, we ended up having our first kiss at night on top of a local water tower! It was windy and crazy cold up there, and I remember shaking, but I think more from the anticipation of kissing someone I’d liked for so long!

Kristina

June 2, 2016 5:27pm 5:27 pm

So fun reading everyone’s beautiful stories! Here is one of my most memorable first kisses:
I was studying abroad in Copenhagen where I met a Canadian guy that I secretly fell for immediately. We had been shyly flirting for a while until we finally went on a small biking trip for an afternoon, just the two of us. Afterwards we had a cup of tea back in his room in the old town with a view of the beautiful brick buildings across the small street. We were sitting next to each other on his bed (since there was no other place to sit) and I could feel the tension and my heart beating. I was crazy excited but calm at the same time. Then he leaned closer, gently pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across my face and gave me the most tender kiss with his hand still on my face. Then he leaned back, we were both grinning at each other in happy surprise, and he said, almost with relief, “wow, I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.” It was so sweet. That was ten years ago but I’ll never forget how right it felt and that I wanted to be nowhere but exactly where I was at that moment.

Jules

June 2, 2016 5:21pm 5:21 pm

My first kiss with my husband was a week after we had met. We met on the first day of college orientation. After watching a movie one night, we walked to a bench on the bluff that overlooked the Willamette River and the city of Portland. He put his arm around me and kissed me. One of the best nights of my life. That was 13 years, 2 kids (another on the way), and 1 golden retriever ago. :)

Katie

Reply to Jules

November 15, 2016 4:51am 4:51 am

Too sweet- I know just the bench you are talking about as I have shared a first kiss in that same spot! Go pilots!

Paige

June 2, 2016 5:18pm 5:18 pm

Most memorable kisses – While at a local amusement park, a friend and I decided to go into one of those haunted house attractions (you know, the ones where you sit in the mini cars meant for little kids), and as soon as all the lights went out we spontaneously started full on, hot and heavy, making out. It was really passionate and unexpected. We never told anyone or did anything physical afterward, but the experience definitely unforgettable.
Then there was a guy I went on a date with – we went to a small, independent theater in the city. Afterward, we broke the lock to climb on top of the parking structure that overlooked the entire city. We sat for a while and then shared our first kiss. It was magical.
Last, but not least, another guy and I made our way on top of the buildings that run along Main Street in my hometown (think old-school Western, pioneer style Main Street that’s been upgraded to be a “hip” part of town, very much like Park City, Utah). We folded up paper airplanes and threw them down to the street below. Some with random messages written on them, others blank. We dangled our feet off the edge of the buildings and sat inside the old bell tower and talked for hours, which, again, eventually led to kissing. All very memorable experiences.

Jill

June 2, 2016 5:14pm 5:14 pm

My first kiss was on the Meditteranean beach in Spain with a French boy who gave me, to me surprise, a french kiss :) I remember thinking immediately I was so excited I had such a rich story to share with my grandkids when I got old and gray!

But my favorite kiss was my first with my now-husband, under the night sky after cuddling in a hammock. It was a complete surprise which made it all the more beautiful.

Simone

June 2, 2016 4:39pm 4:39 pm

First kiss: a deer stand!

nora

June 2, 2016 4:37pm 4:37 pm

i love these comments! my husband and i met at work, became fast friends, and one night we disclosed our feelings. we decided we couldn’t pursue it, even though our hearts felt differently. we were out one night a couple of weeks later, where at dinner he said “we’ll never be together and we have to be ok with that,” but afterwards held my hand as we walked. at that moment, i knew i had to go for it. we went bowling and at midnight (also, his birthday), said let’s go outside and look at the view of the skyline. we stood on kent ave in brooklyn gazing at the lights and i grabbed him and kissed him. that was 8 years ago and we have been together ever since.

Cynthia

June 2, 2016 4:30pm 4:30 pm

On the beach as the sun was setting at the end of a surfing day!
Likely By Sea

Talia

June 2, 2016 4:19pm 4:19 pm

We were having happy hour at work on a Friday afternoon and a guy friend and I engaged in a deep conversation. After I got home, he called me and said he wished he had kissed me. I ran back to the office (I lived only about 5 minutes away) and blessedly everyone had left. He kissed me and I knew I had met the love of my life. We shared a few very short years together until he passed. Best memories ever.

Amy W

Reply to Talia

August 5, 2016 11:06am 11:06 am

This breaks my heart. So happy that you two were able to share some of your lives together. I hope you find another similar love in the future.

Sarah

June 2, 2016 4:12pm 4:12 pm

It sounds so cliche. But I was on a school trip to Europe one summer – our school in Michigan teamed up with a school from Pennsylvania. There were new boys who didn’t know anything about the group of girls that I was with (we were maybe a little nerdy back home, but here in this foreign country, we were so cosmopolitan!). The boys were so odd. We gave them all nick-names so we could talk about them.
The red-headed boy (Almost Amish or AA for short) decided that I had a crush on him. Probably not, but I pretended. We were climbing the Eiffel Tower, and he pulled me aside and gave me my first real kiss. It was actually awful and I avoided him the entire rest of the trip. But a french kiss on the most french monument on the planet… it’s a fun memory.

Gina

June 2, 2016 4:02pm 4:02 pm

My husband and I met working at a summer camp with the prying eyes of counselors and campers everywhere. We got very creative with finding secret spots to steal a kiss. My favorite being the walk-in freezer where we would both go in to grab an “ice-cream.” The memory of freezing temperatures and warm kisses still makes my heart leap.

June 2, 2016 3:54pm 3:54 pm

When I was in college there was this boy that I had been friends with for a while. We had flirted but nothing else had ever happened between us. One night I was coming back from a date with a different guy, and this boy was hanging out with some of my friends in front of my apartment. Eventually it was just the two of us sitting on a bench and talking. It was the night of daylight savings changing for the fall, and it was kind of cold, and my friend brought us out a blanket, and he and I snuggled and talked until we were so close our lips were touching. He said, “is this ok?” And I kissed him, and we kissed and kissed for a long time. I think the time changed while we were kissing. When I finally stood up to go in my apartment, my knees were shaking and I couldn’t stand up straight. He made me literally weak in the knees!

Samantha

June 2, 2016 3:50pm 3:50 pm

My bf and I met at work. I really liked him from the first time I saw him. It was night shift, we finished at 2am and I started asking him to take me home, since we didn’t live too far from each other (he had offered to take me). I liked him so ridiculously much. We hung out a couple times with other people, I accompanied him one time to get something he left in his house. Never did he even suggest that he wanted to kiss me, but I was dying to kiss him. One day we went on a “date”, to this place called Lulu in the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo (we live int he Dominican Republic). It was raining when we arrived, so he got out of the car with the umbrella and then “pick me up”, and when I got out of the car he unexpectedly kissed me. It was a quick kiss, but I guess you could say it set the mood for the rest of the night. We drank wine, talked, and when we got on the car again the tension had grown so much, it was a full on make out session :)

Becca

June 2, 2016 3:47pm 3:47 pm

ski lift!!

Candice

June 2, 2016 3:42pm 3:42 pm

Many of my kissing memories are the locations that stand out in my mind so clearly … I met and married my husband when I was 21 .. so my adult life was spent kissing that man in all kinds of locations … Paris, London, Argentina, NYC, Central Park, the cinema, the supermarket lol He was a romantic, he didn’t care who was looking, he would just grab me and kiss me … Just because.
I sure do miss him & those kisses.

Emily

Reply to Candice

June 3, 2016 3:42am 3:42 am

That is so cool! What happened to him?

Leigh

June 2, 2016 3:37pm 3:37 pm

Though I think about it all the time, I have never actually written this down before. At the turn of the last century, my great-grandfather built a house near a creek in my hometown. My grandfather and my mother grew up in that house. My first kiss with my high school boyfriend was on a bench overlooking that creek. Sitting in that spot so familiar to me wasn’t planned, it’s just where we ended up on a walk and where he gently (and finally) asked me if he could kiss me. This was of course after two years of that weird adolescent angsty dance of wondering if we both “liked” each other more than the best friends we’d become. It still brings pain to my heart and tears in my eyes when I think about it.

Alex

June 2, 2016 3:18pm 3:18 pm

I have two most memorable first kisses. First – at 19 years old, on New Years Eve on South Beach (Miami) rolling around in the sand at midnight with the guy that became my college boyfriend while fireworks went off above us. Second – at 29 years old, in a yellow cab speeding down the BQE at 3am, right as it comes out below the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and you get that amazing view of lower manhattan with my now-husband.
Oh my gosh, this made my day thinking about these kisses. I’m gonna run home from work and plant a big one on my husband!

Allie

June 2, 2016 3:17pm 3:17 pm

I grew up in a quaint Dutch town (Pella, Iowa) and my then boyfriend and I climbed the small windmill by the wooden shoe pond soon after our first kiss. Our second kiss was there! He also proposed on top of the windmill and a neighbor called the police on us. A few months later we took our wedding pictures on top of the windmill and the same neighbor came out of his house to wave and smile at us. He had no idea!

Liz

June 2, 2016 3:15pm 3:15 pm

I once snuck out of my parent’s house at night in the pouring rain to meet the “bad boy” of the neighborhood. We walked around the corner and stood barefoot in my neighbor’s wet grass and talked for hours and kissed like teenagers do. Ahh, young (puppy) love.

Blanca

June 2, 2016 3:14pm 3:14 pm

Aged 16 and still never having been kissed, I remember firmly holding out for a person worthy of sharing a first kiss with, even if everybody around me had sloppily ‘gotten it over with’ whilst tipsy at high school parties. It wasn’t perfection I was looking for, it was simply something that would be meaningful to me. He and I had been friends for a year, and after a while the feeling of friendship was soon replaced with a more foreign feeling that I ignored, and soon realised was the desire to be closer to him. Though highly ironic, but in all seriousness, his name was Love (oh, the Swedes), and after weeks of texting that made my skin tingle and my heart race, I boldly suggested to him that we take a walk together, just him and I, by the lake after a cosy cafe gathering with our mutual friends. I remember the tension that built up between us, as the stars twinkled above us, the snow gleaming as it reflected the moonlight, the world silent as the lake had frozen over. We trudged by the lakeside until we reached the Stockholm City Hall, and though the rest was a bit of a blur, a long hug had turned into a kiss, and I started laughing because it felt so strange (first kisses are sloppier than you imagine them to be). I laugh now because despite convincing myself it wouldn’t be ‘perfect’, the stars seemed to align (quite literally), as we were illuminated by a spectacular building, in the snow under a starry night, and I kissed a boy called Love.

(The link shows almost exactly what that evening looked like!!)

shannon

June 2, 2016 3:10pm 3:10 pm

My husband and I dated long-distance for awhile (NYC to Columbus). Unbeknownst to me, he came to visit and show up at a concert I was singing in. He somehow managed to get a message to me that I was needed in the lobby before the concert started. I came from an upper floor and saw him looking up at me from the ground floor. It was as if the dozens of people around us melted away and I could only see him – I couldn’t believe my eyes that he was right there when I believed him to be 1000 miles away. I sprinted down the steps, dropped my binder full of music with a loud clang, and started furiously kissing him. Apparently it caused quite a scene, because when I came out of the fog everyone was staring at us. It was an amazing moment.

Renee

June 2, 2016 3:05pm 3:05 pm

In a prison parking lot. Sounds crazy, no? We were both employees, I was relatively new. We had a few conversations when we would catch each other going into or out of the institution. After two or three of these meetings, he leaned down, mid-conversation, and gave me the most passionate kiss I’ve ever had. This grew into a relationship, very close, intimate, passionate, and he’s the love of my life. I love to tell the story of how I fell in love in prison!

jacquie

June 2, 2016 3:03pm 3:03 pm

My boyfriend and I are in graduate school and spend an obscene amount of time in the library studying for exams. So, like the cliché, the best place we’ve kissed is “the stacks”. We’re both in our 20s but there’s something about the risk of getting caught by the cranky librarians or a fellow student that makes it exciting!

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