January is Makeout Month at Autostraddle.com
Dance floor
I know, you were expecting this one to rank higher. That’s fair. Making out on a dance floor is a classic. But it’s also so expected. Many times, I’ve danced in some sweaty, low lit place in anticipation of a make out that never came. I’m supposed to enjoy the tension, the build up, I think. But I never do. It stresses me out, wrings me dry. And too many times, mostly in my twenties, I’ve made out on a dance floor with someone whose name I never learned. Hot in theory, I suppose. Maybe for someone else. I don’t need to know someone entirely, but I like to know names.
Someone’s basement in 2006
I wouldn’t know, because while others were making out in someone’s basement in 2006, I was performing monologues. No really. Once, I spent a large portion of a party where other kids were drinking blue alcohol out of plastic bottles and kissing each other performing scenes from the feature film Superstar. “I’m not a slut!” I screamed, as Mary Gallagher does in confession in the movie. As if it wasn’t obvious.
Department store fitting room
Before I was out, I reveled in the thrill of women-only spaces like, for example, the fitting rooms at Macy’s, where I could make out with the girl who was not my girlfriend because I was not gay, no way, even when her tongue was in my mouth and our spit was all mixed together in a fluorescent-lit stall where we were supposed to be trying on skinny jeans.
Backseat of a car
A cab is classic. The first time I made out with my worst ex was not inside a cab but directly next to it, a farewell kiss after a long night of build up to it. Even with my worst ex, there are good memories of course, and this is one of them.
Outside a gay bar
Perhaps while waiting for a cab or while stepping out for some air or a cigarette or just to talk somewhere a little quieter. There’s something about the space immediately outside the gay bar that is almost even more of a queer space than inside it.
Inside a dive bar
My wife and I have made out in so many dive bars, and that, if you ask me, is the secret to a successful marriage. Once, before we were married, we made out so furtively in the back of a lower east side dive bar that the bartenders started playing a punk cover of “Mambo Italiano” on repeat to get us to leave. At our wedding, we did our first dance to it.
The last time I made out with someone in a dive bar who wasn’t my wife, her mouth tasted like that classic messy twenties combination of burnt coffee and cigarettes. I like the imperfect make outs best, the ones that feel a little grimy, that leave a smear of lipstick behind and a weird a taste in your mouth.
Hot tub
Like a dance floor, it’s a tad obvious, but it really is hot.
Someone else’s couch
It can be a hotel couch or an Airbnb couch or a couch at a college house party where you actually don’t make out with the girl you want to make out with but think about it a lot and instead just sit next to each other talking about the boys you supposedly like but don’t until you finally have enough jungle juice to muster the courage to turn your knees toward each other but still you don’t make out because that would be too much for right now but maybe in seven years when you’re both out and happy you’ll try it, not on a couch, but of all places, on a dance floor in your hometown.
Pool
This is better than a hot tub, because there’s more room to do fun sloppy make out choreography.
On the floor in front of a fireplace
I asked my wife to name good places to make out, and this was the first thing she said.
Haunted house
I don’t mean a staged one. I mean a real bonafide haunted house, one with ghosts and secrets in its walls, one where you feel a little scared, a little out of sorts. This is the only place on the list where I haven’t made out, but I want to. I want to feel so scared in a haunted house that the only thing I can think to do is suck face.
Photo booth
Not only do you get to make out in tight quarters, but you get to have photos of it afterward.
The ocean
Of all the bodies of water to make out in, this is the best one. In the ocean, you’re the best and hottest version of yourself. The best makeouts are like an ocean — wet, open, endless.
Elevator
An elevator is the best place to make out. The first time I made out with my wife was in an elevator in The Ace hotel in Manhattan. Before that, I’d made out in plenty of other elevators, sometimes with people I shouldn’t have been making out with. But there’s something about an elevator make out — the limited time, the fact that you’re going somewhere, ascending, often heading to a bed that isn’t yours — that is especially hot, especially memorable. Even just riding an elevator mimics the feeling of making out, an in-between feeling. When I taste someone else’s spit, I feel like I’m going somewhere, like I’m floating in space.
