The Nature of the Bis

We have been in France for almost 20 months. By now, the French greeting has become pretty natural for us. Called faire la bis, the greeting consists of giving a friend or close acquaintance a kiss on the cheek. It's really not a kiss, but rather placing your right cheek to the other person's right cheek and left cheek to their left cheek, while making a kissing sound into the air beside them and saying "Bonjour". Remembering all this is important, so people that cannot walk and chew gum at the same time simply lack sufficient co-ordination to even say hello in France. A misplaced pucker that actually lands on the side of the person you are "pretend kissing" can communicate an entirely unintended sense of affection or familiarity that could scandalize the poor soul. They were bargaining for the French version of a hearty handshake, but instead got the equivalent of a full body hug. (Picture your teenager saying, "Awkward" in a sing-song tone).

There is a whole inculturation process of understanding at what point you know someone sufficiently to plant your cheek next to theirs. And if you wear glasses like I do, you learn to aim a bit wider for a fellow bespectacled individual. Otherwise, the violent clash of eyeglass frames can jar the senses and sound like duelling swords. Some people actually take off their glasses quickly to greet. The advantage of this is that if they are far-sighted, they at least won't be able to see any unsightly facial hairs as they hone in for the kiss.

But just when you think you've mastered the art of giving the bis, you come to find out that how many kisses and which side of the cheek you kiss first varies from region to region. And getting it wrong can result in some funny, if not uncomfortable moments. It gets worse when two people are aware of where you are from and are attempting to be culturally sensitive. For example, we just took a trip to Belgium, where they only kiss one side of the cheek, instead of two. And wouldn't you know it, they start on the opposite cheek of where we do in France. So at first, as someone from France is aiming for the left, and a Belge is aiming for the right, the danger of a real kiss actually taking place increases dramatically. The first encounter goes someting like this: French person (or clueless American living in France) goes left and suddenly sees the Belge headed right; French person suddenly realizes custom is different and adeptly pulls out the kiss, re-meneuvering to the right around rapidly approaching noses; Belge is equally alert and pulls off his or her own deft move to the left; French and Belge almost kiss for real twice; both stop cold in awkward laughter followed by a conciliatory handshake.

So with every greeting, we had to remind ourselves to begin by aiming for the right side, instead of the left, and stopping after one smooch. But, If we had stopped off on our way home somewhere else in France besides Grenoble, we would have had another kind of awkward encounter. This happens when the kisser envisions a different number of bisous on the cheek than the "kissee". If you intend to give three kisses and the other person turns away after two...well, regional wars have started over less humilitating circumstances. Just to give you the rundown based on a recent French online poll, one kiss is the preferred greeting in only two départements of the country, with three kisses the norm in 12 departments, four kisses de rigueur in 22 départements, and the rest of the country remaining two-kiss territory. I think the five-kissers were driven out of the country back in the time of the Camassars. Try keeping all that straight if you are a campaigning politician, long-haul truck driver, or typical American tourist going from Normandy to Nice and visiting everything in between. Fortunately for us, we don't travel into other departments too much. If so, I might have a whiplash from all the sudden neck contortions.