Q Dear Miss Abigail:
How can I get my boyfriend to hug or kiss me? He’s really sweet and cute. Please answer this!
Signed,
Brittany
A Dear Brittany:
Sounds like you need to take action, my dear! I have a feeling you don’t want to lean over yourself and just smooch your shy sweetie, so here are some fabulous tips from Ellen Peck’s How to Get a Teen-Age Boy and What To Do With Him When You Get Him. Her chapter on partygoing instructs young ladies such as yourself in the fine art of flirtation with the boy of your dreams, or perhaps just the boy of the evening. So happy signal-sending to you, Brittany. May it bring you all the hugs and kisses you desire.
1969: The Most Serious Flirtation
The most serious flirtation is physical. . . .
If it’s about time for lights out and you want to be in on the scene, here are a few other things you can do to make sure Neil stays with you instead of taking off in search of Sheila.
Take off something you’re wearing. I mean like an earring. And toss your hair back and rub your earlobe. Describe the lovely feeling of not having pinched ears any more. Or take off your wristwatch or bracelet and rub your wrist and mention how good that feels.
Tell him his shoulders look tense. (He’ll think you’re fantastically perceptive; but the truth is, it’s a safe bet. Nearly always, nearly everybody’s shoulders are tense.) And that it’s important to have relaxed shoulders. And to relax his shoulders he should move them in a circle ~ forward, then up, then back, then down. You demonstrate this, of course, because when your shoulders are back, your chest looks good.
He, of course, isn’t doing it quite right, so you can put your hands on his shoulders to show him how. Then you can tell him his shoulders are not only tense, they’re muscular.
How else physical contact?
Touch fingers when he hands you a drink. You shouldn’t be smoking, because research says you can die from it, but if you are, hold his hand when he lights your cigarette.
When you laugh at something he says, laugh from the torso as you bend over and touch his arm. Or if he’s said something serious, you can, wide-eyed, touch his arm as you say, ‘You don’tmean it!’ You can also touch his arm to signal a change in mood. Like, when you were talking to an unresponsive Neil a few minutes ago, you could have touched his arm lightly as you said, ‘OK, OK, I’ll be serious.’
Stand very close. Sit very close. (Not right against him; that’s being too obvious.) Look very intensely at him.
This is known, in popular parlance, as giving a guy the come-on.
And he nearly always does.
Source: Peck, Ellen. How to Get a Teen-Age Boy and What To Do With Him When You Get Him. New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1969.
~ pp. 230-31 ~