It only lasts a brief second. In the fourth episode of Too Much, Lena Dunham’s highly anticipated Netflix series, ‘Anything’ by Adrianne Lenker is playing in the background as the two protagonists, Jessica and Felix, have slow morning sex. Lying in bed, Jessica, played by Megan Stalter, arches her back and opens her mouth wide. In response, Felix (Will Sharpe) carefully and tenderly aims a string of spit into her mouth. The moment passes. The two go back to bantering. The 38-minute-long episode comes to a close.
But the scene does not leave my head. Not—as one would expect—for sentimental or horny reasons. Instead, I find myself shuddering whenever I remember the rope of saliva that leisurely leaves Sharpe’s mouth, which Stalter promptly swallows before kissing him again.
Too Much is not the first show or movie to incorporate what seems to be the kink of the moment. Earlier this year, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s sleek period horror film, had a vividly uncomfortable erotic scene where Hailee Steinfeld, an infected vampire, drools liberally into soon-to-be vampire Michael B Jordan’s mouth. In Babygirl, released in December last year, Nicole Kidman spits candy into Harris Dickinson’s hand. In April, Lorde announced the first single off her newest album, Virgin, with a photo of her face dripping with drool. To sum it up, it is apt that Vulture called it the summer of saliva.
It’s definitely a summer I cannot get behind. On my group chat, I perplexedly interrogated people about the appeal of spit, and ‘intimacy’ was the word thrown around the most. “Generally, I find the idea disgusting, but I’m a fan when I really like or love the man who does it,” admits 22-year-old student Swadha Kanchan, adding, “A stranger can’t be doing shit like this to me.” Another friend, who wishes to be anonymous, agrees. “It makes me feel dirty and sexy,” he confesses, “It’s like something sacred that no one else needs to know about.”
As a germophobe, the word ‘dirty’ definitely crops up in my sex life more than any other. I’ve spent an abnormal amount of time having a crisis about the fact that sex is nothing but an exchange of germs and bodily fluids. In the middle of sexual encounters, I have spiralled over the fact that the other person touched my face with the same hands they used to put a condom on. Minutes after sleeping with them, I have rushed to use their shower and shamelessly emptied their bottle of body wash. After hook-ups in strange hotels, I have vigorously shampooed my hair twice, sometimes thrice.
I know, technically, that much grosser things happen during sex than the swallowing of spit. There is sweat, there is cum and—regardless of whether someone spits in my mouth—there is an exchange of saliva the moment we kiss. Plus, saliva is probably one of the least disgusting bodily fluids. Perhaps I would think of it differently had I not grown up in a country where it is nearly impossible to look around a train station without seeing someone regurgitate after letting out a long, red stream of paan. I know there is no logic to my crash-out, but the ickiness from the Too Much scene (and that slimy string of spit) remains lodged in my brain even two days later. (Can’t we all agree that spit was only appealing when a young Leonardo DiCaprio taught a young Kate Winslet the art of “spitting like a man” in Titanic?)
Interestingly, spitting is not the only kink to go mainstream lately. A 2022 story published by The Guardian conceded that choking or sexual asphyxiation, previously just common in pornography and BDSM circles, had become so commonplace among young people that many didn’t think it required consent. While it is undoubtedly the more germ-free of the two, spitting, thankfully, has relatively lower stakes for someone dabbling in kink. In 2022, experts warned that there is no safe way to engage in choking which, if done wrong, carries the risk of brain damage. On the other hand, spitting is mostly harmless (if you don’t count the psychological damage it causes to me, specifically). In fact, according to Aili Seghetti, founder of The Intimacy Curator, it is a positive sign that people are getting into spit. “It shows that people are becoming more aware that erotic play is not just penetrative sex,” she observes. “Movements like this highlight that intimacy can be built through various activities.”
Before they had mainstream media in a chokehold (pun intended), it was not uncommon to see jokes about choking (“choke me daddy” was perhaps the most infamous thirsty meme of the 2010s) and spitting (“are you drinking enough water or do i need to spit in ur mouth”) flooding the internet. Perhaps empowered by last year’s Hawk Tuah Girl, this collective humour disguises curiosity and intrigue, destigmatising kinks and encouraging people to explore their sexual interests more freely. The taboo nature of spitting, Seghetti believes, may, in fact, be one of the reasons people are so into it. “Some associate spitting in the mouth with degradation as there is often shame and taboo surrounding bodily fluids,” she shares, “For some, it may be the sensory experience because they are turned on by sliminess. Additionally, spitting can symbolise a form of bonding, as the exchange of fluids can create a sense of intimacy.”
Whatever my opinion may be—and regardless of whether it takes me a week to recover emotionally from watching a sex scene where someone spits in their partner’s mouth like a llama—the fact is undisputed: this year, drool is cool. And not just when DiCaprio is hurriedly wiping some off his chin. We may not understand the summer of saliva, but we definitely don’t kink-shame in this house.
