10 Ways to Guarantee a New Year's Eve Kiss

Lights are twinkling, confetti is falling, and a 20-piece brass band suddenly appeared out of nowhere to play Auld Lang Syne. You close your eyes, pucker your lips, stick your face out, and... open your eyes, realize no one's there, and excuse yourself to the restroom to weep silently while you listen to two girls discuss the finer points of lip gloss. Never again. This New Year's you are getting your midnight kiss if it kills you (let's hope it doesn't come to that). Here are ten legal and semi-legal ways to guarantee you will be lip-locked when the ball drops.

1. Slather your mouth with Nutella. Osculation station.
2. Plant yourself next to someone you know is single. At 11:59:26 p.m., discreetly drop a banana peel on the ground between you. At 11:59:47 p.m., start to slip on the banana peel. (Make it last, because you’re gonna have to flail for an abnormally long time.) At 11:59:59 p.m., fall onto your neighbor’s face. Bang. You're snogging.
3. Attach to your mouth a supersonic vacuum you’ve made with parts from your family’s Dyson, a bathroom plunger (a new one, you sicko), and rubber bands. (Instructions here.) Just be careful not to turn on the forcefield until you reach 3 in the countdown. Trust us.
4. Bribery. How much is this be-all-end-all, two-second make-out session really worth to you? Pick the most enviable gift from your Christmas loot (for example, the iPad, the signed collectors’ edition of the Hunger Games, or the chinchilla you really liked until it chewed through your signed collectors' edition of the Hunger Games), and offer it to someone in exchange for your ideal New Year's smooch.
5. Blackmail. Go through old photos from your most awkward pubescent years. Identify a target (perhaps Jock McBufferson does not realize he was standing behind you during the seventh-grade production of CATS?) and threaten to post the images to Facebook unless he or she exchanges spit with you at midnight.
6. Invite everyone to your house for a New Year's Eve bash. At 11:59, have a friend flip the electrical breaker. When the party descends into total darkness, take your pick of kisses.
7. Paint your hand to look like the person you would like to be kissing. (Or a bald eagle. Whatevs.) At midnight, French kiss your fist.
8. Bring a lifesize cardboard cut-out of your favorite celeb to the party. Pro: Cardboard can’t decide it has to go to the bathroom at 11:59. Con: Paper cuts.
9. Wait until just before the ball drops and fake an allergic reaction to a chemical used in the plastic tip of noisemakers. When someone gives you mouth-to-mouth, slip a little tongue in.
10. Find someone at the party you think is cute. (If you're celebrating New Year's with your family, this is going to be a lot more difficult. See strategies #7 and #8.) Talk to him/her. In a joking manner complain that you still haven't found someone to kiss at midnight. Ask if he/she has found someone to kiss. If not, say "that's interesting" and wait for him/her to suggest using each other for face pecking practice.

Do you have someone to kiss on New Year's Eve?

Related post: What to Do If You Don't Have a New Year's Kiss