Got distracted by "xx"
When I first moved to New York, there was a brief period where I came in contact with a few people whose main greeting was kissing you on the cheeks, like the French. “Mwah, mwah, so good to see you,” was the way it went.
New York really is a different world, I thought. But then I stopped seeing those people, the kisses stopped, and greetings normalized to chaste hugs.
I’ve encountered the occasional cheek-kisser in the years since. They are usually older, worldlier people, often European. And I’m always caught off guard, because I don’t know the rules. Are you meant to make lip-cheek contact? Should the “mwah” be audible? How far back does one pull before going in again? Should there be a third kiss? (No. Not quite. Eight-to-ten inches. Only in France, and even then, only sometimes, says a source.)
I feel stupid and clumsy every time.
Which is why it pains me to tell you: I have just found out that I have accidentally signed every email I’ve written since 2006 with “kiss kiss.”
When I was 21, I worked for an impressive, accomplished British woman for a year. She signed all of her emails “xx,” and since then, I have, too. Incredibly, though, I’ve never actually known what an email signed with “xx” means.
(I do remember looking it up back then, and finding no definitive answers.)
And so for a dozen actual complete years, I simply assumed “xx” was indefinable, something British, sophisticated, smart, malleable with use. Like “best” or “thanks,” it could be tailored to fit your needs. Sometimes it was a shorter, cooler version of “be well,” “cheers,” “sincerely.” Sometimes it was like signing one’s name, “x” in lieu of a signature. Sometimes it was like a full stop.
These are wrong, it turns out. It literally just means “kiss kiss.”
My boyfriend Matt, also British, informed me of this when he read an earlier draft of this newsletter about the joy of the “xx” and its “many uses and meanings” on Monday.
He looked up from reading, and said: “Logan. ‘xx’ means ‘kiss kiss’. It doesn’t mean any of the other things you’ve suggested. It’s just a posh British kiss.”
I disagreed, explaining that I started using it because I was copying my very professional boss, who would not have signed her emails “kiss kiss.” It must have multiple meanings.
He asked if I’d ever asked her or anyone else, what “xx” meant.
I had … not.
So I emailed an American friend living in England to confirm that I was, in fact, right. Kim moved to London in 2008 and, according to my email archives, soon started signing her emails “xx,” too. I never asked her about this, assuming her “xx” meant what my boss’s “xx” meant and what my “xx” meant, too: that enigmatic British goodbye. She responded:
“Hmmm I think it means
Kiss kiss
Like in how Europeans say hello, with two kisses via cheek.”
Okay. Fine, yes, maybe that’s one meaning, but there are, of course, more. Again, I just couldn’t see my former boss signing her emails with “kiss kiss.” There had to be more to it than that! There had to be.
So I emailed my former boss, this brilliant, impressive woman with whom I had not spoken in more than a decade. And incredibly, she responded:
“I think the best way to describe xx is as a written equivalent of the double cheek kiss.
Brits never did this, like the French; though they do now, curiously, in the middle class and up. So you can sign xx to anyone from your sister to a familiar work colleague. It’s egalitarian, very friendly but not at all inappropriate or sexual, even between male/female correspondents. “
So that was it, then. The “xx” means “kiss kiss.”
I read her email many times, clinging to the “egalitarian, very friendly but not at all inappropriate or sexual” bit. I’m really leaning in to that, actually, hoping that somehow it’s inherent in the “xx.” Because I don’t think you could say the same for “xo” — I would never sign a work email “xo.” And yet! And yet. (And yet.) I have signed emails to colleagues, to interview subjects, to hiring committees, “xx.”
Matt, who was my friend for a decade before he became more, said he had wondered for years why I was signing off our friendly emails with “xx” and always assumed I fancied him. (He’s not wrong, but I certainly didn’t know it at the time.) Could this language mistake have inadvertently aided my own courtship? I think it’s possible, yes!
The question now is, do I stop with the “xx,” knowing what it means?
I don’t know if I can. My name looks naked with it. Recently I’ve started signing some emails to friends and family “love from,” which I stole from Matt. I suppose I’ll just have to wait for another British person to send me some further correspondence with a different sign-off I can steal.
Speaking of getting distracted, I started my initial newsletter on this subject because of a joke made by a friend on Twitter. Meaghan O’Connell wrote, “British women are like ‘I’m gonna destroy your life then fucking murder you and your entire family and hide the bodies Xxxxxxxxx’”.
Lol.
That means “laugh out loud”. Obviously I have always known this.
Love from,
Log
xx