One suggests that the entourage go down to the cafeteria to recruit people, and Christian thinks this is a fine idea. So off they go, stampeding down the stairs, rushing through the cafeteria doors as the cashier asks them to pay, and approaching random students with a hopelessly sketchy request. Christian takes the lead, but he is no salesman. "We need one boy and one girl to be in a show," he says to nobody in particular, his arms flailing. Students treat him as they would a homeless person, averting their eyes and walking around him. Eventually, he starts going table by table, where he is greeted skeptically.

This is what kissing has done to Michael Christian. Once an English professor at Boston College, he has devoted his life to teaching college students the science of spit-swapping. "It has taken over my life," he says later, and he's not joking. In 1991, he wrote "The Art of Kissing," which has since been translated into 19 languages and sold 250,000 copies. When it first came out, some B.C. students asked him to give a lecture about the book. He was afraid it would be too boring, so he asked the students to find people willing to demonstrate the kisses he wrote about. The show, which was seen by a small group of B.C. students, was a hit, and he soon took it on the road.

Years later, his English students talked him into performing it in lieu of the day's regular curriculum, and they volunteered themselves for the demonstration. Apparently, though, simulated oral sex and the "spanking kiss" -- a kiss whose description does it full justice -- was a bit too much for some of the students, and they complained to the administration. Christian was put on a tight leash after that. Two years ago, he quit to do the presentation full-time.

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	"The Art of Kissing" By William Cane St. Martin's Press 180 pages Nonfiction Buy this book
	"The Art of Kissing Book of Questions and Answers: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Perfecting Your Kissing Technique" By William Cane St. Martin's Press 176 pages Nonfiction Buy this book

Christian's life is dictated by impulse. He has no casual interests, but only deep, wholly consuming curiosity, and so he heaves himself at everything he likes. Before teaching, he spent years in law school -- but after he passed the bar, he practiced law for six weeks and then quit. Just recently, he read a book about legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, and is now preparing to tour the country doing a one-man Shackleton show. When Christian redefines himself, he does it completely. In his 50 years of life, he's legally changed his name five times, although he can't really offer a plausible explanation for it.

"I must be a very confused person. On some level, I don't know who I am. That's a problem," he says. He wrote "The Art of Kissing" as William Cane, and now goes by Michael Christian. When he was introduced at the beginning of the UConn show, the student at the microphone called him "Michael Christianson." Christian said he didn't mind. He'll probably be changing his name again soon anyway.

Christian is perhaps the least likely figure to give sex advice. He looks a bit like a grown-up Harry Potter, complete with a bowl haircut and black-rimmed circular glasses, and he talks like Woody Allen. When he says the word "crazy" -- and he says it often, about his life, his profession, the kissing show in general -- the similarity with Allen is startling. On the night at UConn, he was dressed in oversize khaki pants and a giant long-sleeved shirt, and it seemed as if he had lost 80 pounds but hadn't had time to buy a new wardrobe.

When Christian checked in to the on-campus Nathan Hale Inn, he asked the desk clerk about the Revolutionary War figure's famous quotes, and soon became the first person in the hotel's history to actually accept its printout biography of Hale. Twice when we were talking in the hotel lobby, he picked up a promotional magazine and flipped the pages under his nose. When I asked what he was doing, he laughed as if he wasn't consciously aware of his actions, and told me he loves the smell of ink. In fact, he says, he can usually identify the publisher of a book by the smell of its ink. He quotes philosophers and psychologists. He analyzes people by their birth order. He is an academic overwhelmed by his idiosyncrasies, a genius savant.

But get him talking about kissing, and it's clear that he's done his homework. For the book, he had thousands of people take an online survey, and learned from the trends. As a quiz, I ask him what men want from women, and he rattles off a list: "They want French kisses, they want to open mouth more, they want them to be more aggressive with the tongue, they want them to bite them gently on the mouth, the earlobe, and they want them to be aggressive by pulling their hair when they're excited." What do women want from men? "They want less invasive French kisses, they want more in the front of the mouth with the tongue, they want more romantic kisses, they want kisses for the sake of kissing, they also love the neck and ears. It will pay you rich dividends to remember that if you're a guy."