By BOB KECSKEMETY
Students Matty Daley and Bobby Canciello broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the “Longest Continuous Kiss.” The record-breaking kiss took place on The College of New Jersey campus located in Ewing, New Jersey on Saturday and Sunday, September 11 and 12, 2010 and was streamed live over the internet for the entire duration which was witnessed by over 207,000 unique viewers at one point of time or another.
The previous record was 32 hours, 7 minutes, 14 seconds held by Nikola Matovic and Kristina Reinhart of Germany. Daley and Canciello, the first homosexual couple to break the record, wanted to take the record to 33 hours, but discomfort set in and they stopped at 32 hours, 30 minutes. The last time the record was held in the United States was in 2001.
The rules for the kiss included that the kiss must be continuous and lips must be touching at all times with no sleep or bathroom breaks.
Daley and Canciello took five months for preparation of the kiss including putting together a support team of friends. Narrators answered questions from the chat board and encouraged viewers to spread the word of the kiss via via Facebook and Twitter. At one point, there were over 6,000 locations around the world watching the event at one time when the counter crashed for the rest of the evening. However, the counter didn’t include the number of people that were watching and checking in from gay clubs, student union buildings and dorms which were “checking in.”
One viewer called it “the kiss heard ‘round the world.”
To keep going, Daley and Canciello used hand signals to alert their support staff of their needs such as needing water which was fed to them by a straw through the sides of their lips. They also would slowly dance to assist in blood circulation. After 33½ hours and after the couple broke apart, they spent a few minutes speaking to the internet viewers.
“It was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be,” said Canciello. “We had no idea what this was going to mean to everybody.”
“About four and half hours ago, I soiled my pants,” added Daley, “and boy did it feel good!”.
