Most people divide kino into 2 main groups. Incidental, where you have an excuse for touching, and overt, when the touching is driven by the will to touch.

so for example:
high 5 after a funny thing she said is incidental.

holding hand her hand is overt

!!!BUT!!!

I have a different way to look at it, and thought i might share

Grouping the kino into 2 groups is not enough when escalating.

I like do divide each of those groups into two more groups being, Intimate and non-intimate.

so we get Incidental Non-Intimate (IN) Overt Non-Intimate (ON)
Incidental Intimate (II) and Overt Intimate (OI)

an example for each:
IN - Incidental Non-intimate - a hand shake up to a warm hug(sexually charged hug)
II - Incidental Intimate - brushing her hair of her ear to see her earing up to touching her lower back when talking about where she should get her next tattoo. Moving her around holding her waist.
On - Overt Non-intimate - keeping your hands held after handshake up to openly taking her hand and holding it.
OI - Overt Intimate - Touching her leg\lower back up to kissing and making out (sex is not included since it is not in the basic escalation ladder. you would have to go over OI in order to have sex.)


When I escalate I group from Incidental to Overt, and from Non-intimate to Intimate.

sometimes it is possible to skip the II, sometimes you may feel it is Necessary.

the big border line of course goes between Incidental and Overt.

so a basic escalation for me would be to:

Shake her hand.
Brushing her hair to see her earings.
Hugging her because of something that excited me (Incidental), and leaving my hand around her, rubbing her back (Overt)
Touch leg\lower back basically outfront fore-foreplay.

The border line between Incidental and Overt is the hard part, where I would usually mix the two worlds Using an incidental touch and sustaining it to an Overt one.

Notice that the Transition has to be Either from IN to ON or from II to ON , meaning not skipping straight to OI

some examples to cross the border:

• Hugging and keeping you hand around.

• Shaking hands and sustaining the hands to a point you are holding hands

• Brushing her hair of her ear and moving into Style's Phase shift routine

THIS THEORY IS INCOMPLETE AND NEEDS A LOT OF INPUT BUT I FEEL IT IS BETTER THEN THE TWO BASIC GROUPINGS...

hope it was useful to anybody

Good luck
Mike