touch my monkey
Jul. 2nd, 2004 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaidentouching people in America is complicated. sometimes i still feel like i don't know all the rules.
my parents continue to be very affectionate, and my childhood was filled with hugs, kisses, and hand-holding. i still often take a hand or an arm when walking with one of my parents. i hugged my friends all the time until my best friend and i started kindergarten and she told me i shouldn't do it anymore. she didn't last much past that year. another time i was making a point in conversation and i laid my hand on the arm of the boy i was talking to, and he recoiled. it took me some time to understand that my unconscious gesture was a violation.
i think about it every now and again. the friendships and events past that glow in my memory are the ones that had a heavy tactile element. i don't know if it's because i experience a deep sense of well-being and connectedness from companionable contact, or because i was getting along with someone so well that we could brush aside the physical reserve that seems to be expected of us. both, i guess. touchers tend to be on a societal edge...both all the kids from nerd camp, and an old friend with brain damage. i wonder if one of the reasons that i drifted into doing theatre was because of hugs and kisses and backrubs? i'm sure it's why i bonded with a group of "international" students in college. the Greek and the Ethiopian assured me that they had been advised to withdraw into themselves while in the US. so we did as people are wont to do, and formed a clique where we could all pile together on one groaning couch and touch hair and scratch heads and roll hands between palms...but there wasn't any sex. i get so frustrated with the conclusion that physical familiarity is an invite to penetration. sometimes a backrub really is for tense shoulders.
i need the cloth mommy in my life. i try to read the context as best i can, and never resist the offer of a hug or an arm around the shoulder from anyone who is less than a stranger. the toughest thing is making sure that we're all engaging in warm regard and not making a pass or copping a feel. then again, ambiguity has its safety, and its thrills. if someone else is getting a charge out of me, i'm not harmed, and a little flattered. if i'm enjoying it perhaps more than i should, still neither of us are harmed.
the day i knew i should consider C as something beyond a friend was when i saw him visit with his parents, and his father kissed him goodbye. in my world, everyone should be able to express love without the assumption of lust. it's funny...i'm glad to see same sex couples happily holding hands in public, but i wish i didn't always assume that they must be fucking (or thinking about it).
C and i can't keep our hands off each other, in the sense that we find excuses to touch, even if it's pressing our shoulders together, or my foot next to his. we spent years as the only couple in a circle of lonely single friends, or finding ourselves in threes, and we've developed self-censorship to such an art that perhaps we are confusing the public. or not. someone at work noted that i always touch his hair at least once if i speak to him for any reason.
i find living without snuggling akin to starvation. if a political candidate offered me a definite national increase in snuggling, i'd vote for her/him.
my parents continue to be very affectionate, and my childhood was filled with hugs, kisses, and hand-holding. i still often take a hand or an arm when walking with one of my parents. i hugged my friends all the time until my best friend and i started kindergarten and she told me i shouldn't do it anymore. she didn't last much past that year. another time i was making a point in conversation and i laid my hand on the arm of the boy i was talking to, and he recoiled. it took me some time to understand that my unconscious gesture was a violation.
i think about it every now and again. the friendships and events past that glow in my memory are the ones that had a heavy tactile element. i don't know if it's because i experience a deep sense of well-being and connectedness from companionable contact, or because i was getting along with someone so well that we could brush aside the physical reserve that seems to be expected of us. both, i guess. touchers tend to be on a societal edge...both all the kids from nerd camp, and an old friend with brain damage. i wonder if one of the reasons that i drifted into doing theatre was because of hugs and kisses and backrubs? i'm sure it's why i bonded with a group of "international" students in college. the Greek and the Ethiopian assured me that they had been advised to withdraw into themselves while in the US. so we did as people are wont to do, and formed a clique where we could all pile together on one groaning couch and touch hair and scratch heads and roll hands between palms...but there wasn't any sex. i get so frustrated with the conclusion that physical familiarity is an invite to penetration. sometimes a backrub really is for tense shoulders.
i need the cloth mommy in my life. i try to read the context as best i can, and never resist the offer of a hug or an arm around the shoulder from anyone who is less than a stranger. the toughest thing is making sure that we're all engaging in warm regard and not making a pass or copping a feel. then again, ambiguity has its safety, and its thrills. if someone else is getting a charge out of me, i'm not harmed, and a little flattered. if i'm enjoying it perhaps more than i should, still neither of us are harmed.
the day i knew i should consider C as something beyond a friend was when i saw him visit with his parents, and his father kissed him goodbye. in my world, everyone should be able to express love without the assumption of lust. it's funny...i'm glad to see same sex couples happily holding hands in public, but i wish i didn't always assume that they must be fucking (or thinking about it).
C and i can't keep our hands off each other, in the sense that we find excuses to touch, even if it's pressing our shoulders together, or my foot next to his. we spent years as the only couple in a circle of lonely single friends, or finding ourselves in threes, and we've developed self-censorship to such an art that perhaps we are confusing the public. or not. someone at work noted that i always touch his hair at least once if i speak to him for any reason.
i find living without snuggling akin to starvation. if a political candidate offered me a definite national increase in snuggling, i'd vote for her/him.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-03 05:10 pm (UTC)I'm very much a touch monkey, and I find that the relationships in which touching doesn't occur regularly—just the casual hand-on-the-arm type—don't seem to last very long or get very close. I've found that people in the PNW are less likely to be comfortable with it than those in the North East, at least in New York. But when I get together with friends, more often than not I'll greet them with a hug or an arm around the waist or shoulders or something. Contact is important, and we're such social animals that I think it's necessary.
And THANK YOU for your position that touch doesn't automatically lead to sex. I don't know how many people I've had that conversation with who seem surprised that it could be otherwise. People, go find yourselves a cloth monkey, for heavens' sake!