skin<3
Song of the week: “Pick Up That Knife” by Wednesday
There’s something so incredibly special to me about physical intimacy whether romantic, platonic, sensual or sexual. I truly think there’s nothing else in the world that gives you the feeling your mom did, while rubbing circles on your back when you were little to help put you to sleep at night. Or the way your fingertips lightly graze someone else’s nose as you count their freckles or birthmarks, or to brush the tangles out of your best friends soft blonde hair after the pool, or to be tickled on your stomach until you’re gasping for air from all the giggles. Then there’s a kiss to the cheek, the way the plush skin softly reverberates, like a soft smushy pancake, or the way two bodies glide together when covered in a layer of sweat. These are moments and sensations that cannot ever be completely replicated and become engrained in our mind forever, like initials on an old oak tree.
It isn’t just touch that contributes to the experience of physical intimacy. All of our senses play a large part. I can still remember the sound of my mom’s whispers and the rustle of my shirt under her hand, the sight of my twin xl sheets covered in tiny drawings of fairies, the smell of vanilla emanating from Audrey’s hair as I brushed it, and the taste of sunscreen and salt from a kiss on the beach. All five senses engage simultaneously to create a stimulating sensory experience. It’s why ASMR exists. It engages our senses of sound and sight in ways that make us feel relaxed and comforted, like my mom rubbing my back. It’s even how I fall asleep at night sometimes, listening to videos of whispering and self soothing my nerves and my racing mind by rubbing my feet together like a little cricket.
One of the things that makes physical intimacy so special and different from a solo sensory experience is the fact that you get to share the experience with another person. It makes your own sensory experience feel multiplied because you’re feeling the weight of the other person’s as well. You go through the same feelings together because you’re each providing a sensory experience for each other. When you touch someone, you both feel it.
One of my most physically intimate experiences by far has been laying naked with a person I loved, skin touching skin with nothing else between it. No clothes to restrict you from melting into each other, limbs intertwined like the loose ends hanging off the sleeve of the knit sweater your grandmother made for you. So close you could almost become one. I often imagine this strong connection with this feeling goes back to our first moments on this earth. After we take our first breaths and get placed upon our mothers’ bare breasts for skin to skin contact. It’s the first time we ever touch something else, somebody else, and we are completely naked for it. Research says it’s the best thing for babies. Maybe it applies to us in our later lives as well.
When I think about it, my most vulnerable moments have been while bare and naked, in my truest form. Sobbing in my mothers arms after she made me strip to show her my self-inflicted wounds, and giving my body to someone I trusted to appreciate it, and love it as much as I do. Our naked body is called our birthday suit for a reason, because it’s the one we were born in. Our skin is the only tangible, physical thing we as beings have to offer to the world. You can’t touch feelings and thoughts, you can’t touch noises or movement. You touch skin and hair. Our body is how we physically exist in this world. It makes sense that a lot of people don’t feel comfortable with physical touch unless from certain people and it makes sense why it feels weird or awkward when strangers touch us, accidental or not because for a lot of people, including myself, the closest we feel with another person is when we touch each other. This is true in a physical sense, since touching skin to skin is the closest we can be to each other, without being inside one another ;)
One of the most beautiful ways that I’ve heard another person discuss this idea of physical intimacy is Adrienne Lenker, who in her song “Anything” says,
“Hanging your jeans with a clothes pin
Skin still wet, still on my skin
Mango in your mouth, juice dripping
Shoulder of your shirtsleeve slipping”
I love the way Adrienne paints such a vivid picture of physical sensations, so casually, so everyday and makes them seem beautiful and special. I really admire her ability to see the world that way. I know exactly what it’s like to sit next to someone on the edge of the pool, wet shoulder’s touching. I know what it’s like to feel mango juice drip down my chin, and the shoulder of my shirt to slip off annoyingly, but I’ve never thought about these actions as anything other than mundane or ordinary.
Every day we touch a million different things. We tend to take our sense of touch for granted because we use it so frequently every day. From this point on I’m going to try to make an effort to be grateful for my my ability to feel things physically. I’m going to try and savor every midnight movie cuddle with my best friend, every little prickle when I get a tattoo done, every steaming hot shower, the rush of the wind in my hair with my head stuck outside the car window, or the feeling of someone’s palm calluses as we hold hands. I will try and live more observantly, to pay attention and notice the things that I feel, so as not to let myself forget them. After all touches are moments that are irreplaceable, so I want to hold on to them all for as long as possible.
xo,
gaby
