Almost everyone I know is afraid of touch, or else is one of the ones responsible for making others afraid of touch, and even such ones, if the truth be told, are afraid of touch, more fearful of touch than any. Even I am afraid of touch. I don't want to be plucked like a flower from its stem, and so I am afraid to let anyone get their fingers on me.
Yet there is nothing we want more, than the touch. We want the other's hands firmly, gently to lie on the unprotected, exposed part of our neck, where the windpipe is.
So it is with Georgia.
I want so very much to leave my neck exposed to her, and I am afraid. Afraid, for one thing, that she “didn't mean that at all.” One could have private sexual intercourse with a girl, and still not know whether that were an invitation to intimacy, or whether it was but a false store-front. One has to know what rules are being played. Is it to be the game-rules of the “fast” society, in which nothing sexual is to be denied, but in which it is entirely forbidden to “let it get so personal” that one deposits the full trust of one's very legitimacy in the keeping of the other.
Or is it the rules of complete tenderness and trust, in which just that—the full legitimacy of the one, is placed, with each physical touch, into the tender keeping of the other. For then, each touch means an iron, a blood-binding. And one must be careful not to commit—”pledge”—oneself to a binding that will not work out properly, because of intellectual, philosophical, religious differences of vision.
I want to be able, even if with embarrassment, to say to Georgia, let us play by the rules where each touch is a bonding, and we are not afraid to place the question of our legitimacy in the hands of the other, fearless of the great hurt possible, yet sensitive. The way I touched your vulnerable neck, the tender, delightful way you touched me, the way our lips were not afraid of touch, but rather became careless and inebriated with it; let that be the way we handle our mental intimacy. Let us not pluck the other like a flower from the stem, simply because we've got our hands intimately on the stem, and can do it. Don't sting the face we kiss, with words from the same mouth our tongue darts from. Let's don't forget the sacredness of the other.
This advice is for me especially, but for her also, though, right now, I am not afraid of being strong, since I know that is the gamble I take. I'm willing to choose it for touch.
The important thing is to be clear we agree on the rules, so that we don't have to worry about fears that the other will be playing by “faster” rules, and will find “slow” ones a sign of innocence and ignorance, and inexperience.
I willingly admit my inexperience. Also my innocence. I less willingly admit ignorance.
Then we will be ready for sincerity: for telling the truth of what we each of us want—in the other, or, if the other doesn't fit—then in someone. We must be able, after so much touch, to face the fact, if it so happens, that we don't fit, and still keep each our legitimacy intact.
