Linguistic cartwheels in the stylings of a rant, these are the thoughts that keep me up at night.
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I am a 20 year old female writer residing in Central New Jersey. My influences include the great Dave Barry, Neil Gaiman, George Carlin, and the two greatest editors in the world, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. My webpage can be found at www.homestead.com/foxfyresden and I can be reached at Foxfyre33@aol.com. Happy reading!
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Tuesday, March 11, 2003
The Lost Art of the Embrace
or, A Kiss From Brian-Joseph
Since my infancy, my mother had always perscribed to the tangibly-focused school of child rearing. From back rubs when I was sick to a sharp and unforseen whap upside the head when I "talked back fresh", I didn't understand that there was such a thing as "personal space" until I left the confines of my home and family for kindergarten.
Even in the supposedly more formalized structure of school, the baby book my mother had kept from my youth for me was filled with tales of how much I loved to hug my teachers, happily throwing my arms around them to start off each day. A hug was my all-purpose affection, a way of showing even someone I didn't know all that well that I thought they were great, and fully accepted in my own little bright world. My mother, no stranger to my overly-trusting ways, quickly noticed and took great care to teach me who was "ok" to hug, and who was not. However, even this stern missive from my mother was open to interpretations, and relied solely on my own judgement, something I had come to expect as the years went on.
As I grew older, my heart sank a bit as I noticed that hugging one's teacher wasn't "acceptable" or "proper". As my respect for my teachers grew, the want to hug them, to thank them for the knowledge and hard work they put forth on my behalf, did not diminish. Rather, it grew, and branched into a want to hug my friends, and all those close to me, and a deep despair settled into my heart because I could not. I came to fear embracing people because it might be frowned upon, I might be cast out or shunned for my affection.
This quiet and restricting fear followed me even to the present day, when my admiration for my teachers grew to levels of idolation in some cases, and I wished feverently that I could communicate in the most basic and pure of affections, and hug them. This may seem strange to some people, and I'm sure Freud would have a field day with it, but it's only the way I honestly feel. I came to accept that it would always be a silent societal shackle on what I really wanted to do, and express - but it only took a few moments from a friend to give me hope that maybe I wasn't so weird.
Most of my friends are males, by choice, simply because I get along with them much more smoothly than my own gender. This greatly limits any chance I may have to hug them, as we live in a world that constantly cowers in fear of sexual-harrasment lawsuits and restraining orders - men are, as a whole, terrified to be physically open with women. However, I met one man recently that completely shifted my image of the gender.
Brian-Joseph is, by all accounts, a unique person. I met him in math class while trying to help him with a problem, and was surprised to find that he, who struck me as a class clown, was actually quite articulate and well-spoken. With this revelation, and the kinship we shared in being utterly clueless in math, the pentacle-draped pagan girl and the cross-laden christian boy stepped across the cultural rift to befriend one another.
We quickly adopted a routine of coffee and roundtable discussion for an hour or more following each class, and I came to greatly look forward to it. I was taken aback that a man who was completely covered in christian tattoos and outwardly secure in his faith never once looked down on me or even mentioned conversion. My trust was swiftly won in the face of this diversion from the usual manner of religious oppression. He respected me, and treated me like a human being, and none of his kind ever really had before.
We got to talking about a number of things, not the least of which was my lamentation over the absense of good, solid, platonic embraces from the culture. He agreed, and we cited examples, and discussed for a good long while before moving to a different subject. An hour later, I had to leave to catch my ride, and the conversation was all but forgotten, replaced by a mental list of the work waiting me at home.
In some quiet moment, as I was rearranging my coat and rambling on some goodbyes to Brian-Joseph, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me. It was a solid and meaningful embrace, one that clearly said "you are my friend". He kissed my cheek then, held me at arms length with a smile, and told me to be well, before wandering off.
As I walked down the path to the car, I looked up at the sunlight streaming through the trees and down to where it danced across the snow. The quiet staccatto of my boots paused on the blacktop a moment, and, smiling, two fingers touched my cheek where he had kissed.
Like the land, I, too, felt the snow melting - gently revealing the hope of spring beneath.
8:09 AM
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