Intimacy

1:

D didn’t like being hugged- she would squirm, there would be no leaning into her- she’d shift, unobtrusively. And she hated a friendly arm on her shoulder- the weight of that arm, the knowledge of it; felt like she was being pushed into the ground. D hadn’t been held much as a child, she had rarely been hugged and she hadn’t seen her parents hold hands even. Outside of sex, physical touch held no appeal for D.

But every morning when she went to wash her face she’d see their toothbrushes together in the stand, leaning into each other, nearly kissing. She never separated those brushes, and if she pulled apart their socks that had gotten tangled in the wash- she did so very carefully.

2:

You’re on the phone with me one morning, when I ask you, “are you making scrambled eggs?” You nod. And I see you, the blue shorts you’re in, the eggs in the pan and even your nod.

3:

Our bodies cave into each other. I lean into you and your arm comes around me in a circle of you and me and when your head falls on my shoulder- my head leans in to hold you there, at night we spoon in concave shapes, my feet tucked into your knees, when we walk our hands become receptacles, but who is holding whom? I can never tell. But your fingers make space for mine so naturally that I can’t help but think — we fit.

4:

We fit so easily once. I think of this when I see you now. You’re bigger, whereas I have shrunk with time. You’re with someone else now, but we’re still friends. We sit at the same table at a wedding and it’s alright, neither of us mind. But in the middle of all that bustle I feel suddenly overwhelmed, and because of a habit I never outgrew, I try and catch your eye. Before I can be embarrassed by this lapse, you nod in a way that comforts me.

5:

Within an ugly fight is a flood of tears, a torrent of insults that tear into you a little bit because they are all true, snot runs down his nostrils, you yank your end of the blanket forcefully, he sits up furious and screaming…and for a moment you forget everything to focus on how a spray of spit tends to leave his mouth when he shouts, you notice his hair and how stupid he looks with everything on end, you want to laugh, you want to scream, but you just turn away and suddenly you both collapse exhausted. Neither of you sleeps that night. The next morning he brings you tea, you take the cup, refusing to look at his face. But you allow him to sit next to you.

6: Friends since 1993:

“You always know what I mean.”

7: Familiarity vs Intimacy:

One grows without permission, while the other must be allowed.

8:

We weave a language of gestures in a vocabulary of hints, needs, buried sorrows, invitations, dismissals, urgency, flashes of anger and even a few taunts. A language spoken in knit eyebrows, wide eyes, curled upper lip, four stalks of ocean lilies, sliced green chillies, smothered smiles, fingers raking hair, a gentle pressure on a hand, three taps on the table, scooter keys jiggled, the word “roman”…so many gestures in a language that only both of us know in the entire world.

9:

I have learnt you in bumps and ridges and tiny pinpricks of gooseflesh and moles and dimples and hollows and depths and shades and tints and loosening skin and your soft middle is now so well known to me that I pinch it sometimes with great tenderness and aggressive affection.

10:

Two strangers on a train reading the same book, look up, find each other and smile.