I don't know if this is how teenagers have always been, or if it's just the ones I know, but it seems to me we sure have a starvation for meaningful physical contact. In a weird, unhealthy, my-parents-never-held-me way. The generation holding hands and searching in the dark. People may think, with technology, we've lost our touch, but stick us in a room together and it's HOLD ME HOLD ME HOLD ME.
Or I just hang out in the theater room too often.
I gradually got over my tactile defensiveness through the art of holding hands, but that took a lot of analytical thinking, which is still required for me to make sense of the strangeness of human comradeship.
I went to see one-acts at my school the other night, and ran into Sally before the show started. We sat together in the second row and watched the empty stage.
Meanwhile, Martensen and his boyfriend snuck out for a minute through one of the stage exits, the hallway one that turns to the left after a few feet. They walked through, directly beside each other, and they didn't hold hands. Not even after it was safe and no one could see. Sally nudged me and pointed at them and said, "Isn't that cute?" and I mentioned the strangeness of their distance, but assumed they got closer eventually.
I've known Sally since we were kids, and so when we sat together during the play I found myself muffling my laughter in her shoulder without thinking about it. A kind of head-nudge of acknowledgement and comfortable togetherness. And, when I did, she would rest her head on mine.
There were four or five kissing scenes in the performance. And I just thought, wow, that's a lot of wasted meaning. I mean a kiss is a special thing, and these scenes are awful, except for the first one. They don't know what to do most of the time, they're kids. They bump noses and pull away too soon, clumsy and grimacing and much too much themselves to be anyone else. So they think about someone they love and look at someone they don't and they pretend, because they are acting. I wonder then, if ones who love them watch them from the audience as they kiss a stranger, and if they are saddened at this stolen piece of sacred togetherness meant to be shared with them.
I'm laughing at a scene about a balloon, I mean really falling apart kind of laughing, and Sally's got her head resting on my head and I'm thinking, that's a really powerful gesture. And then I think about Sally's girlfriend, who lives far away, and I wonder what it's like to want to hold hands and not be able to, because of the whole time and space thing. And I wonder how many times, when people show affection, they mean it for someone else.
Afterwards, when the audience filed into the crowded hallway, I ran into Martensen, who was surprised to see me at a public event. He had smudges under his eyes and panic around his shoulders. He smiled desperately and, strangely enough, held out a crooked pinky. I linked mine around his, surprised at such untimely sentimentality, and he used his other arm to pull me into a hug. Hugs from Martensen are strange, because he is one of the only people in my hug circle who is taller than me. My mouth kind of gets pushed into the indent between his collarbone and shoulder, and it is from this position I asked him what was wrong. Most people don't need a hug so badly immediately after a date.
"Nothing," he said. "I've just needed that for a while."
His boyfriend had gone home.
So I stood outside and thought about the strangeness of stages and intimacy, and decided it was okay to be given the affection meant for a girl who happens to live far away and a boy whose hands happen to belong to someone else, because the initial outlet and inward manifestation of affection don't always align. And it's okay that the love I receive is stolen because maybe one of those false kisses on the stage was meant for me, but given to someone else. In theory, at least. Probably not.
And then I thought, wow, most of the physical contact I receive is from gay kids and actors. No wonder I'm so confused.
Or I just hang out in the theater room too often.
I gradually got over my tactile defensiveness through the art of holding hands, but that took a lot of analytical thinking, which is still required for me to make sense of the strangeness of human comradeship.
I went to see one-acts at my school the other night, and ran into Sally before the show started. We sat together in the second row and watched the empty stage.
Meanwhile, Martensen and his boyfriend snuck out for a minute through one of the stage exits, the hallway one that turns to the left after a few feet. They walked through, directly beside each other, and they didn't hold hands. Not even after it was safe and no one could see. Sally nudged me and pointed at them and said, "Isn't that cute?" and I mentioned the strangeness of their distance, but assumed they got closer eventually.
I've known Sally since we were kids, and so when we sat together during the play I found myself muffling my laughter in her shoulder without thinking about it. A kind of head-nudge of acknowledgement and comfortable togetherness. And, when I did, she would rest her head on mine.
There were four or five kissing scenes in the performance. And I just thought, wow, that's a lot of wasted meaning. I mean a kiss is a special thing, and these scenes are awful, except for the first one. They don't know what to do most of the time, they're kids. They bump noses and pull away too soon, clumsy and grimacing and much too much themselves to be anyone else. So they think about someone they love and look at someone they don't and they pretend, because they are acting. I wonder then, if ones who love them watch them from the audience as they kiss a stranger, and if they are saddened at this stolen piece of sacred togetherness meant to be shared with them.
I'm laughing at a scene about a balloon, I mean really falling apart kind of laughing, and Sally's got her head resting on my head and I'm thinking, that's a really powerful gesture. And then I think about Sally's girlfriend, who lives far away, and I wonder what it's like to want to hold hands and not be able to, because of the whole time and space thing. And I wonder how many times, when people show affection, they mean it for someone else.
Afterwards, when the audience filed into the crowded hallway, I ran into Martensen, who was surprised to see me at a public event. He had smudges under his eyes and panic around his shoulders. He smiled desperately and, strangely enough, held out a crooked pinky. I linked mine around his, surprised at such untimely sentimentality, and he used his other arm to pull me into a hug. Hugs from Martensen are strange, because he is one of the only people in my hug circle who is taller than me. My mouth kind of gets pushed into the indent between his collarbone and shoulder, and it is from this position I asked him what was wrong. Most people don't need a hug so badly immediately after a date.
"Nothing," he said. "I've just needed that for a while."
His boyfriend had gone home.
So I stood outside and thought about the strangeness of stages and intimacy, and decided it was okay to be given the affection meant for a girl who happens to live far away and a boy whose hands happen to belong to someone else, because the initial outlet and inward manifestation of affection don't always align. And it's okay that the love I receive is stolen because maybe one of those false kisses on the stage was meant for me, but given to someone else. In theory, at least. Probably not.
And then I thought, wow, most of the physical contact I receive is from gay kids and actors. No wonder I'm so confused.
--an angsty teenage tree monster rant, from coffee and an essay due tomorrow--
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