Too Close For Comfort

In the summer of 1993, I was one of a group of college students who studied abroad in Saratov, Russia. Although two years had passed since the fall of the Soviet Union, life there was still relatively free of Western influence.

Most of the other students and I hailed from Wyoming, where wide-open spaces are abundant and people are in short supply. In Saratov we lived in cramped rooms in crowded apartment buildings. We stood in long lines to wait for the bus and, once onboard, were forced to stand intimately close to our fellow passengers, enveloped in their body odors and heavy perfumes.

The other students had difficulty adjusting to our new environs, but I drank in the crowds, people, and noise. What I appreciated most was the Russians’ near-nonexistent sense of personal space. Whether exchanging pleasantries or discussing matters of great import, they stood toe to toe and eye to eye with one another. Locked in conversations with locals, I could see the tiny pockmarks and pores in their faces, examine their carefully applied makeup, and make an educated guess as to what they’d eaten for lunch. With their humanity — and mine — so exposed, there didn’t seem to be any room for artificiality. I felt connected to people in a way I never had at home.

Culture shock came when I returned to America, where we keep even people we know at arm’s length. I longed for the sense of connection I’d felt in Russia. I wanted someone — anyone — to stand toe to toe with me and tell me of his life.

Susannah R. Conn
San Diego, California

Exhausted from a long week at work, I was trying to transplant some perennials in my flower garden on Saturday, but my two-and-a-half-year-old had other plans. She demanded my full attention and would cry and whine whenever I tried to get her to play by herself or work with me in the garden. With each tug on my arm and complaint in my ear, I felt my jaw tighten. Finally I yelled at her and told her to go play with her daddy in the backyard. Then I took a deep breath and returned to digging up a day lily that was crowding an iris.

When I heard my husband start the truck, I dropped my shovel and ran to the backyard. I could see the truck backing up and my daughter behind it, retreating into a row of bushes on one side, looking confused. Her expression seemed to ask, Why was I supposed to come back here? I couldn’t breathe. Then my husband saw her and shut off the engine.

I felt relief and shame. My inability to manage my frustration had nearly cost us our daughter’s life. I didn’t deserve to be a mother.

Parenting forces you to see who you really are. In that moment, I reminded myself of my own mother, who’d always made me feel as if I were in her way. I’d hated that. Now I had become just like her.

Name Withheld

For most of my adult life I had difficulty distinguishing sexual touch from merely affectionate gestures, like hugs and hand-holding. Perhaps I’d received too little physical affection from my parents in childhood. (I cannot recall ever kissing or hugging my mother.) I was a bookish, depressed, and withdrawn teenager, socially insecure and conflicted over touching and being touched. At age twenty-one I married the first woman I’d ever slept with. Even after marriage, I didn’t know how to appreciate nonsexual touch as pleasurable in its own right.

In my late thirties I began practicing yoga to get more acquainted with my body. It occurred to me that this might help me freely enjoy the touch of others. When I discovered there was a therapist in my area who combined talk therapy with assisted yoga poses, I mustered my courage and signed up for a series of one-on-one sessions.

The therapist was encouraging and skillful, and my levels of trust and comfort increased. At the sixth session, however, there was trouble. The therapist manipulated my leg in a way that caused sudden sexual arousal. Guilty and embarrassed, I told her what had happened. In subsequent sessions we simply talked about my problems without touching. Finally she referred me to a male colleague.

My new therapist seemed convinced that massage therapy could play a key role in my healing, but I resisted mightily. The very idea of receiving a massage was tangled up with sexual fantasy for me, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself again.

Five more years passed before the wisdom of his recommendation hit home. A few days before my forty-eighth birthday, I made an appointment for a full-body massage with a female therapist.

As the massage therapist’s hands gently cradled my head, I felt my anxiety subside. Her touch was sensuous, strong, and affirming, yet entirely nonerotic. I didn’t cry during the massage, but I wept profusely later that afternoon, and the next day, whenever I thought of how wondrously different I felt. After four decades, my body had been given back to me.

W.M.
Guilford, Connecticut

The worst thing about prison for me is the lack of personal space. I hate contact with other inmates. If someone is standing within a few feet, I will move away — if I can. A friendly arm thrown around my shoulders is quickly thrown off. And I refuse to shake hands. I don’t like to think of where that other man’s hand might have been — or what it was doing while it was there. Besides, I want both my hands free, just in case.

Even simple questions — “Where are you from?”, “How old are you?”, “Any kids?” — make my gut clench. I am suspicious of men who show an interest in me. At best they’re striking up a conversation for the sole purpose of turning it to their favorite topic: themselves. At worst, their questions are a lead-in to a sleazy come-on, the offer of a relationship in which they are the dominator. Most interrogators are looking for a weakness, some personal bit of information that can be used against me. I would no more reach out to forge a bond of humanity with them than the lord of a castle would lower the drawbridge during a siege. They want to hurt and humiliate me for their own entertainment.

There are a couple of people to whom I talk, to satisfy my need for human contact, but suspicion and alienation define even those relationships. I don’t share personal information with them. The only reason I’ve chosen to speak to them at all is because I fear them less than I do the others. We will never be close. Nobody will ever be close to me. I am safe behind these bars and concrete walls and coils of razor wire. I can’t get out of this prison, but at least no one can get in.

Jeff West
Tennessee Colony, Texas

For my six-year-old autistic grandson, a hug can feel like an assault. A haircut can be torture. Even someone sharing a room with him can be too much. He often says to me, “Get away of my face,” even when I’m on the other side of the room. If he leaves, he will point his finger at me and say, “You stay here. Don’t follow me.” He wears only red shirts turned inside out so that the seams and tags do not irritate his skin. He will sit quietly, wrapped in the frayed baby blanket he calls “friend,” and stare out the window for hours.

I know it’s the chaos in his mind that makes him avoid people, or any sensory input. I’m grateful for those times when his mind is calm, and he can risk a short dip in the pool of sensation. Then he will muss my hair, wrestle with me, chase me around the house, and hug me tight. When he comes to visit, he jumps from the car, runs across the lawn, and leaps into my arms yelling, “Papaw, you found me!” He is a constant reminder that, in this life, there is nothing so wonderful as to be found.

Gary King
Roanoke, Virginia

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