Laughing All The Way

The Discovery Channel

I’ve always hated people touching me. I know, for someone who really enjoys sex, that seems odd. I suppose I should qualify my statement, I’ve always hated certain people touching me.

My grams touches my face and I just want to scrub my face with bleach. I don’t know. I love my grams, but she touches my face and I just want to crawl out of my skin.

At clubs the boys would dance around me. I wasn’t an amazing dancer (well, actually, I am pretty good), rather, I needed the protection from elbows and back and other body parts that were flailing about in a coke induce arrhythmia.

On airplanes I try to snag a window seat so that I have something I claw onto when the person next to me moves their elbows (and more recently legs, GET ON YOUR OWN SIDE BITCH). Bruce was a little surprised to see me so messed up from the touching thing (that flight was the first one where I was driven to tears at the thought of being touched).

Public transportation clearly has no place in my life, except for the fact that I take it every day. Great.

But there is more. I have realized that I might not be okay. I was reading a blog by a father in a separation and heading to divorce. He wrote about how he talking to his daughter who sat on his lap while he mowed the lawn. “Next it was time for the big girl. She was with me the rest of the time which was for about an hour or more. We talked, as best we could, about what she did all day and things she wanted to tell me. I kissed her shoulder a lot and held her tight. We got to just enjoy each others company.” I read it and thought creepy. I didn’t think too much of it until yesterday on the T. There was a family heading home after the Red Sox game and the youngest child, a boy of about 7, kept leaning into his father and bouncing his head off his father’s stomach when the train lurched back and forth. A joke was made about his paunch being good for something and then the young boy TOOK A HANDFUL OF HIS FATHER’S STOMACH AND SQUEEZED. For his part, the father didn’t even flinch. Dude was totally at ease with someone messing around with his stomach fat. I shuddered at the thought.

And yet, now I wonder, is this me? I know I have friends who don’t like to have their face touched, but it seems to be a universal preference rather than in regards to a single person. And why would I get so messed up by my grams touching my face when we touch hands and link arms all the time? And why do I start having anxiety attacks on airplanes when someone’s elbow jostles me? Is it normal to want to claw off your own skin just because someone’s elbow touched your blanket-covered, jacket-covered, AND shirt-covered arm?

Also, I have noticed that the more chemically impaired I am the less affected by all this I am.

I am so messed up.

Yup. Right with you. LOVE the sex, hate people touching certain parts of me. HATE IT! I have to fly tonight and I am already dreading that SOMEONE will sit next to me. SOMEONE will invade my armrest. NOOooooooO!!!!!

word! the elbows punching into my side make me want to go insane. INSANE.

I always sit on the aisle on planes so I can lean out away from everyone.  I get claustrophobic sitting in the window seat b/c I can’t make a hasty exit if need be. 

I used to sit on my stepdad’s lap all the time when he mowed the lawn, but we weren’t a touchy-feely family.  sure, we hugged and kissed when we were saying hello or goodbye or at bedtime, but the idea of him just sitting there kissing my shoulders as a kid just creeps me out a tad.

I was “dating” (I put that in quotes b/c I was really just using him for good head) a guy back in ‘99 that thought it was really funny to smack me on the ass all the time.  I would constantly tell him to knock it off and he would ignore me.  one day I had had enough.  we were walking up a flight of stairs, me in front, and he smacked my ass again.  I spun around and punched him in the shoulder with every ounce of strength I had and said, “I fucking told you not to do that.  Do you understand now?”  he never did it again.  now, my husband does it and it doesn’t bother me at all.  it’s all about comfort levels.  I didn’t like the other dude touching my ass like that, but it doesn’t bother me when my husband does it in a playful manner.

I don’t know why I get that way about being touched, it’s just something about tertiary space sometimes. It’s usually okay with Bruce, although after that flight I did kind of growl at him and yelled when he kept trying to hug me.

I don’t find this weird at all. I loathe flying if I am in the middle of three seats—I lose it. I am also very specific about who can touch me, and where. But I am a touchy person (haha) with my friends—I will hug people and kiss them on the cheek, if it’s warranted.

About elbows: when I was in my late teens/early twenties and taking a commuter train into my city every morning I ‘woke up’ to the fact that male suburban commuters would regularly ‘fall asleep’ on the train and lean into me. A lot. When I finally realised what these “nice” men were up to (I busted one, wanking under his wall street journal) I developed the strategy of waiting til the moment when they leaned into me heavily—and then planting an elbow right in their kidney.

I’d always smile sweetly and say my arm had ‘slipped’ as they ‘woke up’ with a yelp of pain. To their credit, each and every one blushed deeply and apologised to me, even as they were still wincing. They’d be too embarassed to even meet my eyes as I apologised to them smiling—they and I knew what they’d been doing.

Love
O