SPRING SWAN SONG: INTIMACY 06.17.2013

Intimacy is learning the middle name of your favorite crush in high school. Even though he wouldn’t cheat on his depressed girlfriend to be with you, he chose to share his much despised middle name late at night while listening to Liz Phair.

Intimacy is craning your neck from the exam table at the doctor’s office, to see if the doctor was coming back from testing your pee sample, and not seeing his flesh, but seeing the silhouette of his face in the cheesy painting of the southwestern sunset. You catch him reaching his nose down to the pee cup and sniffing it. You see his face resurface with his nose rising above a big cotton candy pink cloud.

Intimacy is noticing the blue elastic band around a stranger's wrist with her springy hairs tangled up in it. You watch them twirl through the air as she gesticulates in front of a man she's on a first date with. You are fixated on how much hair she's lost to the blue elastic band and you wonder if he notices too.

Intimacy is staying until the end of the party, to have a real connection with the host while washing dishes, which is what you were looking for the whole night in everyone else, but you were just everyone else. In the end, it’s just the two of you.

Intimacy is watching a teenage girl on a train furiously pick at and slough off her blue nail polish onto her lap, and then feeling her search your eyes inside of your sunglasses, looking for a connection. She's desperate for approval from a stranger. You smile and give it to her.

Intimacy is getting so close to a beet in attempt to take a picture of it, that the tip of your nose, the corner of your eyebrow, and a bit of your top lip stain purple.

Intimacy is clipping your toe nails over the toilet with the bathroom door open so both of you can hear every line of the movie.

Intimacy is letting him kneel down at the bottom of your teeny shower to scrub the callouses off the bottom of your rugged feet with a pumice stone, cause you’re sick of feeling like your feet are manlier than his, and though he doesn’t judge, he wants to do what he can to help you feel better about yourself.


Intimacy is aiming to hug everyone so tightly that you can feel the flesh and fat melt away. You hug like you’re two skeletons unencumbered by age or narrative. Just the simplest parts clutching at the simplest parts.

Intimacy is vulnerability illuminated.

Intimacy is at a young age teaching your friends how to pleasure themselves because you wanted them to experience the amazing sensation you discovered and were over the moon about.


Intimacy is letting the tape roll for a few extra minutes at the end of an interview when they’ve answered all of your questions, allowing the deeper little bubbles and gurgles to come to the surface. Allowing their breath to imprint the recording.


Intimacy is being loose enough to surprise yourself.

Intimacy is choosing not to give a speech at your dad’s funeral. Instead, you played a cassette tape of him singing an eery and beautiful version of ‘Don’t Let it Bring You Down’ making those that simply thought he was a drunk, weep in front of you, and then allowing yourself to weep in front of them. Your uncle had tears caught in his red beard and momentarily hid his face, and the guy who was just jealous of his voice turned around and paced.

Intimacy is staring at someone who just stared death in the face and hearing how scary and painful it was, and though they are usually very positive, they are transparent about not being sure if they will be able to pull through. You look at them and you savor the light still in their eyes and you tell yourself to remember this moment under these awful florescent lights around this round gray kitchen table. 

Intimacy is learning that the people that you thought had it all figured out... don’t.

Intimacy is sharing your scraps and cracks.

Intimacy is sharing an idea that you think is potentially really stupid with someone you really admire.

Intimacy is closing your eyes and taking five deep breaths with a friend in the middle of a city street.

Intimacy is curiosity engaged and awareness directed.
 
Intimacy is going to a friend’s house two days after their home birth and helping to clean up and hold their new teeny heap of life.

Intimacy is discovering what makes a person feel the most alive and then contributing to that aliveness.

Intimacy is watching a parent suffer, and witnessing the moment that they become aware that you see how deep their suffering is.

Intimacy is being aware that someone else is becoming aware of some part of them self for the first time in front of you.