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This weekend I got to see my mommy. Patch & I met her & Jim at the Santa Monica Craft Show. We were slinky-ing along, one person getting ahead of the group, another lagging behind. At one point I went to where my mom was, wrapped my arm around her waist and leaned over to kiss her shoulder. Just as my lips were touching her shoulder, my brain said “WTF?” my stomach quailed, suddenly I was very self-conscious and the moment became awkward. My mother for her part didn’t notice or react as if this was a strange thing.
Why did I react this way? Because, I don’t act like that with my mom; I do not show my mother physical affection. She taught me touch was bad. Not, she explained to me what bad touch is (although she did do that), but she taught me that physical contact is in-appropriate. She didn’t ever say to me, “people shouldn’t touch”. It was just the undertone throughout my life, which is really weird when you hear her lament that I was not a cuddly child.
I remember my mother teaching me that kissing on the lips was wrong. Her argument was that germs were easily passed that way. But she trained me solidly, not to kiss like my father’s family; on the lips.
Like most children, I used to have tickle fights with my father. He’d make a buzzing sound like a bee and then poke me with an index finger. Then he’d intensify the sound and poke me with his other index finger. This would go on until A) I fell off the couch (hurting myself) trying to escape or B) my flailing around knocked his glasses into his face (hurting him). When I was 10 (5th grade), my mother put an end to it. I don’t remember now if she lectured him in front of me, or lectured each of us in turn; but I definitely got the “You’re too old for that sort of behavior”. I could never quite fathom why, but I understood that it was something shameful. Soon after that any physical interaction with my father got automatically scanned in my brain for “wrongness”. Which means I feel that awkward quail, even now, if my father hugs me a beat longer than usual.
During my college days, I related a story to my mom that included the fact I was giving or receiving a massage and my mother made disapproving noises. She told me that massages were an intimate thing and should really only happen between two people who are married.
In thinking about it now, I never realized how much of my life was coded with the message “people of the opposite sex shouldn’t touch”, which in my brain morphed to “don’t touch”. I knew that my life had been saturated with a distrust of men, but I had always attributed that to my parents failing marriage.
I realize that this is one of the things I found so freeing about Faire. There weren’t the same constructs as in regular society, people were physically affectionate and genuinely warm. There was nothing wrong with having your arm around someone’s waist or leaning on them, kissing them on the top of the head. Human contact was not just the norm, but encouraged.
I live this way with my friends now. I greet them with hugs and kisses. I snuggle up to people. I sit in men and women’s laps and while sometime there’s a sexual undertone to these interactions, mostly there isn’t. I don’t have to guard against it. I don’t have to check the appropriateness of the touch. I now trust that A) I *know* when something crosses the line and B) if I tell someone they’re crossing the line, they’ll back off.
I find that I am not angry, as much as saddened by all of this. While I recognize that this is going on, I don’t know how I can overcome thes layer of awkwardness that prevails in physical interaction with my family. Maybe someday it will be normal for me to casually hug my dad or my mom, but I’m sorry it’s already taken 30 years for me to reach this point.
Why did I react this way? Because, I don’t act like that with my mom; I do not show my mother physical affection. She taught me touch was bad. Not, she explained to me what bad touch is (although she did do that), but she taught me that physical contact is in-appropriate. She didn’t ever say to me, “people shouldn’t touch”. It was just the undertone throughout my life, which is really weird when you hear her lament that I was not a cuddly child.
I remember my mother teaching me that kissing on the lips was wrong. Her argument was that germs were easily passed that way. But she trained me solidly, not to kiss like my father’s family; on the lips.
Like most children, I used to have tickle fights with my father. He’d make a buzzing sound like a bee and then poke me with an index finger. Then he’d intensify the sound and poke me with his other index finger. This would go on until A) I fell off the couch (hurting myself) trying to escape or B) my flailing around knocked his glasses into his face (hurting him). When I was 10 (5th grade), my mother put an end to it. I don’t remember now if she lectured him in front of me, or lectured each of us in turn; but I definitely got the “You’re too old for that sort of behavior”. I could never quite fathom why, but I understood that it was something shameful. Soon after that any physical interaction with my father got automatically scanned in my brain for “wrongness”. Which means I feel that awkward quail, even now, if my father hugs me a beat longer than usual.
During my college days, I related a story to my mom that included the fact I was giving or receiving a massage and my mother made disapproving noises. She told me that massages were an intimate thing and should really only happen between two people who are married.
In thinking about it now, I never realized how much of my life was coded with the message “people of the opposite sex shouldn’t touch”, which in my brain morphed to “don’t touch”. I knew that my life had been saturated with a distrust of men, but I had always attributed that to my parents failing marriage.
I realize that this is one of the things I found so freeing about Faire. There weren’t the same constructs as in regular society, people were physically affectionate and genuinely warm. There was nothing wrong with having your arm around someone’s waist or leaning on them, kissing them on the top of the head. Human contact was not just the norm, but encouraged.
I live this way with my friends now. I greet them with hugs and kisses. I snuggle up to people. I sit in men and women’s laps and while sometime there’s a sexual undertone to these interactions, mostly there isn’t. I don’t have to guard against it. I don’t have to check the appropriateness of the touch. I now trust that A) I *know* when something crosses the line and B) if I tell someone they’re crossing the line, they’ll back off.
I find that I am not angry, as much as saddened by all of this. While I recognize that this is going on, I don’t know how I can overcome thes layer of awkwardness that prevails in physical interaction with my family. Maybe someday it will be normal for me to casually hug my dad or my mom, but I’m sorry it’s already taken 30 years for me to reach this point.
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