This summer, while sitting in a coffee shop in Montpelier, the most peculiar thing happened. A man touched my knee. It doesn’t sound that weird, I know, but I didn’t see it coming at all.
He wore a wedding ring and he chatted idly about his wife of eight years. He looked only at my face despite my low-cut summer dress, but he didn’t make excessive eye contact, either. In fact, he showed only minimal interest in my answers to his questions, but then, when he finished the sandwich he was eating, he brushed the crumbs from his fingers and his hands disappeared beneath the table. I was going on about my summer internship and his hand was engulfing my knee. He wasn’t leering at me or squeezing my leg. He was just resting his hand there, and I was so bewildered I just kept talking about my internship.
As scintillating as it is to engage with someone else on that glorious frontier of sexual tension, I felt totally unprepared in this instance. In my experience, there are usually signs that an innocuous conversation is going to turn into intimate physical contact. We go through all kinds of trouble to hide how we feel, especially if our feelings might be rejected, but at the same time we have to wager tiny indicators of our own feelings to see if we can get the other person to show their hand first. It would be great, and easier, if every time someone wanted to be close to you they came flying out of nowhere and snuggled you on the spot. Unfortunately, touching someone is the most obvious expression of the sentiment “I WANT TO TOUCH YOU,” and that sentiment is not always returned, so most people take it slower than the cross-Battell-Beach-tackle.
Do you ever look across a restaurant, see a couple on a date and feel like you know how the date is going? The signs you read in that couple from afar are notoriously difficult to read up close when you are one of the parties involved, but I think the trend of the signs becomes apparent fairly quickly. Smiling is good — grinning like a lovesick loon is better. Scooching closer is a good sign, while edging away from each other is obviously a bad sign.
Paying attention to what another person is paying attention to about you is also often a good indicator of interest: I tend to watch people’s hands too much when I am thinking about touching them, and folks who want to kiss each other usually seem to form a visual preoccupation with each other’s mouths … though I got a false positive with that one in the 12th grade when it turned out I just had a huge chunk of broccoli in my teeth. It is no fun to be awkwardly off-balance leaning forward with lips pursed, only to stumble through empty air.
Fear of that awkwardness and rejection is what I think motivates most of the silly games we play when it comes to showing people how we feel, which brings me back to the man in the coffee shop. I was so confused because he played absolutely no games — no intense glances, no leaning toward me over the table. He just grabbed my knee.
After a few flustered moments I said, “What is that for?”
He said, “Because I wanted to.”
Under many circumstances that might seem creepy, but for some reason he just seemed honest. He took his hand away and I thought, “Fair enough.” He skipped all of the complicated guessing games and bets on how I would respond to him. Things didn’t exactly go his way, but the interaction was so simple. He wasn’t embarrassed by his feelings or sharing them with me, even when I didn’t reciprocate — I wish that were less peculiar. We all have feelings. We might as well acknowledge that as part of our humanity.
So watch out. You might see me dashing across Proctor Terrace to hug you soon.
The L-Word - 9/16/10
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