Touch me

# 10. In the Flesh
Essays on a Life of P.E.

by shadow

Touch is the most basic of human needs. We all know what the studies say about babies who thrive or fail- that skin to skin human contact is not just important, but vital for the human condition.
Knowing that, i sometimes feel that we humans tend to put touch into the "sex" box in our heads and make it a priority only when we are aroused, only when we are deliberately focused.

Some of us identify heavily as contact laden beings. i need to be TOUCHED, to feel skin on skin, to have my partner reach out to me. i never really knew this before entering the public scene, only that i craved something that was missing.

i remember well the first moments that my Master and i met, and the need to have Him touch me. We spent about 2 hours in the company of others before we left to go talk, bond, sexually swim in each other's presence alone in a parking lot. The first thing He mentioned that became a steel beam between us was the need to have meat- and from that moment forward, that was what He has called me. The *second* thing we both hooked on was touch. i told Him i liked that idea of always being in the "awareness field" through touch, and He told me that He needed to always have some contact such as a hand on me. He needed to not just know He had control, but to feel a constant feedback to that control under His power through touch.
From that moment forward, i felt incomplete without His hand on me as i drive through the days or sleep without Him. He feels that emptyness as well when there is no undercurrent feedback from my skin to his.

i sit and watch people at public events and notice the subtle changes in them when they make contact with a partner and when they don't. Their body language is so subtle that they do not often even realize when they have changed postions and rested against their other half. Their arms relax more when a partner reaches out and touches them, or comes from behind to "lean" in them and join a converstaion. i see more smiles, and less guarded interactions when the person has made a skin bond with another.

We see that in the reverse as well- hostile angry people tend to jerk away bodily from those who touch them without permission, from strangers who brush too close, and most especially from those they USED to have some better relationship with that has now soured. Touch, for them, is as painful as a 1,000 watts of power racing unstabilized across the sky. It's touch burns.

That kind or reaction reminds us that the intimacy of our skin is deeper and more important in our hiearchy of protected space than someone seeing us naked, or hearing our cries of orgasm, or tasting our blood and sweat and tears. It is the touching that we value above all else.

For many, the *deliberateness* of the touch is an intimacy as well. Remember when you were a child and one of your siblings or friends "touched you"? That repeated, deliberate poking, the sly, "here my finger comes again to your arm" game that inevitably ended with screams of "He's Touching me!". That too comes into play when evaluating what we crave.

A lover's accidental touch that is *unnoticed* by them is often slightly dissapointing. A strangers *deliberate* brush against the skin is an extreme violation akin to rape. Intentions change touch for us, and the friendly hug that is asked for and welcomed by and leather family member is quite different from the friendly hug proffered by a stranger.

Craving touch is what humans are programmed for. Removing that from the equation makes us wither and fade. Love without touch is a glass half empty. Life without touch is a lie.

Copyright Strong Eagle's shadow, July 21, 2007
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