Lube Me Up, Baby

Wednesday nights are my downfall. But only because of Thursday mornings. Wednesday nights are my 4-hour massage practical class which means getting home at 10:40 pm or so (having left the house at 6:20 am in the wee hours of the morn). Lately it also means arriving home at 10:40 pm completely wired and energized and pulsing with creative spirits, unable to sleep for hours--compounded even moreso by last night's top-of-the-lungs singing session to Jane's Addiction and Dinosaur Jr. from some old mixed tape I'd found on my car-ride home. All because of touch.

I find this fascinating.

As our massage practical instructor pointed out, touch is most certainly the first sense we develop after birth. Our sight is botchy and it takes us a while to work into using those eyes. Our hearing is indifferent--you can blast music around a newborn and they'll generally stay completely zen in its presence. They eat only to stay alive, so their sense of taste doesn't yet mean a thing--they just want boobie. And they could sit next to a flaming pile of shit for 3 hours and not bat an eyelash at the stench. But goddamn if they don't love that touch. Their little fingers will curl around your big fingers if you touch the palms of their hands. They cry often, and oftentimes all you need to do is pick them up and hold them to get them to stop.

Even as adults, we're suckers for touch. A hug. A handshake. A hand on your shoulder. A cuddle. A spooning. The touch exchanged in flirtation. A kiss. A fuck. The pleasure of all of these things is contingent upon touch.

So I love love love this part of the massage practical class. It feels so good to touch and be touched. Especially since I am a particularly tactile-loving person. I remember my teacher in high school psychology class telling us that certain people are more receptive to certain types of rewards for their good work--some are more receptive to an auditory congrats, some are more receptive to receiving a prize, etc. etc. and some are more receptive to touch--a pat on the shoulder in congratulations, for example. I am most definitely the latter.

I love to be touched; I love to extend the warmth of touch to other people. It don't rightfully matter who it is either--some people are squeamish when touched by a stranger, but I dig it (within reason, of course). I like the exchange of energies and the gap that is bridged with touch. I love hugs. I love the touch of flirtation.

So spending 2 hours once a week bridging that gap is so revitalizing to me. The actual massaging right now is inept and clumsy, lacking confidence and often incorrect (on my end and the end of whomever I'm partnered with), but I don't mind--it's nice to just lie there and jokingly banter back and forth with someone, making them smile, making them giggle, while they rest their hands on you and bridge that gap with their energy. And I like doing the same for them.

There is just some sort of essential connection that is made when you bridge that gap with skin. Maybe that's why sex is so overrated. It's strange because you open up to the other person like a flower, in a way that you wouldn't just through casual conversation. There's an intimacy and a sharing involved that is so lovely and essential to our well-being. Connections are forged in the time I've spent interacting with folks in this way, connections that wouldn't've been nurtured through any other means, i.e. conversation--it is inevitable, because touch DOES that.

So it's difficult winding down after those connections are made. It's difficult not to feel completely rejuvenated, even if the person did every massage technique absolutely incorrectly (and some of them really goddamn do--heh heh). It's difficult not to feel energy coursing through your veins.

This is why I'm here.

This is why I dig massage so.

The only bad thing that comes with this territory though is that since I'm such a very tactile person, hand-wise, I've always had a huge aversion to lotions and oils. I don't mind them on other parts of my body, but, in that sweet Helen-Keller-esque kinda way, the hands are so super-tactile that I can't bear to load them up with greasy shit which just masks their sense of touch.

And stupid me forgot about the fact that, duh, massage therapists use MASSAGE OIL. Gah. This is going to be my only downfall.