A girl called GirlKisses at D-Land describes herself as a "touchwhore". I sat with my small Tare Panda Laptop at the coffeeshop this morning and thought about the word. I can remember writing long ago about being "skin starved"--- lonely for physical contact. But I suspect that--- as always ---it's more the idea than the thing itself that I was lonely for.

I watched a couple at another table this morning. She was maybe nineteen or twenty, in one of the little clingy sundresses half the girls there were wearing. He was older, maybe by ten years. It was obviously a Morning After, and they were very much a romantic couple. They drank iced coffees and smiled and touched one another with every bit of conversation--- small kisses, brushing hair away from ears and foreheads, hands laid on thighs. She was attractive and I did envy her boyfriend for having had her there in the morning. She'd have been lovely naked on soft fresh sheets at dawn.

I tried to remember Mornings After in my own life. It's been too long. It's like remembering books read in seminars back in grad school. But I watched the girl touching her lover there at an outside table and realised that it's the idea of "skin starved" that means something to me. I'm uncomfortable with actual touches.

Having a lovely girl show me physical affection at a coffeeshop table--- I like the idea, like the idea of public proof of my value. And I think I do like the thought of a girl kicking off a flip-flop or ballet flat and gliding a bare foot or bare ankle along my leg under the table. But in general, I dislike being touched. Holding hands is fine. Holding hands is a romantic thing. But a girl running her hands over my body or my face--- that does make me uncomfortable. That makes me feel vur' uncomfortable indeed. I feel like I'm being searched, like she'll find something untoward. Any physical examination is too much of a risk that a girl will find something wrong--- that she'll find me lacking in endowment, or not up to physical standards. Touch leads to judgment. Touch is too much of a risk for me ever to be comfortable.

The same D-Land girl wrote this morning about being naked on her apartment balcony at 0300 on a hot SoCal night. She wrote about looking at apartment windows across the street and wondering if anyone was looking back. That's a "Red Shoe Diaries" kind of moment. I hope that she had a cigarette there on the balcony. Standing naked on a balcony in a hot summer night requires a cigarette--- any "Red Shoes" episode would work that way.

Watching a "Red Shoes" DVD last night, watching "Art of Loneliness" and "Swimming Naked", it did occur to me that I could never do one thing the male characters habitually do. Male leads pull off their shirts and stand bare-chested for the kisses of the female lead. I don't wear pullover shirts. Not polo shirts, not pullover sweaters. Only button-front shirts. Call that a legacy of being a heavy child. And I never wear a shirt next to the skin. Not ever. I insist that girls in my life stay panty-free and bra-less, but I always, always wear a black t-shirt under my buttondowns. (A memory... Lacey at sixteen, sitting topless in the front seat of my car, glaring at me: You can get me naked in about ten seconds, and I have to get through about three layers of black cotton... ) Buttondown, black t-shirt, black blazer--- I wear them as armour. I need the layers there as armour, as barriers between flesh and the world. Black blazer, oxford-cloth buttondown, black t-shirt--- it's the cloth that shapes and defines me, that protects me. I've never been comfortable in just flesh. I need uniforms and armour to feel not just safe, but to feel like I have any identity at all.