Give Me Some Skin

Skin is the human body’s largest organ and as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the most important. I’d like for mine to remain relatively good-looking as I get older but as long as it works well, that will be fine with me. After all, I know that none of the rest of my vital organs is all that pretty, so why should I worry about whether or not my skin is, too? That doesn’t mean that I don’t endeavor to take care of my skin, just like the rest of my organs. I use sunscreen and I moisturize and I try to be good to my skin, but I realize that time will wreak havoc with all my organs, including that one. Skin performs a lot of very useful functions, but by my reckoning, the sense of touch it the most important. It’s been proven, for instance that premature babies grow faster and sleep quieter when their skin is stimulated by touching. Sure, it’s important that my skin remain intact and keep my insides on the inside and the outside, outside, but if I had to choose a sense to do without I’m not sure which I’d pick but I do know that touch would be the last on my list.

I’m a touchy-feelie type of person; I always have been. Skin-to-skin contact is something that I really, REALLY enjoy. I also have never had much of a problem with showing my emotions. Because of how we were raised, all of us kids in my family are demonstrative sorts. Until I left home to join the Navy, I kissed both my parents good night every night (when I made it home and was sober, that is). But I recognized early on that most other people outside my immediate family weren’t nearly so comfortable with being touched, either physically or emotionally, and so I learned to refrain from doing so. It irked me, too, that my mother and my sister didn’t have to hold back from touching other people or telling them how they felt. (To be honest, I was jealous of a lot of things that my mother and my sister could do that I couldn’t.)

It’s still not very acceptable masculine behavior in our society to touch other people, with one exception, which I’ll get to in a just a moment. But for a man to touch another man today still carries a large element of homophobia and for a man to touch a woman carries an element of sexual harassment. So men still don’t touch other people, except for politicians. Politicians, both male and female, recognize that a touch personalizes an encounter and serves to ingrain it just a little more. Glad-handing actually does serve a purpose in the political arena. I’m not a politician (I can think of more enjoyable ways to prostitute myself) but I do touch people nowadays. It’s much too natural for me do so and for too long I denied myself the pleasure of touching others. And, of course, the fact that I casually touch people now serves to reinforce the image of me as a woman because everyone knows that “men don’t touch” – in America, anyway.

In my travels, I’ve found that many other societies around the world value the personal touch much more than Americans do. In many places, it’s not at all unusual for both men and women to walk together holding hands, not in a homosexual way, but simply for contact. In some places I’ve been, the crowds were so thick that holding hands was a self-defense measure, too; if you didn’t hold hands, you got lost. And we’ve all seen the hugs and kisses bestowed upon others in greeting, where Americans would simply shake hands. I think that hugging and kissing (especially kissing!) is actually a very good idea.

I also find that my son and my daughter have picked up their parents’ touching habits. There are nights that one of the kids gets in bed with us not because they're afraid but simply to be in direct skin-to-skin contact with other people. When our family is physically idle, which happens more often with the adults than the kids, we’re usually in contact. Because of my electronics background, I envision this as a kind of completed circuit, but one that conducts love and peace instead of electricity. And why not? Skin can conduct electricity, why not emotion, too? Maybe the phone company DID get it right: reach out and touch someone.