Touch

I don't mind admitting that it's been a very long time since I've had a significant romantic relationship. Sure, I've dated guys for three, maybe four months, but nothing compelling has ever developed. And while I could easily ponder the reasons for this lack of noteworthy relationship over the past, oh, twelve years, that wasn't what sent me to my blog page this evening. It was touch … or, more specifically, the lack of it … the lack of the simple sensation of skin on skin. Fingertips, arms, toes, lips, heads on shoulders, cheeks on chests, leaning, grazing, caressing.

It's all too easy for me to complain about the ways I suffer from lack of sex, and I have, believe me (and just for the record, no sex is infinitely more tolerable than bad sex). But, tonight my mind was recalling how the simple trailing of a finger inside the palm of my hand would easily and quickly flood my brain with endorphins and how a simple shoulder to shoulder lean could relax my body from head to toe.

It just feels good to touch, and be touched by, another human being.

I pet my cat, but it's not the same.