Can I Touch You Here?

Dancing. Out with on the dance floor, enjoying some cover band, some nondescript band. Wait - I can describe them. Fedoras on the men, Spandex on the women. Is that enough? More? They played a little Prince, they played a little MJ. (It's much more cool to call him MJ than by his given name. I think it lessens the sting of his adulthood to our party going ears.) I moved to the dance floor with a friend who dances to her own beat even as the music pounds around her. I'm often laughing when we go out together because she is so profoundly free. I get caught up in admiration mingled with a teensy tug of envy and I find myself smiling at her effortless ease in simply being Janet.

So I was dancing in the space that is Janet and I felt a hand on my waist. Not such an unusual thing, to be asked to dance. I turned to the man and we moved to a spot on the floor and then it happened. "Can I touch you here?" His hand was still on my waist. Well, we were dancing. It seemed benign.

"Sure." It was a nice evening. I'd had a cocktail. The music was...there was music if not wonderful music.

His hand moved up my ribs. "Can I touch you here?" Whoa! His hand kept going now it was, where? "Can I touch you here?" He had his hand under my arm. Now I'm not talking about around my back, guiding me blissfully around the floor by cupping my scapula in some sort of Fred Astaire move. No, this guy was sticking his fingers into my armpit. He was performing some sort of axillary massage.

How many ways can my eyes say no? My mouth said it once. I removed his hand from my 'here' and I returned to my table. Fellas, that's not a flirt, that's a deal breaker. If the club had a shower, I'd have been there.

The closest I've come to that sort of thing was the man who asked me, in front of a couple of male friends, if he could "rub this lotion on your feet". He had produced a large bottle of lotion and was holding it in front of him. This took place at a singles mixer about 5 years ago. Paul, remember that? Yeah, same suave moves.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how we let people touch us, or not.

I had dinner with my sister last weekend and she asked me something that set off a chain of thoughts that I've wanted to put down in words. She asked me why our Dad kept us separate when he visited Houston. I told her it may have been because he wanted each of us to have special time with him. That's not entirely true. Part of it was me.

It took a very long time for me to establish trust with my father, to be able to talk to him about who I was dating. At first he was hesitant to accept that sometimes I dated outside of my race and we had some heated conversations around that. I was hypersensitive for a very long time and I worried that at any time I might speak out in defense of a relationship I was in, causing stress and unhappiness during a holiday meal or a family reunion. I isolated myself from my Texas family, only seeing them on rare occasions and I know this caused them and Dad to think that I didn't want to see them. I wasn't letting them touch me.

Eventually I couldn't deal with not having my father involved in one of the most important aspects of my life. I introduced him to someone I cared for and they got to know each other. Dad showed me a part of himself I didn't expect to see. He wanted me to be happy above all else. He was incredibly supportive of me and I will always cherish the time we spent together.

This brings me to today. The circumstances around my father's death were so stunning and shaking to my family that my sister and I are tenuously developing a relationship that we've not had over many years. I know Dad would be thrilled with this outcome.

I've been compelled to enforce some of my personal boundaries over the last few months as I've recovered from the loss of my father. At the same time, I've opened up and trusted in ways I didn't even imagine before the events of last year. I'm grateful to him for the years of Sunday morning talks on the phone.

So the answer is, maybe.


©Michelle Scofield, Feb. 20, 2011 All Rights Reserved