Over a year ago, I penned this feature for a supposed launch of an online magazine. Inspired by my growing inner feeling then that bachelorhood is a rather wondrous way of celebrating singlehood than pressing, here's a throwback to a throwback to the persistent ghost of loneliness a.k.a. singlehood, fathomed below as a life's boon than bane:
INTIMACY
Ssssshhhhh...
You want to get intimate with me?
Can I tell you a secret?
If you, with your invulnerable heart and incorruptible disposition, can promise me not to spread this like fire but akin to a kindled candle only the 2 of us can keep it burning, then here it is:
Yes, I hug my unan. I kiss my unan. I make love to my unan. Yes, we have been married for 27 years now. And for the record, we only have a love-love relationship. Leave the love-hate moments to the quasi-pillows called humans.
I call that perfect intimacy. She, my unan, knows not just who I am but what I can become. She crumples to a smile when my face creases to a frown. She cushions my dog-tired head and insists on cushioning my traffic-worn feet as well. She is sensitive to my woes but more importantly to my tears. She listens to my monologue and her listening silence alone makes it a dialogue. She babies me when adulthood is menacing crises. She balances my emotions. She is intimate with me.
Don't get her wrong. She is not necessarily passive. In fact, she'd hug me back knowing she's armless (and prefixes it with “h” when it's becoming too tight she'd assure me it's harmless), stands as an absorbent diary, and only wages fights when I declare a “pillow fight!” She is so soft she pushes my buttons on the right places and avoids so at the stormiest times. We are intimate. That is intimacy – “when she knows the right buttons to push and knows even better when not to push them,” as my best friend once put it.
It is not carnal.
It is not closeness.
It is not “you and I.”
It is not a synonym for shared privacy.
It shouldn't be a euphemism for sex.
It is detail.
It is buttons.
It is a “pillow.”
PS: I cannot even reversibly call them quasi-humans. That is a shameless insult to them. Because in our 27-year intimacy, no human and only she had stood and understood every trickle of my drool as juice of my craving dreams, a mouth agape with awe, and at the end or rather beginning of a new day, is never tempted to brand it Eeew-timacy.
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