Oh my god yes!! (Besides the first one who verbally assaulted me).
I once got a tattoo of dogwood from this incredibly talented Russian woman in Berlin. I think from the moment I sat in the chair I was so undeniably enamored with her and the way she calmly and permanently scarred my skin into a beautiful bouquet of dogwood.
The funny thing is, my friend had joined the appointment, but went for a walk while I got tattooed, leaving his phone behind to charge. Well, my tattoo was finished so quickly that the artist needed to close the studio… before my friend was back. Here I was in a foreign large city, with no way of getting in touch with my German friend, freshly scarred.
I told the tattoo artist what was happening and she said ”oh ok! Well we can go walking together and look for him!“ so her and I walked all around Berlin at dusk for close to an hour, talking and laughing so much I think we almost forgot my friend was gone. I did end up finding my friend, and she went back to her life, but that was a wholesome tattoo moment I’ll never forget!
I’m in the middle of a separation from my husband / partner of 20 years. During the last 18 months of us unwinding our romantic relationship (and moving toward another new, nebulous one), there has been no physical intimacy between us.
But we’re co-parenting and still often in the same house, and the other day, my brother and his wife and kids came over. And we (my ex- and I) hosted in “our” kitchen and home — the way we’ve done a thousand times — and I was struck by the intimacies of that.
Of automatically knowing what duties are mine and which are his. Of knowing exactly how much space to give each other when we’re maneuvering around the kitchen. Of anticipating when I need to bring the cheese for the burgers out to the grill. Of the wordless glance, and slight nod we give each other when it’s time to call everyone to the table.
As I mourn (and also celebrate) this transition, this closure … I wonder which of our intimacies will remain. And though I’m sure I’ll fall in love again, I wonder if I’ll ever host people in any home with any person in this same way.
I am lovingly separated from my 25 year marriage partner. We are still completely legally entwined and in our 70’s don’t find the need to divorce as there is no real benefit and several important legal drawbacks. It has been 3 years and I still get little pangs of nostalgia for some of the everyday intimacies that relationship had, similar to those you so nicely stated. Not the big physical ones, the tiny concordances that you grow to share over time. Luckily we now love each other in new ways and it is a solid goodness in our lives that we preserve some of our old rituals. Good luck redefining your relationship with new, hopefully better, feelings about each other. It is worth it. “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”
While coming home from Iceland, i sat next to a woman who found out as we were boarding that her mother, who she was on her way to see, had passed away. As she started to tear up I asked if she was OK, and she told me. As we took off, I asked her what her mom was like, and she softened and started sharing stories. We talked the whole flight and still occasionally exchange messages.
When I went home one weekend in college, one of our cats went missing and my mom and I both had a bad feeling about it. We drove up the road looking for him and saw a furry shape laying motionless in the middle of the lane. I couldn’t bear to look closely at it so my mom took a picture and we confirmed it was him based on the fur pattern of his chest. She went back to retrieve his body off the road when a large gold truck pulled over behind us. A man with a classic car mechanic jumpsuit - monogrammed with the name Mike - got out of the truck. I heard him ask my mom “Ma’am, would you like me to do that for you?” And I watched in the rear view mirror as my mom nodded tearfully and he gently scooped our cat’s body off the road into a shoebox. He appeared almost out of nowhere and somehow knew we were stuck in that moment of realization and grief. We were so grateful to him for doing that first awful, painful task.
I too am in a kind of platonic love with my contractor. Yesterday he showed me how to create an extension jam for my windows. Maybe he likes me because I’m an on-time-paying client with a sense of humor. Maybe he feels bad for me, because I’m divorced and trying to finish renovating this big old crappy house by myself. But he patiently showed me on a Friday evening how to safely use all his saws and drills, explained the math to me, and then told me to text him with questions. I swore for my whole life I didn’t need a man. But turns out it’s extremely helpful to have one around who’s willing to rescue you from your stubborn self.
I don’t have a strange intimacy story to share at the moment but just need to say this essay, and nearly every comment, have left me weeping. My heart has felt so tender lately and this was medicine. It’s more than the random acts of kindness from a stranger that my body can hunger for … Thank you for this.
Kneeling next to a birth tub as a baby is roared incrementally closer to earth. Locking eyes with the partner in the moment the wild, fierce power and magic of the person they love washes over them. Their shock and awe, opening them, changing them. It tingles with intensity and a slight discomfort as if witness to a space too intimate for my presence. Somehow that second of awareness seems just as sacred as the moment a new voice rings into the room
On a flight home after my Dad died and after my sister-in-law’s baby shower for the first grandson, I was in a state of shock. A man and his daughter sat next to me and half way through the flight he spilled his cranberry vodka with lots of ice right into is lap, and gasped from the cold. I chuckled. This sparked a conversation and a shared laugh about the icy shorts he had to now sit in for the rest of the flight. As we were approaching the airport the plane almost touched down then took right back off due to weather. My stomach was in my butt and all of the intensity of the previous week was about to come up. His daughter and him put their hands out and held my hand until we circled the airport and came to safe landing. So much grief and so much gratitude for those who hold space and provide intimacy just when we need it most.
There is a strange kind of intimacy I have with the neighbor kid. He is tough and sweet and tries very seriously to understand what sort of kindness is being asked of him in the midst of his rumbling energy. He stops by in the afternoons, and for an hour or so a day, I become his mother: explaining why we don’t name call, asking after his missing shoe, offering him crayons and snacks alongside my own children. Then we say goodbye, and he struts home to his own beautiful mother—so different from me, and all his own—who will make him dinner, and put him to bed, and wonder about his missing shoe as she cuddles him to sleep in the dark.
I cannot stop thinking of this essay since I finished it last night (catching up on my Substacks!). I think in all my years of Nursing, I’ve had so many strange and intimate interactions with patients I’m not sure I could pick one. The one that comes to mind is when I was giving an old woman in her 90’s a bed bath at 2am in the ICU (we did baths on night shift if our patients were stable). She started crying because she said she hadn’t been touched in over 30 years. I slowed down and made sure the washcloths were extra warm and the soap extra sudsy. We talked quietly about her life. I washed and braided her hair and slathered her dry, wrinkled skin in thick lotion and tucked her in with blankets from the blanket warmer. She fell asleep and after I gave report to the oncoming shift, I went in to check on her. She opened her eyes and they were wet with tears. She said thank you, and I cried the whole way home down the 101. I never saw her again. It was the most intimate and sad and holy thing I think I’ve ever done.
After I gave birth the second time, I lost a not unalarming amount of blood. The first time I got up to go to the bathroom, my nurse and midwife came along either side of me to assist me as I got down from the bed and hobbled across the room. I sat down on the toilet and promptly passed out.
When I came to, I was literally laid out like a baby across the nurse’s lap there on the floor. She had one arm under my head - like you’d hold a newborn- the other under my knees, holding me above the cold floor tiles.
It was one of my most vulnerable moments - not only was I naked from the waist down, but I was once again bleeding and had totally lost consciousness.
But I still remember what it felt like to wake up in her arms and to feel held like that in such a low moment. I still remember thinking that this is what rescue feels like.
Oh Joy I loved this one so much. So rich. I’m writing a movie right now about what I guess is strange intimacy (love these words). A young woman and her Coach. And how when a Coach is fixing something they touch the body. The hips, a knee into your knee to get you to bend properly, massaging a cramped calf… I went on a dolphin diving trip once where I spent the entire time seasick. But at the end of the trip when I said goodbye to one of the guides he reached out and rubbed my earlobe and it was the oddest most intimate thing. Nothing had happened between us but in a way he saw what I was going through. I’m going to spend some time with this question. This essay made me feel so full.
This was evocative and devastating—yet oddly sensual. I think death creates its own form of intimacy, even when the death is that of a possum.
I feel strangely intimate with a friend of a friend after the two of us coordinated the end-of-life care of our mutual friend. I don't really know anything about the woman, and yet I feel bonded to her.
The woman who grabbed my hand when the plane seemed to drop a thousand feet while we were flying over the Indian Ocean and didn't immediately let go after we steadied out.
Any time I exchange eye contact with a stranger when we catch each other witnessing another human in the world doing something we both find humor in.
The flight attendant who placed her hand on my shoulder and brought me tissues and asked if I needed anything every time she walked by my seat, where I sat weeping as I left one life due to heartbreak and didn't know what life it was I was going toward.
Someone told me they feel wild unexpected intimacy with every tattoo artist who gives them a tattoo and god, I love that. Tell me yours.
Oh my god yes!! (Besides the first one who verbally assaulted me).
I once got a tattoo of dogwood from this incredibly talented Russian woman in Berlin. I think from the moment I sat in the chair I was so undeniably enamored with her and the way she calmly and permanently scarred my skin into a beautiful bouquet of dogwood.
The funny thing is, my friend had joined the appointment, but went for a walk while I got tattooed, leaving his phone behind to charge. Well, my tattoo was finished so quickly that the artist needed to close the studio… before my friend was back. Here I was in a foreign large city, with no way of getting in touch with my German friend, freshly scarred.
I told the tattoo artist what was happening and she said ”oh ok! Well we can go walking together and look for him!“ so her and I walked all around Berlin at dusk for close to an hour, talking and laughing so much I think we almost forgot my friend was gone. I did end up finding my friend, and she went back to her life, but that was a wholesome tattoo moment I’ll never forget!
Massage therapists and acupuncturists, really healers of any kind.
Yes! Same!
I’m in the middle of a separation from my husband / partner of 20 years. During the last 18 months of us unwinding our romantic relationship (and moving toward another new, nebulous one), there has been no physical intimacy between us.
But we’re co-parenting and still often in the same house, and the other day, my brother and his wife and kids came over. And we (my ex- and I) hosted in “our” kitchen and home — the way we’ve done a thousand times — and I was struck by the intimacies of that.
Of automatically knowing what duties are mine and which are his. Of knowing exactly how much space to give each other when we’re maneuvering around the kitchen. Of anticipating when I need to bring the cheese for the burgers out to the grill. Of the wordless glance, and slight nod we give each other when it’s time to call everyone to the table.
As I mourn (and also celebrate) this transition, this closure … I wonder which of our intimacies will remain. And though I’m sure I’ll fall in love again, I wonder if I’ll ever host people in any home with any person in this same way.
The ache of this is exquisite.
Agree! Just beautiful.
I am lovingly separated from my 25 year marriage partner. We are still completely legally entwined and in our 70’s don’t find the need to divorce as there is no real benefit and several important legal drawbacks. It has been 3 years and I still get little pangs of nostalgia for some of the everyday intimacies that relationship had, similar to those you so nicely stated. Not the big physical ones, the tiny concordances that you grow to share over time. Luckily we now love each other in new ways and it is a solid goodness in our lives that we preserve some of our old rituals. Good luck redefining your relationship with new, hopefully better, feelings about each other. It is worth it. “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”
While coming home from Iceland, i sat next to a woman who found out as we were boarding that her mother, who she was on her way to see, had passed away. As she started to tear up I asked if she was OK, and she told me. As we took off, I asked her what her mom was like, and she softened and started sharing stories. We talked the whole flight and still occasionally exchange messages.
When I went home one weekend in college, one of our cats went missing and my mom and I both had a bad feeling about it. We drove up the road looking for him and saw a furry shape laying motionless in the middle of the lane. I couldn’t bear to look closely at it so my mom took a picture and we confirmed it was him based on the fur pattern of his chest. She went back to retrieve his body off the road when a large gold truck pulled over behind us. A man with a classic car mechanic jumpsuit - monogrammed with the name Mike - got out of the truck. I heard him ask my mom “Ma’am, would you like me to do that for you?” And I watched in the rear view mirror as my mom nodded tearfully and he gently scooped our cat’s body off the road into a shoebox. He appeared almost out of nowhere and somehow knew we were stuck in that moment of realization and grief. We were so grateful to him for doing that first awful, painful task.
I too am in a kind of platonic love with my contractor. Yesterday he showed me how to create an extension jam for my windows. Maybe he likes me because I’m an on-time-paying client with a sense of humor. Maybe he feels bad for me, because I’m divorced and trying to finish renovating this big old crappy house by myself. But he patiently showed me on a Friday evening how to safely use all his saws and drills, explained the math to me, and then told me to text him with questions. I swore for my whole life I didn’t need a man. But turns out it’s extremely helpful to have one around who’s willing to rescue you from your stubborn self.
I don’t have a strange intimacy story to share at the moment but just need to say this essay, and nearly every comment, have left me weeping. My heart has felt so tender lately and this was medicine. It’s more than the random acts of kindness from a stranger that my body can hunger for … Thank you for this.
Kneeling next to a birth tub as a baby is roared incrementally closer to earth. Locking eyes with the partner in the moment the wild, fierce power and magic of the person they love washes over them. Their shock and awe, opening them, changing them. It tingles with intensity and a slight discomfort as if witness to a space too intimate for my presence. Somehow that second of awareness seems just as sacred as the moment a new voice rings into the room
On a flight home after my Dad died and after my sister-in-law’s baby shower for the first grandson, I was in a state of shock. A man and his daughter sat next to me and half way through the flight he spilled his cranberry vodka with lots of ice right into is lap, and gasped from the cold. I chuckled. This sparked a conversation and a shared laugh about the icy shorts he had to now sit in for the rest of the flight. As we were approaching the airport the plane almost touched down then took right back off due to weather. My stomach was in my butt and all of the intensity of the previous week was about to come up. His daughter and him put their hands out and held my hand until we circled the airport and came to safe landing. So much grief and so much gratitude for those who hold space and provide intimacy just when we need it most.
There is a strange kind of intimacy I have with the neighbor kid. He is tough and sweet and tries very seriously to understand what sort of kindness is being asked of him in the midst of his rumbling energy. He stops by in the afternoons, and for an hour or so a day, I become his mother: explaining why we don’t name call, asking after his missing shoe, offering him crayons and snacks alongside my own children. Then we say goodbye, and he struts home to his own beautiful mother—so different from me, and all his own—who will make him dinner, and put him to bed, and wonder about his missing shoe as she cuddles him to sleep in the dark.
I cannot stop thinking of this essay since I finished it last night (catching up on my Substacks!). I think in all my years of Nursing, I’ve had so many strange and intimate interactions with patients I’m not sure I could pick one. The one that comes to mind is when I was giving an old woman in her 90’s a bed bath at 2am in the ICU (we did baths on night shift if our patients were stable). She started crying because she said she hadn’t been touched in over 30 years. I slowed down and made sure the washcloths were extra warm and the soap extra sudsy. We talked quietly about her life. I washed and braided her hair and slathered her dry, wrinkled skin in thick lotion and tucked her in with blankets from the blanket warmer. She fell asleep and after I gave report to the oncoming shift, I went in to check on her. She opened her eyes and they were wet with tears. She said thank you, and I cried the whole way home down the 101. I never saw her again. It was the most intimate and sad and holy thing I think I’ve ever done.
After I gave birth the second time, I lost a not unalarming amount of blood. The first time I got up to go to the bathroom, my nurse and midwife came along either side of me to assist me as I got down from the bed and hobbled across the room. I sat down on the toilet and promptly passed out.
When I came to, I was literally laid out like a baby across the nurse’s lap there on the floor. She had one arm under my head - like you’d hold a newborn- the other under my knees, holding me above the cold floor tiles.
It was one of my most vulnerable moments - not only was I naked from the waist down, but I was once again bleeding and had totally lost consciousness.
But I still remember what it felt like to wake up in her arms and to feel held like that in such a low moment. I still remember thinking that this is what rescue feels like.
Oh Joy I loved this one so much. So rich. I’m writing a movie right now about what I guess is strange intimacy (love these words). A young woman and her Coach. And how when a Coach is fixing something they touch the body. The hips, a knee into your knee to get you to bend properly, massaging a cramped calf… I went on a dolphin diving trip once where I spent the entire time seasick. But at the end of the trip when I said goodbye to one of the guides he reached out and rubbed my earlobe and it was the oddest most intimate thing. Nothing had happened between us but in a way he saw what I was going through. I’m going to spend some time with this question. This essay made me feel so full.
This was evocative and devastating—yet oddly sensual. I think death creates its own form of intimacy, even when the death is that of a possum.
I feel strangely intimate with a friend of a friend after the two of us coordinated the end-of-life care of our mutual friend. I don't really know anything about the woman, and yet I feel bonded to her.
…neither love nor lust but a hunger of a third animal kind.
The woman who grabbed my hand when the plane seemed to drop a thousand feet while we were flying over the Indian Ocean and didn't immediately let go after we steadied out.
Any time I exchange eye contact with a stranger when we catch each other witnessing another human in the world doing something we both find humor in.
The flight attendant who placed her hand on my shoulder and brought me tissues and asked if I needed anything every time she walked by my seat, where I sat weeping as I left one life due to heartbreak and didn't know what life it was I was going toward.
Oof. I think this may be the piece, among so many of yours, I love most. Thank you. ❤️