The Apologetic Touch

Last night, we went to see Prom Night, a terrible but unintentionally hilarious movie about a girl who is terrorized at her Senior Prom by a psychopathic ex-teacher who had become obsessed with her years prior.

This is a movie we've been intending to see since before it came out, but school obligations made it almost impossible until now. It's been out for a month, and we saw it on a Thursday night at 10:05. The theatre was empty except for us.

The three of us filed in: Joe sitting in the middle, with a seat between him and Jacob, as per Jacob's unspoken man-rule. I asked, jokingly, if Joe wanted me to skip a seat too, and he shook his head. As I pulled the seat down, it caught my little finger. "OW, FUCK!" I exclaimed.

"That is exactly why I wanted to sit beside you," he said.

We had arrived more than 20 minutes early, so we had the pleasure of sitting through Regal's entire pre-previews show. After a few minutes of terrible previews, Joe started poking me. This escalated, as it does on an almost-daily basis, to a flurry of limbs as he attacked and I defended. He's not a touchy type of person; he doesn't believe in excessive hugging. If he's touching me, then it's almost always intended as a light attack, something to pass the time or an opportunity to see me flail around [see: empty tank of gross motor skills]. It reminds me a lot of my brothers, who still take time out of their oh-so-busy schedules to wrestle me to the ground or to pick me up and toss me around. These fights are innocent--not malicious or dangerous--but they are always taken, by both parties, with the utmost sincerity.

Jacob has stopped paying attention, and we find his inattention both endearing and perfect. He's become completely desensitized to the entire process, the sideways glance and poke that always results in some well-waged battle, a fast waltz that we have choreographed meticulously.

After the movie, we stood by the side of the road, after midnight, waiting for the AAA repairman to change Joe's stripped tire. He stood in front of me, blocking me and an impending migraine from the blinking lights of the truck. One poke led to my wrists pinned behind me, his knee placed lightly in the small of my back, pushing my torso forward. Jacob was beside us, looking on his iPhone, not batting an eye in our direction. My elbows went on the defensive, when suddenly, my arms went lax and came into my control again.

"Oh, your metal back!" he said, "Your metal back." His tone was concerned and almost-embarrassed that he'd forgotten. I tried, as I always do, to remind him that I'm fairly hard to damage. That I have, post-surgery, taken Judo (and been thrown), been in two car accidents in which my car was rear-ended (the second being last weekend), and that I get tossed around all the time, because I'm little more than five feet tall. When you're short, I reminded him, people like to throw you around.

But etched perfectly in my memory, his hands shoot out uncontrollably as he lays them on my arm, my back. I'm turning around, my head is tossed over my shoulder, and he just keeps touching, lightly, my arms. Can't stop repeating "your metal back, your metal back."

Later, we talked about the apologetic touch, his tendency to put that hand out when he's worried that he's hurt me or when he says something that I take poorly, either something I take the wrong way or something that makes me explode. It's not an act he thinks about, we both acknowledge, nor does it happen very often. It's completely instinctual, the idea that this single touch can communicate something that words fail. Which, I imagine, is why it works so well.