Note: This newsletter alternates between new pieces and writings from my scattered archives. This is one of the latter, first published in 2017, from a memoir I am writing, under the working title, Fire and Vultures. Amid the hazy memories of my childhood is one certainty. I was an exceptionally physically clingy child. I remember clambering onto my mother’s lap and wrapping my arms and legs around her like a little monkey. I would try to stop my father from leaving for work by wrapping myself around one of his skinny legs like a human manacle, so that he would have to stumble the last few steps towards the door, in a three-legged race with a midget partner. I would clamber up and wrap myself around his shiny bald head like a living hijab. I liked the smell of the sallow, wrinkly skin of his neck and behind his ear, a scent impossible to describe: cumin and old parchment and a yeasty, beery, citrusy tangy note.
I too grew up in a world like yours Iona. I saw my mother for lunch on Thursdays and my father almost never as a small boy. They did not die but they might as well have. Off to boarding school aged 8. At 18, I was the archetypal emotionally and physically distant English boy. Most of my lovers have been "maternal" figures. I suspect that losing your beloved parents so young set up this void that is hard to fill and that, in my case can be confusing as it is easy for me to differentiate affection from sex. Dogs too have been a saviour for me. I have learned that I cannot live well without one.
Inhibition and longing are set up in conflict. In my 70's I regret I have not found an answer.
I think it can be very difficult to deal with the somatic components of human connection - the bodily surfaces and fluids - in a way that isn't either clinical or vulgar. You do it by linking it to memory, which sentimentalizes it. And the ending, where your decision to marry your ex was based on your "touch memory", gives the reader an idea of how strong that sentiment can be.
Btw, I like the way that "saliva-stiffened plait of rope" echoes the "thread of saliva" mentioned earlier.
I too grew up in a world like yours Iona. I saw my mother for lunch on Thursdays and my father almost never as a small boy. They did not die but they might as well have. Off to boarding school aged 8. At 18, I was the archetypal emotionally and physically distant English boy. Most of my lovers have been "maternal" figures. I suspect that losing your beloved parents so young set up this void that is hard to fill and that, in my case can be confusing as it is easy for me to differentiate affection from sex. Dogs too have been a saviour for me. I have learned that I cannot live well without one.
Inhibition and longing are set up in conflict. In my 70's I regret I have not found an answer.
I think it can be very difficult to deal with the somatic components of human connection - the bodily surfaces and fluids - in a way that isn't either clinical or vulgar. You do it by linking it to memory, which sentimentalizes it. And the ending, where your decision to marry your ex was based on your "touch memory", gives the reader an idea of how strong that sentiment can be.
Btw, I like the way that "saliva-stiffened plait of rope" echoes the "thread of saliva" mentioned earlier.