Where's the Party?: Allison P. Davis

Are You Ready to Be Touched? Reintroducing the thrill of casual physical contact.

JUST TO TORTURE MYSELF, I recently clicked through an online slideshow of parties from before the city shut down. A collection of black-and-white photos of people at clubs and bars, on dance floors and dark street corners, their bodies all so close together I instinctively worried they were a new crop of superspreaders, until I remembered the timeline. Looking at them, I realized I’d forgotten the diversity of ways people can touch people. Did you remember that you could grip the back of someone’s neck so hard your nails could make half-moon indentations in their skin? Or that you could let the pads of your fingers explore the rough terrain of someone’s elbow, or press your knee against a knee, snake a leg around a leg, put your lips to the arch of a foot, lean your whole backside against someone else’s frontside? You could playfully tug, gently pinch, or brusquely squish, nuzzle your face in a beard, and all of this could happen spontaneously, without underlying pandemic anxiety?

In the days since, I have had the most persistent fantasy: I’m at a crowded bar, so surrounded by people it takes 35 minutes to get a drink, but I don’t care because of the flesh. As I wait, a person I am with, or maybe a stranger—all right, it’s a fantasy, so definitely a stranger, and not just any stranger but a stranger I would try to make out with in a corner later—needs to get by, so they put their hand on the small of my back and lean in toward my ear to murmur, “Can I squeeze through?” Help me.