A Couple Precious Moments

Reminiscing on wordless connection and intimacy

May 24, 2024

I lay supine on my yoga mat, reeling in the bliss and somatic fuzz of having breathed continuously for what felt interminable but was probably around an hour. I noticed the entire visual field behind my closed eyes turn a peculiar shade of purple for a few moments, then white, before returning to its familiar blackness speckled with superimposed and inchoate blotches of color.

Though this visual experience served as a brief reprise of my recent mystical experience in the Saharan desert, my kinesthetic experience was like being wrapped up in effervescence, like a full-body shaped glass of San Pellegrino.

I was at a breathwork session accompanied by live music at a local community hall in late winter. There were dozens of people, likely more than fifty and perhaps closer to a hundred, sprawled out on mats covering the floor, with facilitators doing rounds checking in with breathers periodically, all under the spell of the performing duo YAIMA.

As the breathing portion of the facilitation entered its denouement, the main facilitator, Robin, gently invited us to sit up in no particular hurry and, if it felt appropriate, to share some touch with a neighbor.

I had been aware of an attractive blonde woman set up next to me the moment I settled into my space, though I was circumspect about being overt with my attention.

I sometimes like to play this game where the more I find someone attractive, the more I try to keep them in peripheral awareness, or out of my visual field entirely, if I’m at risk of being spotted. No one likes to be ogled in public I suppose. Who knows? It’s probably some residual shame around my desire and some socialized sense of propriety and restraint to play it cool.

I can’t say I recommend it as a particularly effective approach. It hasn’t worked out very well for me so far.

In any case, after the beaming breathwork session – I gently looked over to my left and went to place my left hand on her right knee, but she had beat me to the touch, placing her right hand on my back, directly behind my heart.

It was a beautiful moment and I did my very best to savor it.

No names. No words. We hadn’t so much as shared direct eye contact. I had only caught glimpses of the profile of her face.

Up until now, the most we had shared was the very air in the room.

There was a play of sorts – I eventually reciprocated and placed my hand on her back, then she touched my knee.

Then I caressed my hand from her back to her shoulder, tenderly sliding my hand along her arm to place my hand on top of hers, while hers rested somewhere between her right knee and my left one.

There was a part of me that didn’t want that moment to end.

Human nature, I suppose.

We stayed like that awhile.

And eventually, as it must, the moment ended and she reclaimed her hand.

We went about our respective ways as I was doing rounds catching up with other friends I recognized.

I did eventually catch her name and share some brief words as she was on her way out.

And that, as they say, is that.

Oddly enough, it reminded me of another precious moment back in 2013.

I was boarding a party bus in Curacao en route back to the MS Nieuw Amsterdam, the cruise ship where I lived and worked as a showband musician.

We were at the tail end of an off-shore crew party hopping around some bars and clubs.

I’m not sure how this happened, but I managed to find a seat next to the woman I, and pretty much every other man aboard the ship, had a crush on.

She was a ten.

A dancer.

Blonde. Beautiful. Intelligent. Talented. Wholesome.

And her laugh was this hideous cackle I absolutely adored.

She appeared distraught as she absently gazed out the window, her cornsilk hair covering her face.

I had no particular desire to disturb her and felt content to leave her alone.

As the party bus started moving, after some time, she unexpectedly reached out and grasped my hand.

I was stunned.

Thankfully, we simply shared the moment in silence, but what transpired next is among my deepest regrets, though how it could have played out otherwise is simply an exercise in private suffering.

After the initial amazement and excitement, a storm of anxiety started brewing in my psyche, and somehow in the span of the fifteen or so minutes it took for the bus to get back to the ship, this is an approximation of what took place in my mind.