Let’s Get Intimate

by Jenny Block

I’ve been thinking about intimacy, those moments of understanding between two people where no words are, or need to be, spoken. I’ve been thinking about inside jokes between friends, new and old. I’ve been thinking about still being in my pajamas at noon, sitting toe to toe with another person, forgetting to eat, dissecting the lives we lead and that we want to lead. I’ve been thinking about intimacy that comes through sex and intimacy that develops outside of it. I’ve been thinking about roommates and lovers and family, relatives and strangers and even enemies.

I know what intimacy is. I’ve enjoyed it in any number of permutations.

Scene:

I sit with a group of women in a circle of mismatched chairs: a rocker, a ladder back, an upholstered wing chair, weathered and worn. The women are 20 and 40 and 80. I haven’t seen them, or even exchanged emails with some of them, for a year. We cannot pull ourselves from the room. We share story after story of the year gone by, the life gone by, and the futures that may lie ahead. In this circle, there is no age; there is no distance; there is no race or class; the superficial falls away. There is just that moment, amongst a dozen writers who come together every year to write and talk and revel in the intimacy that every day life often doesn’t allow. They are the kind of relationships that developed instantly out of one common trait—the love of words—and that have lasted indefinitely.

Scene: