Don’t Touch Me

“Can’t I get a hug though?”

Blackness, feminism, & personal space..

Leah Drayton

*names have been changed to save the last scraps of dignity that I have.

Ricky* was an upper senior – three years older than me. He was the kind of beautiful that I can fully subscribe to in high school – tall, lightskinnedededed, and emerald eyed. He spoke Spanish, acted in school plays, and get this – had a tattoo the size of a postage stamp. Heartthrob right?

Besides being the male form of Aphrodite in my mind, he was kind and sweet and didn’t mind the duck-footed, Hot-Topic dork who followed behind him like a disciple.

But what spoiled my pre-Rihanna Chris Brown – era ADONIS was a simple problem I wouldn’t understand for years later – he liked to hug.

Now any acne-ridden, Charlotte Russe-clad high school girl would have been enthralled to hug their high school crush as often as Ricky hugged me. But hugging was the primary form of greetings in my 4,000 person, mostly black & Asian high school. Girls mostly did it, and we did it a lot – between class periods, in the locker room, at theatre class… And guys liked it too, either to press up on the girls or because they genuinely liked expressions of intimacy.

Unfortunately, Ricky was the latter.

I struggled, for all 4 years of high school, as we faithfully practiced the ritual of hugging. Not just because the smell of Japanese Cherry Blossom and Victoria’s Secret, but because I couldn’t stand people touching me.

It began as what I believed was a prissy beatnik face of pretentiousness, but then it got freaky. I felt people touching me and felt the edges of my body being spoiled, soiled, sullied – Ricky would touch me and I waded through the initial feeling of teenaged fandom to the stomach plunging, sinking idea – of feeling DIRTY.

The fear of being touched is called haphephobia. It usually comes after assault or abuse. Admittedly, my narrative is much less intense than others with the phobia, but it’s still a condition that makes me extremely uncomfortable in social settings.

And whereas I can take people I know touching me, people I just met or feel strongly about (negatively or positively) make me feel disgusting when they touch me. My skin crawls and burns, I want to vomit, I want to run away. And though it sounds dramatic, it’s a condition that I have forced myself to ignore – because the simple suggestion of “please don’t touch me” insults people like a wet slap – but that’s another matter.

However it was inescapable in high school. At first I thought because I was so loved (pfft). But the reason became clearer 4 years later after graduating.

 

Girls of color are not given boundaries to their own bodies.

 

In my blackety-black education in blackety-black schools, I was never given a chance to express that I do not want to be touched. If I did, I was seen as a prude or a b****. But blackness, in it’s purest form – welcoming, warm and loving – has the layer of misogynoir that we rarely address. Young black girls can be sexualized, prodded, pulled, grabbed, and touched and it’s not an issue because we perceive young black girls as “fast”. When they do not touch or embrace others – especially black people – we assume they are closed off and not embracing their blackness.

Translate this to adulthood. Black girls uncomfortable with the in-your-face sexualness of mainstream culture are relayed to the idea of being asexual, Mammy, bible-toting freaks – while white women who do are seen as a brand of self-controlled feminists. Black women – especially young girls – who do not embrace intimacy are not these examples of heroic feminism because of the mainstream ideal that black women are open, sexual objects.

Let’s go back to Ricky and how I – 1) embarrassed myself to the point I switch trains if I see him in public 4 years after high school and 2) realized that my discomfort with touch reclaims my own ideas about feminism.

Ricky liked to sing y’all. Could he sing? I mean, I guess. Now Ricky, aware that he was a pretty boy – liked to hold court with girls in the cafeteria, singing in their ears n’ making the ladies smile. One unfortunate day, Ricky caught me with my back turned and my face buried into my bag looking for an extra scruchie. With his hand pressed on my back, leaning in close so his chin could rest on my head (here’s a visual – I’m 5 feet tall, he’s 6’5ish) and sang into my ear.

I jumped y’all.

I jumped away so far, I threw my purse clean across the table. I jumped away so far, I used my foot against Ricky’s crotch to propel myself backwards. I jumped away so far, that I was feet away from him in seconds – only to watch him grab himself in pain and for some senior girl to stage whisper What a freaking weirdo.

Never. Came. Near. Me. AGAIN.

I beat myself up about it for days, until I relayed the experience to a girlfriend that was way too smart to be my friend at the time.

“But did he ask your permission to touch you? He got what he deserved.”

Permission.

Now, it’s a monumental rule that you ask me for permission before touching me. Not because I’m a b**** or that I hate germs that much (you can get cold sores anywhere…fun fact), but after years of misogynoir dictating that my black female body belonged to everyone – I have the chance to give it the access and control it deserves. You have to ask to touch me – because that is my autonomy. I control this space and I don’t let every and anyone in. After years of my young body being the focal point to be invaded (boys rating girls and “exposing” them online, girls grabbing my hair in high school to ask how it was done, teachers holding my shoulders to get my attention), me creating the access point and permission for my body is more than protecting myself.

I’m reclaiming my space.

In NYC, personal space is a myth along with the 2 train coming on time. But in the spaces I can control – allowing who hugs me, kisses me, holds my hands, even touches me in conversation is the ultimate form of power. Friends understand that me allowing closeness is one of my greatest displays of affection. The perimeters of my body are no longer public space just because I’m a black woman. I can create the boundaries of my own interaction’s history has taken from women that look like me.

Leah Drayton

Leah Drayton is the Editor-in-Chief of Iambic. She keeps changing her bio because she’s in her 1996 Patti LaBelle phase as she becomes a full-realized human being and understanding how to be confident in her work. She also really enjoys Busta Rhymes and fried pickles.