Thea and I like to touch things. I've learned to constrain myself to socially acceptable practises and avoid mud until Tuesday nights: pottery nights. Thea can't help but put her hands in the dirt. She always picks stuff up even when I yell at her and beg her not too. Then she wipes her face. She twirls her hair into tight knots and brushes the top over these bits so I can't tell. She cracks the 50 metres of bubblewrap I always have. She puts her fingers inside the strings of tennis rackets All The Time. She put her fingers in the cake batter. Of course she has licked dry ice.
When we go shopping we always put our hands on all the dresses as we move along. We run our fingers along railings. We fondle the petals of roses. Every day we turn rabbits upside down to access their soft soft soft bellies. We phone up Greg and beg for Henri to come over so we can touch his beagle ears. Thea will not sleep with fewer than five of the softest tigers. Keep your mohair jerseys away from us. We will stroke the inside of your jacket secretly while you fall asleep next to us at the movies.
My sister is the same, she had a blanket as a baby with a silk edge, that my mum constantly had to replace – worn out with stroking. She still does it. She holds on to the arm of the waiter with the silk shirt on, without even realising it, while we choose our dinners.
Luckily, John is the also the same. He doesn't mind being touched by people or them touching him. People he knows, mostly, I think. He says our neighbour Rico gives the best massages, even of the earlobes.
Nina is the same. She recently shared On Facebook a shout out for platonic intimacy. "Kiss your friends' faces more", it said. It meant their Real Faces. It got So Many Likes. At dinner on Friday we were talking about a question we could ask someone we didn't know, who we met at a party, that would elicit the most information possible, in one go. Nothing really satisfactory came of this discussion except, if they were to be your lover, look at the hands. Obvs.
So, of course, when Nina said she would henna my and Thea's hair on Saturday we were excited. We'd seen Rachel and Sophia's hair that very day. We wanted the same. But we also know Nina's hands. Long and slender with matt black nails. We know she has been to the Sudan. We know she knows about henna and she knows about dukhan. When you go to Nina's house, real owls hoot at you. There is a deck that looks out over the trees inland. The sun shines into the house, just where you sit while she puts mud onto your head with her most beautiful fingers.
Of course you can also talk while your friend fiddles with your hair, like the women of the Sudan and Ethiopia do. You can work out all your problems. Fleeting anxieties like, "will she find a louse?" pass quickly away under these conditions. Vague insecurities, like "will my daughter and I turn wholly orange because we've left this in for such a very long time, and will we ever return to normal before school starts" are replaced with "who cares" because having this person touch my head for this afternoon is Amazing.
And when eventually you agree to go home, you get there and say, "look John I finally look like the goddess Nastassja Aglaia Kinski". And John says, "Yes you do, my love. Wow you look very Irish. Actually you look quite Russian" (because you have interrupted him reading a short story by Pushkin which involves "pistols at dawn" but with swords). And everyone is satisfied. More than satisfied. Dare I say, in fact, that the story about people who touch things, their new red hair and black finger nails always has to have A Happy Ending. Thank you Nina!