How to: Hold Hands (and When to Let Go)

I met a girl in the park last month, Mary, and wrote two dozen songs about her, none that she’ll hear. She doesn’t like poems that rhyme (she says they’re too cheesy) and all of my suffixes have their phonetically-friendly partners; not out of spite, but because they’re safer in pairs.

There are many different contexts in which you might find yourself holding another’s hand, depending on the culture and your relationship with that person, but the way in which you embrace their grasp has a language all its own, one that you’re maybe not entirely fluent in and may not be listening for. Everyone has a melody in their heart, best performed upon your palm.

I once held a girl’s hand so that she’d feel safe enough to fall asleep, and another’s so that she couldn’t stab herself. I locked fingers with a young actress to help shake her nerves, and did the same with an old widow to give her the confidence to walk to her car. There was even an instance where I held hands with a young woman the entire time we made love, which is an endeavor easier said than done (but quite a bit of tender fun). Emotional connections this varied and effective would not have been possible had I not been ‘listening’ for the silent songs they sang via touch.

As the Romans Do

Human beings are different from other creatures in that we’re burdened with not only consciousness but opposable thumbs, each of which are painfully aware of just how capable they are of interlocking with others. Life can be a trying blessing, made all the more blissfully-difficult if you croon to someone who might not be singing the same song as you.

When I was a teenager my father and I worked together doing manual labor. One sweltering afternoon we were riding around in the truck, headed to our next job, and my father asked me some question about life that I found a bit too obvious or lacking in nuance. I was pretty ‘pissy;’ sweating, tired, and impatient to finish the day. I don’t remember what the question was or even my answer, but I’ll never forget his expression and the way his voice changed when responding to my statement, “Jess, I don’t mean this in a weird way, but you are the most romantic person I’ve ever met.” It’s not tremendously fun to hear such a thing from your father, and he quickly realized that; “What I mean is that you always put meaning in everything.”

The true etymology of ‘romance’ is a bit complicated, but the word stems from ‘Roman,’ evoking a sense of ‘eternalness’ or ‘awesomeness’, and the Romantic Movement of the 1800s, where individual emotional expression was emphasized in both art and life.

I was taken aback at hearing that my sentimentality was so obvious. Sure, I had a tendency to anthropomorphize everything as a child and write silly biographies for passersby, but those were silent musings; overflow from an overactive imagination, unspoken yarns unspooling in my head. I thought everyone entertained and encouraged these thoughts to the extent that I did. I later had a lover tell me with a quiet, smiling sigh, “Everything you do has a reason” and was again surprised that others go through life apparently ‘thinking’ about their romantic interactions less than I did. I always saw myself as rather apathetic but these revelations helped me tune in more regularly to a frequency that might help you in deepening your relationships.

The Frequencies in Your Feelings

In music, a chord is a set of notes played at the same time. Some may sound beautiful or relaxing and others scary or discomforting, but a chorus of simultaneous notes vibrating together typically tells a more ‘full’ story than a string of them ringing separately.

Most of the development and theories regarding chords and harmony was inspired by the Romantic Movement, when composers realized that melodies could be given new dimensions and contexts through consonant and dissonant accompaniment. There are about four thousand possible chords that ‘exist’ but you don’t often hear many of them because composers and performers typically stick to the ‘proven’ ones. Most aspects of musical enjoyment are derived from external projection, take this quote for example:

“I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation.” ― Bob Dylan

In this same vein, we might cast others into pre-established roles or convenient archetypes in our lives so that we can better understand what we think our relationship with that person is. We will write a song for them to live in, one just vague enough that allows them to be themselves but definitive enough that we can squish them into a specific box. This is why love can feel so wonderful and heartbreak so devastating: we may not be composing the correct song for the melody they are actually singing.

Recently I met a young woman in the park, we’ll call her ‘Mary’ to respect her privacy. I found her immediately and absolutely astounding. I actively enjoyed communicating with her and each new opinion or thought that she expressed was music to my ears, whether or not I even agreed with her. But it wasn’t until I saw her for the first time that I understood, “I’ll die if I cannot hold this woman’s hand. And if I can, then any death I shall suffer will be all the more endurable.” I wanted nothing more than to hear Mary’s inner song, the melody of her heart, and the best way to listen would be to feel it in her palm.

In 2014, composer Richard D. James gave an interview to Pitchfork where he was asked about the ‘atypical’ frequencies, pitches, and chords in his music. He justified his creative process, explaining why his intentions may be experimental but not divorced from traditional emotional resonance:

“It is all about sound, but people forget that. They think, ‘Oh, I want to hear a nice tune.’ But what you’re actually saying is you want to hear the combination of frequencies that make you feel a certain way. And more excitingly, it’s about finding out the new ones.

If you’ve got an equal temperament piano keyboard, then you know what you’re going to get if you play certain chords. But I actually like it if you don’t know where the notes are, because then you do it intuitively. You’re working out a new language, basically. New rules. And when you get new rules that work, you’re changing the physiology of your brain. And then your brain has to reconfigure itself in order to deal with it.

So if you hear a C-major chord with an equal temperament, you’ve heard it a million times before and your brain accepts it. But if you hear a chord that you’ve never heard before, you’re like, “huh.” And your brain has to change shape to accept it. And once it’s changed shape, then you have changed as a person, in a tiny way. And if you have a whole combination of all these different frequencies, you’re basically reconfiguring your brain. And then you’ve changed as a person, and you can go and do something else. It’s a constant change. It could sound pretty cosmic and hippie, but that is exactly what’s going on.

The hand has five unique fingerprints, each serving as a speaker. You must tune your antennas to receive the signal that your partner broadcasts. Whether intentional not, whomever you hold hands with is communicating a special combination of notes that you’ve never heard before. They’re talking to you not as a lazy archetype, so how you embrace them, the notes that you send them in return, determine whether the chords of your connection are merely ‘standardly-pleasant’ or grant you both an unknown blossom.

The Science of Your Sensations

Holding hands with someone is a form of communication that may be embraced in familial, friendly, and romantic relationships but rarely are its intentions and effects consciously considered. It’s seen as an active gesture to express a desire for comfort, solidarity, or love but the biological consequences of hugging fingers are often neglected in order to fulfill a simple yearning to reenact positive depictions of a ‘relationship’ one might have seen in films or on television.

Any sort of intentional and somewhat-intimate physical contact between two people will release oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin into the brain. Like a mouse darting through a maze in order to find the block of cheese, you may be racing to embrace someone simply to ‘push’ this button and get a ‘hit’ of dopamine. Maybe the relationship you find yourself in is actually stagnant, but you still reach out and interlock fingers to get that little bit of ‘juice’ to feel better about the afternoon together. In this way, though you are reaching for authenticity, you are only replacing genuine butterflies with artificial ones.

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovian philosopher and, while I find some of his ideas to be unreasonable, his assertion that sex and romance have been commodified by media is one that I cannot help but agree with. In one interview, he argues that the love we share with others is in danger of being reduced to a exclusively-performative gesture, where we enact behavior not gleamed from our upbringings but from depictions of romance witnessed in formative adolescence. He contends that, as of the last century, we have become more interested in the aesthetics of sex than the actual act itself, to the point where the ‘perfect first date’ in Žižek’s mind may eventually be to “attach the artificial genitalia that we each use to masturbate onto machines so that they can have intercourse in another room while we chat over tea, and maybe if things go well our hands will touch.”

In this piece, I’ll walk you through the compositional connections I made with six important women in my life as examples for your own efforts, so you may sing ‘fuller’ songs with those that accompany you. My minor details may be different from yours, but feel free to recast the roles in my stories with family, friends, and lovers from your own life and the relevance should remain. I’m a heterosexual man from the West, so I don’t often hold hands with those of my same gender, but these anecdotes should still ring true for any combination looking to transfer warmth to one another.

I operate on the general philosophy that I was born alone, I live alone, and I will die alone. Of course there are people around me all the time, dear friends and lovers that I share life with, but as I am a single soul, mind, heart, and body it’s just a matter of physics in stating that any individual person is inherently a singular being set against the vastness of the universe.

I embrace this with a bit of a metaphor, painting my life as an Odyssey of sorts. I see myself as a battleship sailing through the ocean; occasionally I will encounter islands or even other ships, but the only constant is the ship and its crew. Similar to an Inside Out situation, I imagine that there is a figurative Captain and First Mate collecting, interpreting, and acting on the information presented to them. ‘Home’ might be a shore that I return to often, where I know I’m safe. Friends might be other vessels, sailing alongside me in a fleet every so often. Potential lovers might be a ship on the horizon, flying a flag I don’t recognize.

Mary entered my life as one such ship, first appearing as a magnificent mirage where the sky met the sea:

“Ay! Captain! Starboard side! Look at that one! She’s pointed this way!”

“Blast…aren’t those just the most beautiful brown eyes you’ve ever seen?”

“What do reckon; is it a friendship or a relationship, Captain?”

“Tell the boys down in the engine room to pick up the pace, let’s sail closer.”

Helen

The first time I ever held hands with a girl was in 1994 at daycare. I was a very brash and extroverted three-year-old while she was an exceptionally pensive and introverted toddler. She’s a private person, so we’re going to call her Helen, though I call her my best friend in the entire world. She was always very serious and dower, often choosing the ‘safety’ of solitude. I remember mornings where I would be dropped off and she wouldn’t yet know I had arrived; I would watch her play by herself on the other side of the room, away from the other children. I was told by our teachers that she would rarely smile unless I was around, a fact confirmed in these early morning reconnaissance missions. Her teeth were poorly aligned and her smile wasn’t ‘pretty’ so she would often cover her mouth around others if she grinned, a habit that continued into her twenties, long after braces had straightened the situation. But, because of our history of affection, I always earned an unmasked and toothy “Jesse!” each morning before our hug.

While our fingers weren’t literally glued together, it was rare that Helen and I didn’t hold on to one another. I sought her out because she was shy and seemed unhappy, but many years later I understood that she would reach for me because her parents were emotionally negligent; I was the majority of her physical human contact.

At nap time we would lay next to one another and hold hands, allowing each of us to feel safe and secure enough to sleep. She was an overly-fearful girl, I was an exorbitantly-pompous boy, and our influence on one another was better transmitted through the wires of our fingers. Throughout the years I was able to grow more contemplative and introspective by holding on to her, as she put me in touch of with a ‘third rail’ of thinking about the world rather than simply reacting to it. Much later, when I was teaching her how to literally sing (as she had a beautiful voice under all that shyness), Helen would hold my hand to tap into this same electricity and find her confidence on stage.

The song I heard in Helen’s heart when taking her hand sounded something like this. Though she may have been fearful and unsure, there was a tremendous spirit in her that only needed to be let out of the cage: she was an extraordinarily talented artist. She had never been offered an embrace before and it was all that was needed to lift her up so that she could soar.

The physical connection we shared was simply a constant friendly embrace. Though that requires a somewhat-high degree of emotional comprehension from both parties, the benefits can be monumental.

When I lived in Asia it was not uncommon to see two women of any age holding one another’s hands while walking down the road. I saw it between young girls in Thailand, college students in Hong Kong, and retired friends in a rural Chinese village. I speak no Thai or Cantonese and only a little bit of Mandarin, so I wasn’t able to understand every word of their conversations (and eavesdropping is rude) but it was very apparent that the laughs between them were just a bit deeper and the words of advice a little more hand-tailored. It is difficult to for a wall to exist between two people holding hands.

Often times, having a barrier is healthy. I’m a filmmaker and just about everyone on a given crew is either already my friend or finds themselves one after a few days working together, but I don’t think it’d be productive to hold any of their hands all that often. In that environment I am literally the captain of a ship; both the collaborative relationship as well as structural function of the group would be compromised if I were to be so affectionate.

But a wall isn’t always necessary; I make a point to shake hands if not outright hug everyone that I work with, often, not just because I want to but also in order to exchange dopamines and subliminally tell them, “The warmth you feel with me in this brief moment is reflective of the warmth I’ve felt because of your unique contribution.” Most of the universe is uninhabitably cold, it’s important that you look for any moment to transfer and share warmth.

Julia

I had a situation with a young actress, we’ll call her Julia (because that’s her actual name and I doubt she’ll mind), in which transferring warmth through our hands was the best way in which to shield her from an occasional anxiety. We had cast her in a short film that I wrote and directed, one that required not just her mental strength but physical dexterity as well.

Julia had a scene where she needed to hang in the air, upside down, and deliver her lines, but she struggled with contorting her body and delivering a performance that met her standards. She was eight years old at the time and not completely equipped to process failure or frustration. After a few attempts, she broke down in tears and we had to lower her to the ground again. A few people tried to calm her but it wasn’t until I knelt down with her and took her hand in mine that she found herself not only regaining composure but, after a few well-timed self-deprecating remarks from her director, smiling and laughing. Julia, whether she consciously understood it or not, needed the acceptance of another human being in that moment, not just words of comfort.

That incident took place on our second day of shooting but was not the last time we embraced one another. I would hold her hands when I was giving her the emotional motivation for her character, I’d carry her on my back when we’d hike up and down mountains, and we’d constantly engage in thumb wars to build camaraderie and deepen our friendship.

Yes, to an eight-year-old it was all just affection and attention that she was already accustomed to receiving from her mother and father, but I made it a priority to use it as a defense so that she wouldn’t have the time or desire to become distracted by the ‘importance’ of what her job was on set. Julia didn’t cry in that one instance because she struggled, she cried because she felt she was disappointing the crew, her new friends. I’d hold her and others would play with her in a similar manner to show her that she was accepted. But I’m no saint; there were a few moments when I was really tired and she was just too chatty, so I’d squeeze her cheeks together when she was talking so that her voice became squishy, which would usually just make her giggle and forget about whatever she was saying (note: I do not recommend this technique with adults).

There’s a reason that our friendship has endured this many years (Julia is now almost fifteen) and it’s not because I have all that much in common with a Californian teenager: we took the time and opportunities to bond with one another in a silent way when each of us needed it most.

The song I heard in Julia’s heart when taking her hand sounded something like this. She saw positivity as an inevitability and marched as if she was ten feet tall, my hand only needed to meet hers to help her up if she stumbled and to set her on the right path. It wasn’t that she needed confidence or inspiration, but the simple reminder that her failures would be met with an eternal reassurance that she was appreciated.

Holding hands can be, of course, a precursor to tighter hugs, kissing, and sex, but you are doing yourself a great disservice if you limit all acts of physical affection to those who you are in a romantic relationship with.

Like many children, I slept with a stuffed animal each night. Mine was a bear but I don’t remember the name, if it even had one (which is rather rude, actually; all that cuddling and I couldn’t be bothered to ask). I knew at a very early age that I was heterosexual, often flirting with the girl that lived next door to us while we played with my Godzilla toys (because I’m a romantic), but my stuffed bear was definitely a boy bear. Yet I still held it with affection.

When we were children, my brother and I would often spend nights at our grandparents house where we had to sleep in the same bed. Just as I would hug my stuffed bear, I would ask my brother if I could hold him while I slept. In some ways I look back on this behavior with questions of insecurity, “Have I always really been that lonely?” But, more often than not, I’ll remember these moments of affection as instances where I was trying to communicate, “I’m here for you.” I remember holding my brother’s hand at our grandfather’s funeral, an event that happened too early in his life to understand but far enough into mine to devastate me as I didn’t have a chance to hug our matriarch goodbye.

My father is rather closed-off when it comes to emotional acknowledgement. He is a very kind man but any type of confrontation or ‘negative’ feeling is usually quickly brushed away, this is probably why I’m so quick to embrace sentiment and romanticism (a weird rebellion to make, but a healthy one I suppose). Almost a year ago, he broke down in the hallway about an emotional conflict that he didn’t know how to deal with. He’s thirty-four years older than I am, there wasn’t a lot that I could offer him when it came to life experience. I didn’t hold his hand but I made sure to hug him often so that he would be encouraged to ‘open up’ and not feel that vulnerability is an ‘uncomfortable’ sensation. I couldn’t give him advice but I could let him know “I’m here for you” without saying a word. This is easily done with a hug but better done through holding hands.

I can remember, from a very young age, seeing the relationship my grandparents had and thinking, “I cannot wait to have a wife.” I saw my grandmother and grandfather as teammates, best friends, and partners in affection, starting their days hand-in-hand at breakfast and ending them on the couch, their books in one hand and one another in the other. Before I knew of sex or even dating, I knew that no matter how independent and driven I was, finding someone to share hands with would provide more electricity than I could ever generate on my own.

It’s not that I lack confidence, but I never feel bolder or even more ‘myself’ than when holding another’s hand. This true of all people to unique extents; I think it is inherent to my brain chemistry as well as the result of a psychological conditioning set through my friendship with Helen. But feeling these drastic changes in courage certainly did wonders in ‘sentimentalizing’ me from the rather anarchistic and destructive person I was in my youth.

“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful, a man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” -George Orwell

Before Mary and I went on our first date, in my subconscious battleship there was an office full of maps, buzzing with figures spouting plans of gestures to execute should I feel any affection for her. These little characters analyzed my feelings toward the ‘idea’ of her and concluded, “If Jesse likes her, then we’ll need to send a message up to the Captain with instructions for Operation Hold-Her-Hand.” As soon as Mary jumped into my car the first time, the Captain and First Mate of my inner battleship spoke up, each looking at her through the telescope:

“Captain, the flag says she’s very successful in the business world but also has an interest in poetry.”

“Aye. If she’s pretentious or boring, then we’ll call her a friendship. But if she gets our butterflies going…”

“Then what?”

“We fire a shot across her bow, and see what she does.”

“Captain…she rides a motorcycle.”

“…Man the guns.”

Mary was not the first I had taken on a date, nor would hers be the first hands I held romantically. Years before this, I had met a young woman who needed to be embraced just as much as I did.

Stacy

Contrary to my propensity for endearment, the walls around my heart are tall. I usually need to know someone for about four years before I can truly ‘open up,’ and my barriers are even more daunting when it comes to ‘falling’ for them. But the moment I met a young woman we’ll call Stacy, it was love at first sight. It’s been many years now, but I remember the exact day we met, what she was wearing, and almost every part of the conversation we shared. I felt like I had known her all my life and, unbeknownst to me at the time, wanted nothing more than to know her for the rest of my life.

Stacy was a beautiful young woman with a smart smile and a flare for instigation, a person that (much like Ahab) would strike the sun if it insulted her. She was of an average height but towered over life and conventional wisdom.

It was a complicated courtship but we began seriously dating a few months after meeting, which was much faster than either of us were quite used to. We had torn down our walls and found comfort in the warm breeze that now blew between us. She flew out to Denver to see me and the first time we ever held hands was at the TSA checkpoint because, again, I’m very romantic.

I had never been so in love and, though I can’t speak for her, I suspect she would say the same. She said she’d never thought she could marry a man, until she met me. She never wanted kids, until she met me. We held hands everywhere and all the time. She valued practicality above all else but the ‘oneness’ felt when we embraced one another would lead us to even holding one another’s hands while we slept, even on the hottest nights of the year. I’d hold her hand while I drove, we’d sit beside one another at restaurants (leaving the other side of the table empty), and we’d even run around and skip with locked fingers. I’ve known since I was three years old that there is no better sound in the universe than a woman’s laugh, Stacy’s delighted giggle whenever I’d juke and jive us through crowds or across streets didn’t just validate my love but her entire state of mind.

Stacy suffered from manic-depressive disorder, I’d normally just refer to her as ‘bipolar’ but I feel the term has been weakened by those that think of it as simply ‘big mood changes’ in addition to the misogynistic connotations that word now seems to carry. She was victim to hysteria. She grew up in abysmal living situations and with a family and social group that were extremely negligent to her condition. Though she had never acted on it, she was constantly suicidal and prone to drastic bouts of depression. I’m a tender man, so I wanted to hold her as much as possible in general, but she was someone who needed to be held, therefore I took my position as her lover very seriously.

Her condition was completely manageable for me, I wouldn’t even call it an inconvenience. There were hours or days when she just wasn’t ‘herself;’ she would drown in inconsolable rage or sorrow and not because she wanted to. She saw this as completely ‘incurable’ circumstances, because most of the people she grew up around or lived with would simply ignore her. This conditioned her into a certain reflexive behavior. Some days she might return to our apartment, having had a truly terrible day made worse by the fact that she’s having a bad ‘mental’ day, and start spitting absolute venom, completely irate at the world and then me for both everything and nothing in particular.

But just like a scared animal, which is all any of us really are, if I slowly approached her with a soft voice and arms out, she was usually receptive to a hearty hug. And even if she wasn’t open to that: if I could get ahold of her hand, it was over: feeling my warmth and heartbeat was enough for her, consciously or subconsciously, to understand who she was, who I was, and who we were in relation to that big bad world outside. She could conquer her gigantic demons and all it would take was five fingers.

She was also susceptible to exceptionally painful menstrual cramps. I’m not one to kiss-and-tell (to an extent, see: later), but I have never been with a young woman that was so completely destroyed by Aunt Flo each month. Stacy would be physically knocked out of commission for two or three days during her period, spending all that time in bed, doubled over and sobbing for hours on end. I was working from home for most of our relationship, so I could tend to her until she fell asleep again. I’d boil water for her heating pads, run my hands through her hair, and hold her hand.

Much like Julia, Stacy was better able to face a brutal reality with the infusion of reassurance that a simple embrace gave her. Her crying would eventually stop, she would shiver and shudder as she regained her breath, and she’d nuzzle close to me with the understanding that, though she is existentially alone and suffering alone, she’s not inherently alone so long as another’s fingers are woven between hers. Her suffering may have been excruciating before and after, but in moments of inclusion she could find invincibility.

There was one particular afternoon where Stacy had suffered a profound professional loss not of her own doing and was feeling especially depressed, so she lunged for a knife. I wasn’t willing learn if her first actual suicide attempt was a serious one, so I grabbed her hand and squeezed harder than I ever had, putting myself between her and the blade (this was not a great idea and I would not endorse it, don’t put yourself in harm’s way like I did). She had no intention of stabbing or cutting me (and didn’t) but was not pleased that I interfered in this way. She struck me before releasing her grip on the knife in her other hand and stormed out. That situation was not rectified by holding her hand, but when we both eventually returned to the apartment I was able to quell her stormy disposition by assuring her, physically, that someone was always going to be there for her.

Stacy and I had talked about marriage and played house for quite a long time. I had never loved someone so deeply, I was never able to open up so completely, and happiness had never touched me so thoroughly. But she was not at a place in her life where she could be as mature as she wanted to be and I eventually saw the degree of mistreatment that was being committed when she was in control. She knew that I was using affection and emotional availability to help her, so she would become withholding or distant in moments when I needed it and her ego had inflated.

We’re not on speaking terms at the moment, which was my decision, but we will talk over the phone in rare instances when she needs guidance or understanding. We don’t live anywhere near one another but I’ll ask her to, “Take my hand, take my hand” when walking her away from the metaphorical ledge or calming her from senseless decisions. “You got it? Holding on? I’m right here with you. I’m not going anywhere.” Just like anyone I’ve ever let into my heart by way of my hand, I’ll always love her and therefore made it a point to ‘eternalize’ my fingers between hers.

The song I heard in Stacy’s heart when taking her hand sounded something like this. She could be quiet, contemplative, and sensitive but also bombastic, theatrical, and exuberant; all she needed was a bit of help when the winds changed and sabotaged her voyage. She was destined for greatness and only needed someone stable to reach out for when those nonconsensual dizzies and aches knocked her off balance.

Stacy loved when I did a high-pitched impression of what a daisy would sound like if it could talk, so one of my nicknames became ‘Daisy.’ When I last saw her, I gave her a necklace and a ring, each resin with a daisy inside, to let her know that no matter what happened between us: her Daisy will always be there to hug her and take her hand. I told her, no matter how silly it seems, to put on that necklace and ring in times of strife and I’d be right there with her. Even if the relationship’s failure was due to her inability to provide emotional availability (that’s a mutual consensus, not me being vindictive), it was important to me to be as positive of an influence in her life as possible. Though I’m no longer by her side, it was always a priority that my fingerprints remain on her grasp, so that she doesn’t ever doubt the existence of warmth.

Like all things, even the best embrace must end. Physically letting go of another’s hand can be difficult but pales in comparison to untangling the dopamines that you may shared with a partner.

Betty

I attended church for the first eighteen years of my life and, from childhood, would walk little old ladies from the pews to their cars every Sunday. These women wobbled and worried the entire journey if they used a cane, but if I took their hand or allowed them to hold me, even though I technically wasn’t as sturdy as their metal supports, they could march in confidence and in spite of their physical limitations.

One woman sat in front of us each sermon, widowed and without family. I can’t recall her name, so we’ll say it was Betty. My brother might hold hands with our grandmother, helping her traverse the long ramp and scale that steep parking lot curb, and I would do the same with Betty. We didn’t really ever exchange words beyond her compliments, “Such a nice young man” and my retorts, “You too! I mean, uh, see you next week!”

Betty and I danced that dance for probably ten years. She was in her seventies or eighties when I was a teenager, so she’s absolutely dead by now. I have no idea when that would have happened; I was off somewhere else, living life, probably filling an average day with whatever trivialities when she took her final breath. She probably didn’t think of me when it happened, nor did I of her until just now, as there really was no relationship between us. But it doesn’t change the fact that a woman was able to sing her song to someone for a decade and know that she still existed.

The song I heard in Betty’s heart when taking her hand sounded something like this. She was well aware that she was in the winter of her life, holding on to someone only in the spring of theirs. Maybe her ego wasn’t so injured in relying on another just to walk to her car, but she knew that our journey together would be the most vulnerable moment of her week, every week. I could feel in the way her fingers would tremble that though she may have been a bit nervous, she was appreciative that the universe still had some cozy charity to offer her.

There are two significant questions in holding another: when to initially embrace them and when to let go, what you do between those instants are of relatively little importance. It’s likely that you will be more proficient in one than the other; I think I’ve made it clear that I enjoy reaching out but my struggles with goodbyes perhaps haven’t been as illuminated.

The congregation at our church had very few youth or even middle-aged members, most that would gather in the pews were older than sixty-five when I was just a toddler. This meant that I grew up wading through a steady stream of death. We celebrated ‘the life’ of the recently deceased more than we had the opportunity to celebrate a new marriage or birth. The group of attendees shuffling to their cars grew smaller each year, giving us less people to hold. Someone next to you might be so jovial and full of energy on Sunday, only to pass away on Wednesday. Of course I had friends at school and other outlets at the time but having a significant portion of my social circle constantly under threat is likely what planted an occasional ‘separation anxiety’ in me. This, compounded with my overall sentimental-as-hell nature, have made goodbyes quite difficult.

As a result of so much death, as well as the general confusion that can come with adolescence, I retreated inward during my early-teen years. I was no longer outwardly affectionate or tenderhearted. This is an extremely polite way of saying that I let a monstrously mean streak develop in me. Girls may have liked me at the time for being ‘dark and mysterious’ but I had absolutely no affinity for myself, and therefore none to spare for anyone else. Helen and I would go to college parties in our mid-teens and sit in the corner as misanthropic morons, silently condemning the subjectively-negative behavior of others as a way to justify the objective emptiness we shrouded ourselves in.

I became self-destructive by my late teens. I didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs and it’s not as if I thought my hands were literally poisonous, but my walls were impenetrable and I was basically seeking wars to get into.

Helen developed into an attractive teenager, something that isn’t easy to hide from inebriated college guys. There was one incident where she turned around and the guy we were talking to reached down and groped her butt, right in front of me. He probably thought I was ‘gay’ or too meek to do anything about it. I remember laughing, not because I found it funny but because I could finally ‘reach out,’ not to hold his hand but to more aggressively listen to his song. I was drinking a Pepsi, so I took a swig, spit it in his face, and then started swinging (a cheap shot but I needed to be strategic against a foe that was a hundred pounds heavier than me and a foot taller). And it was precisely because he was an athletic college guy and I was an ‘artistic’ teen that I certainly did not ‘win’ that battle, but was ‘victorious’ in my war of defending Helen as well as exchanging contact with someone. This was just one of many dumb, senseless fights that would have been better started in the spirit of actually helping others, but I didn’t want that at the time because connecting with another person would only guarantee me the pain of their inevitable departure.

Jane

After my petulant youth, I grew up and learned to live and love again. By my twenties, on the last day of a film shoot I’d usually hug everyone on the crew and cry that night while I sent out ‘thank you’ emails to each of them. I let myself be vulnerable and sentimental again, and my maturation was rewarded with the deepest and most profound romantic relationship I had ever had. I had learned more from Stacy than anyone else I’d ever met, feeling like I’d lived ten lifetimes with her, but I did not emerge from our relationship unscathed. Her actions in repeated instances were what she, I, and a licensed therapist defined as ‘emotionally abusive,’ embedding trust issues into my psyche that I wasn’t willing to take out on others like I had done in my teens. Again I put up my walls but this time instead of seeking fights with young men, I sought the empty escapades of romanceless rendezvous.

There’s not a more polite way to describe my post-breakup behavior than by saying I ‘went on a bit of a tear’ for a little over a year (safely and responsibly, of course), finding company with young women who had no interest in me as a human being other than someone to roll around in the hay with. I try to be kind in all things that I do, so I earned all the same compliments that I usually would (“You are the sweetest ever,” “No one has ever done this for me before,” “You’re the first that’s ever ‘made love’ to me”) but there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d hold any of these young women’s hands. Not because they didn’t need it and not because I didn’t want to, but I was absolutely devastated by what happened with Stacy and couldn’t risk falling into the immature misanthropy and selfishness of my youth.

I went to Hong Kong several times in 2019, before and during the ongoing ‘troubles.’ I met a young woman there and we entered into a purely physical relationship. The first time we saw one another, I remember thinking that her smile wasn’t just polite but sincere. Something about ‘me’ made her immediately happy in some way. She knew nothing about me and yet wanted to be close to me. She wasn’t tricking me or trying to start a relationship or anything like that. I had caught a glimpse of her before she ever saw me and thought she was beautiful. Her wide eyes seemed kind and her posture suggested an interesting attitude. My smile, in response to her grin, was the most sentimental it had been in a very long time. Let’s call her Jane.

Not only were Jane and I never going to be in a relationship, as we lived over seven thousand miles apart, but we had no interest in being ‘together’ either. We were content to see each other every so often when I was in Hong Kong and spend some time together in her bed at night. I never slept over.

I went out with other women at lunch and dinner. Singers. Photographers. Businesswomen. Models. Scientists. Actresses. Architects. Each beautiful, kind, and intelligent, also not expecting a relationship from me either, given my extremely temporary stays on the island. But Jane was always a block away from my hotel and we both had the demons of former relationships to corporally distract one another from.

In June, the citizens of Hong Kong felt compelled to make their voices heard. Regardless of nationality or political ideology, anyone and everyone in the city felt unsure of their futures and lived in a state of constant anxiety. By August, the time of my third visit, Jane and I had a routine of ‘catching up’ with one another, often, but it was obvious that though we might be sharing a bed our minds and attention might be elsewhere when together.

We had just finished ‘catching up’ one night when we went down to the street and into a 7-Eleven to take a break. She grabbed a beer, I picked out some milk bread, and we sat out on a bench nearby. We didn’t say much to one another, it was clear that we were going to go ‘catch up’ again after this, so we were content to simply sit there and watch traffic push through the hazy heat of the summer night. However, we found no traffic but a mass of protestors, marching down the streets in an impromptu demonstration.

I looked at the masked faces of these young men and women and went down a rabbit hole in my own head, thinking about the political situation and the future of Asia. After a minute I looked over to Jane and noticed her posture suggested an attitude of sadness and her wide eyes weren’t hopeful but concerned. I’ll refrain from saying what her thoughts on the matter were that she shared later, but her silent song in that moment was one of worry for the well-being of her family, her city, and herself.

I wanted to hear that song. So, for the first time in a long time, I reached out and held her hand. She flinched but then squeezed my fingers tight. Our relationship before that was polite and fun, but obviously physical. Though, in reaching out this way, I unlocked something in her: permission she could grant to herself to be vulnerable. We were helping each other in a superficial way before that moment, but now a path had been paved toward friendship.

Later that night, during our next round of ‘meeting up,’ she was rather cheeky and reached out to hold my hand. This was very sweet, a clear reminder to me that, even if our connection was extremely temporary: it’s worth embracing others even if it’s just for an instant, as that might be all it takes to help them up from their stumbles and onto a better road.

However, I was still a bit defensive (and eternally cheeky myself) so I decided not to let go of her hand while we made love. It became a wager of sorts: we would see who would release their grip first. This was different from our other nights, as we rolled around in the hay while smiling. I exercise often, my daily routine consists of at least a few hundred pushups and sit-ups as well as running a 5k, but this was quite an endeavor. Ms. Jane was, like many of my generation, maybe a bit more concerned with the aesthetics of sex rather than the authenticity of it, or maybe she was just challenging me, but I don’t think I’ve ever rotated through so many positions in a single session before (I was raised out in the countryside but never had the opportunity to participate in “mutton busting” but I’d imagine the experience we had was similar but less cruel). I’ll never forget the unadulterated joy I felt at the end of our bout, with both of us doubled over and laughing, our fingers still locked together.

The song I heard in Jane’s heart when taking her hand sounded something like this. There was a vitality and glee to her that could sometimes be tinged with melancholy and worry. She was able to live in the moment and holding my hand was her way of finding that presentness when the future seemed too imposing. From that time onward, we didn’t just meet in her bed at night but at parks in the daytime too, helping one another to confront our futures with jolly advice. Jane and I don’t talk all that often anymore, as we’re so many miles apart, but every once in a while we’ll check in with one another when life seems a bit too daunting and remember the smiles we unlocked for one another. It was easy to ‘let go’ of her hand, as I had done my duty.

Shortly before COVID-19 hit, I was having troubles sleeping so I bought a larger and firmer pillow than I normal use. I tried it out for a night and it wrecked my neck for a week, but I made an interesting discovery that second night: it was no stuffed bear and I certainly wasn’t going to give it a name, but I slept much better and felt better about myself if I ‘hugged’ that pillow in bed.

On one hand, I found this revelation to be absolutely humiliating. In Japan they have what’s known as a Dakimakura, which is basically a body pillow with the image of an anime girl/boy printed on it, functioning as a ‘security object.’ A stuffed bear would be a security object for a small child but a grown adult typically should not need to resort to such a device (***in my opinion***), as I believe it encourages infantilization and codependence as well as exacerbates the inherent degree of separation anxiety that an individual already possesses. I don’t allow myself ‘crutches’ in life for fear of becoming reliant or addicted to external means for happiness, so this wasn’t a tremendously empowering discovery.

However, on the other hand, in addition to the psychological benefits it apparently had, I measured my actions in regards to their ethical worth. By my count there are up to seven women in Denver I could invite into my bed in order to satisfy my need to provide affection as well as receive it. But in extending such an offer, I would likely be deceiving them into an embrace that could only be temporary and only end in disaster; reducing us to slaves shackled by dopamines, forsaking the authenticity of affection for the simple side effects. After about a week of feeling confused about my pillowy bedmate, I concluded that it is likely healthier and more ethical to slightly humanize the inanimate rather than dehumanize the living even one degree.

I was content with my pillow, my work, and my solitude…until the rays of a sunny June day drifted onto my hand in the form of another’s.

Mary

“Captain, she’s signaling us. Says she’s excited to go out on Thursday.”

“Load a poem. Aim. Fire.”

“…She’s sending a poem of her own in return.”

“…No matter how this ends: it’s been an honor sailing with you.”

Before our first date, I knew that Mary was professional and intelligent but was worried that she’d be a downright bore. I’m a bit stuck-up and impatient, it’s difficult for me to really connect with someone whom I don’t feel an ‘intellectual’ bond. I went out with a mind-meltingly attractive model in Hong Kong, the type of woman that could cause a car accident just by walking down the sidewalk, and declined a third date because she thought “history and philosophy are a waste of time.” Okay well, Carmine, I literally mentioned I’m writing a play about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s time in pre-war Vienna, but don’t mind me! Just payin’ for ya over-priced Italian dinner over here! Dai!

I met Mary on a Thursday; a beautiful navy blue dress outside a red brick building. She didn’t look like she did in her photos, she looked better. Stupefying. She spoke in extremely unpretentious statements that were filled with forethought. In less than thirty seconds I felt my walls being torn down, four years earlier than normal. I forgot the day of the week, my name, how to drive, which way was up, and where to pick up our Mediterranean dinner. Stupefying. But never in so long had I felt more present, more comfortable, and more ‘Jesse.’ “I’ll die if I cannot hold her hand. And if I hold her hand, then any death I shall suffer will be all the more endurable.” She was sweet, funny, and thoughtful, and I wanted nothing more than to hear her song.

We had traded poems before this, she wrote a ‘cheesy’ one about a past relationship that really stuck with me. The subject matter was familiar but the structure was barbed and sunk its teeth into me. On that first date, she was excited to get my notes about her work. I had plenty, but wanted to be specific.

Mary and I sat on the grassy shore of a lake, eating our dinner and discussing life for an audience of ducks before we moved on to ‘critiquing’ her writing. I often speak in metaphors but was struggling to convey a specific point to her in a way that wouldn’t sound cliché or pretentious. The point I wanted to make was that technique, style, word choice, and meter are significant when writing a poem but that the ‘spark’ or ‘life’ in it is the most important aspect; there’s no use in being ‘technically’ perfect if the work itself has no soul.

I searched for the words for a moment before asking to holding her hand to illustrate my point. What I was going to say, quite confidently, was that each aspect of writing might be a finger but what really matters is the heartbeat in the palm. But the instant I held her fingers in mine, I felt twenty years younger. It was not that I was holding Helen’s hand, nor Julia’s or Stacy’s; I felt the performativity that accumulates with adolescence and adulthood fall away. I’m youthful and energetic enough, but I felt young and full of fire.

“Captain?!”

“Drop anchor.”

I stumbled through explaining my metaphor and let go of her hand, but still felt like a child. Mary was not a perfect person, our conversations weren’t unimaginably amazing, but each new word that tumbled from her tongue filled me with wonder. I didn’t even need to agree with what she said and I wasn’t complimenting her for the sake of getting in her pants, I had simply not been so existentially astounded by a person in a very long time.

She would throw her head back and laugh at my jokes, write down literary references I was making, and was so curious about my life. Normally I would take this as a sign that someone is trying too hard to force a connection but this was not the case; in conversation with her, I was funnier than I normally feel, smarter than I usually feel, and just a better human being than I feel most of the time. I wasn’t staring into a mirror and finding pleasure in the way she made me feel, I was simply rising to the occasion demanded by me in interacting with one of the most impressive people I had ever met. I knew, very quickly, that I was falling not for the way someone made me feel but the person themselves.

“Captain?!”

“Fire a shot.”

I needed to buy some time, so I asked her to take a minute or two to look around the park and come up with an idea for a poem. No sooner did the prompt leave my lips she responded with, “Actually I think I already have one.” She pointed out the way that the streetlights were reflecting on the water and crafted a very clever metaphor for the phenomenon.

I later told her how I felt about this moment; regardless of whatever ‘Mary and Jesse’ became, it would be because of her answer to my challenge. I would not use the word ‘love’ but only because I had so much yet to learn about her, though it was undeniable that she had fired a shot (purposefully or not) that caused every man on my inner battleship to go outside stand on deck, as if she’d dropped an atomic bomb and all they could do was marvel at her. If I we were to date or get married or have kids, it would be because of that moment.

We talked for hours. The alarm for my bedtime went off but we pushed on. The alarm for her bedtime went off and we continued. It became so dark that I couldn’t see her face but was enraptured by the brushstrokes of her words.

She had just moved to Denver. She told me how she’d be going to get her motorcycle from out of state and driving it to Colorado in July. Two dangerous thoughts entered my head. The first: worry, and worry that I worried. I had a sudden tug at my stomach, concerned for the future safety of this person I’d only just met. The second: understanding. When I was young, I really wanted to be a race car driver. This means that all of my current-day mentalities and metaphors are colored by motorsports references. It’s by no means a ‘deal-breaker’ if a young woman has no interest, but the idea that I could say, “When I write a poem, I try to rev-match for a late apex” and Mary might know what I was talking about was infinitely appealing to me.

On the way back to my car, I asked if I could hold her hand. I thought about just doing it without requesting but I wanted to be as diplomatic as possible, I think she thought it was cute. But the minute our fingers embraced, I could not stop shaking to save my life. I hadn’t had such a thing happen since I was maybe thirteen years old. An absolute tidal wave of butterflies crashed over my battleship and I could barely speak. I’d rolled around in the hay with lingerie models, PhDs, and women that had literally charmed my pants off, but simply holding hands with this girl was unhinging my jaw.

“Captain, there’s too many butterflies, we’re gonna tip over!”

“Don’t let her see! Get her talking!”

I asked a question, very slowly so as not to signal that I was probably slurring my words, so that I could try to recover before we got to my car. It’d be a terrible end to a date if my arms were too shaky to keep us from flying off the road. I don’t think she noticed that she had inebriated me and I evaded discovery, dropping her off at her apartment and sailing away into the night.

I opened my phone to see a text from a dear friend asking, “Did you have that date tonight? How did it go?” And before I jumped on the highway I sent over the only reaction I could, “This good.”

I had never met someone who set me so at ease and simultaneously scared the absolute shit out of me. She was authentically gorgeous, with the intellect of a supercomputer, and a personality that I could not shake from my soul. I had never met someone that I admired so much in such a short amount of time. The instant we parted that night, I felt the vacuum of her absence. I had only become aware of this young woman six days before and I missed her after only just meeting her. I was scared shitless.

We set a second date for the following week. I asked her out again with a poem and she accepted with a poem. I refrained from looking at pictures of her or hearing her voice. I was a beacon of confidence yet fractured by uncertainty. I could close my eyes and not only see her but feel her, and not because I was actively thinking of her. That charm, that wit, that grace, that attitude, that presence: I found her warm amber eyes wherever I looked. The infinite ripples of her sapphire soul. The dulcet barbs of her disposition. I was unequivocally smitten and the crew aboard my battleship were not having it.

“She is just a girl and Jesse has always thrived in solitude.”

“Mary is not just a girl, did you hear her philosophies on measuring ambition?”

“He was just humoring her.”

“No, he’s not just thinking about her but her advice and that was four days ago! He likes her brain and her heart.”

“Yeah, did you hear all that crap about ‘amber eyes’ and ‘sapphire souls?’”

“Mary is not just another girl.”

“Aye.”

“Lads, I’m not saying she’s a wife or even a girlfriend, but it is very clear that he legitimately likes her. So they’ll either moor together or she’s going to sink us.”

I asked her a question at some point during that first date only to rudely interrupt her answer with a compliment, “Sorry but I just really like the way you talk.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say and not something I’ve ever expressed to anyone, but it’s because I’ve never felt that way about anyone. The way in which she articulated her thoughts was unlike any I had ever experienced, I felt an unprecedented sense of understanding.

The day we met I wrote a poem about her, and did the same the following day, and each day after. Every day that she crossed my mind, I used that energy to write a poem, not for anyone but me. I thought it best not to waste my emotions and committed them to words. After we went on our first date, I started writing songs about her, I’d literally sit in front of the keyboard with a bass strapped to me looking for the chords that sounded like how she made me feel (every song I ever wrote with Helen was with a bass and every song I wrote in by myself in Beijing was on a keyboard). Mary was never made aware of my creations, I would never be so ridiculous as to tell a girl I just met, “Yeah, I think I legitimately like you so much that I’ve written almost two albums of material about you.”

But I did my homework in listening to those dissenting sailors in my head. “Do I like her just because I’d like to sleep with her?” No, that’d be great but I’m legitimately over the moon just texting with her. “Do you like talking to her because you’re lonely or bored?” No, because I’m actually busy and have to make time to see her, I don’t have a spare minute to be lonely or bored as it is. “Are you using her simply as an outlet for affection or a way to generate it for yourself?” No, because I could find that much easier and more often in other young women. “Is it simply because she’s new that you like her; is she just the latest mouse for you to play with?” No, I don’t open up so easily or so fast; there’s an inherency to her that clicks for me, terrifyingly enough.

I presented her with three options for our second date, out of one million ideas I had. I would have been content sitting on a block of concrete and listening to her thoughts on literally anything, but I wanted to make sure that her Saturday would be as good as I could possibly make it. She chose a hike, preferably one with “lots of wildflowers.” Ten options popped into my head, I spent an hour going online and checking hiking forums to check which ones were still covered in snow. I asked what her favorite flower was, to narrow down the options. “Lilies, especially red ones :) ”

Lilies, in Colorado, in June, is not really possible. So I called up no less than two dozen florists over the course of an hour. “Do you have red lilies in stock?” “In this economy? During a pandemic? Keep dreaming, pal.” Eventually I found some and hid them in my trunk.

The day of our second date I made a playlist of music I anticipated that she might like. I thought about everything we’d talked about, how she made me feel, how I hoped I made her feel, the thoughts and theories that she proposed, and just the general ‘soundtrack’ that I wanted to accompany the date. Whatever melodies were in our hearts, I wanted the music we listened to in the car to at least fill a congruent atmosphere. It sounds like a ridiculous effort but I knew exactly what I wanted the playlist to ‘say’ to Mary so it wasn’t all that difficult.

I picked her up outside of that red brick building. Her navy blue dress from the previous date maybe have been beautiful but it hid most of her features. I’ve neglected to mention that Mary was also a model. She came out wearing a black tank-top and jean shorts, which rendered me speechless, other than a hug and a- “You look absolutely…effervescent.” This woman was pulling vocabulary from the most obscure shelves of my vernacular. Her outfit was a combination that teenage Jesse would have dreamed of but the sailors aboard my current battleship were anxious in accepting.

“Aw hell. Tell her to go put on something infinitely less…aw HELL.”

“Well, if we sink, at least it’s within sight of such a splendiferous butt.”

But the sailors weren’t finished. Again, to say I was nervous would be inaccurate, that would imply that I was uncomfortable. To the contrary, I had never really met anyone who made me so comfortable while simultaneously scaring the absolute shit out of me.

On the first date, my butterflies energized me, prompting me to be direct and playful. On the second date they didn’t just bog me down but neutralized my existence entirely. I became the most boring person in history, a passenger in my own head. In the worst way, a hostage to her splendiferousness.

Making conversation, she asked me what the difference between a director and a cinematographer is, which should have earned the simple, “The director is basically the leader of the entire crew, the cinematographer is the leader of the camera and lighting teams” but instead earned her a meandering, twenty-minute response that lead to an answer even less clear. I was destroying my own date, talking too much and defaulting to an insanely-neutral personality that was not my own. She asked me if I knew any Mandarin and, instead of answering her in the Mandarin that I do know, where I could have both joked and flirted with her, I sheepishly said “Not really.” Why? Why was I undermining my afternoon with someone I really liked? I could have even answered in French! But my “je m’en foutisme” had been taken prisoner by an unwelcome impartiality.

A minefield that I had to navigate with Mary is that a certain percentage of her opinions were completely identical to mine, regardless of how I was behaving. It’s not very enlightening or endearing to reply to each musing with, “One-hundred-percent, totally.” That was an active endeavor on the first date, taking care not to seem like I was just agreeing with her to be polite. But on our second date, my agreeances were silent and my disagreements betrayed me by manifesting themselves as false agreement. I was too nice, too accommodating, and inauthentic, all unintentionally and all despite my best efforts to correct my behavior.

We hiked through a canyon together and there came a time when we had to cross a river via a few rocks with odd spacing. I went first and stopped halfway across, where I turned and evaluated the situation. Mary was extremely independent, that’s what I liked about her, but what if she needed help crossing the gap? What would be more insulting: asking if she needed assistance or to not offer it?

The men on my battleship thumbed through thousands of files of previous battle plans. Betty literally needed a hand as a physical brace, Helen and Stacy required one for emotional support, Julia needed to be guided, Jane’s day was bettered by an embrace, and so many others in life had some direct reaction to taking my hand. But Mary was her own person entirely, so I risked it:

“Do you, uh, want any help?”

“I got it.”

She wasn’t pleased. She wasn’t pissed but there wasn’t an upward inflection in her voice. My offer was rejected but I wasn’t surprised, Mary was one of the most impressive people I’d ever met because of her confidence, drive, and determination in all things. I felt as if maybe I had insulted her but didn’t regret asking, I would rather have asked someone not wanting help than not reach out to someone who might have needed it.

Near the apex of the hike, Mary asked about dinner and what I wanted. This was a minefield that I had no answer for. Food is not much of a priority in my life, I don’t have strong preferences. But I have strong desires for whomever I’m with to have a great meal of their choosing. I hemmed and hawed for a moment, struggling to convey that she probably cares about food more than I do, so a meal tailored to my preferences has less value than one tailored to hers, but expressing this in a way that didn’t make me seem like a dull, lifeless, pushover was impossible on this day for some reason.

I describe this second date as a complete disaster but that’s more of an indictment on my behavior than the experience itself. I still said things that made her throw her head back and laugh. We were both able to open up a little more about our lives and families. Textured talks of work, life, and artistic philosophies were abundant. I had no idea if this date was as much fun or as enjoyable to her as the first one, but I knew that I was drowning.

I came across as indecisive, which is not reflective of my authentic self. I’m a writer and director, every decision I make from morning until night has drastic repercussions for dozens of artists, millions of dollars, and unknown potential success/failures; every day of my life is more decisive than the last. Yet I moved through this second date of ours as if it was totally superfluous, totally antithetical to my actual personality.

We sat in another park and, after presenting her with her red lilies and having some conversation over our take-out sushi, I decided to call a mutiny. My battleship was dead in the water, I was not myself and not sure where the ‘real me’ had sailed off to, and it was time to salvage whatever I could from my inner calamity. There had been hints of future dates between us so I pivoted the conversation to a more direct approach.

I told her, honestly but not completely, how I felt about her and our time together so far. I didn’t say it so bluntly, but I layered in that I was ‘off my game’ on this second encounter and, very diplomatically, asked if she’d be interested in seeing each other maybe more than once a week. I had very little ‘undeniable’ indications of how she felt about me, there were some clear green flags that she had flown in our interactions but none too blatant. I wasn’t faking a personality or not being my true self, but I didn’t want any more pretension to completely sabotage this date or any future ones. I laid all my cards on the table and served the ball to her.

Mary perked up. She was appreciative and receptive. She said, “The way I see it, there are only three options at a point like this. The first option is that we never see or talk to one another again. The second is that we hang out again as friends. The third is that we go on a third date.” At this point, had you put a gun to my head and asked me to guess what she’d say next, it would be completely impossible for me to predict what her preference was.

Had I so thoroughly bored her and ruined this afternoon that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with me ever again in any capacity? Very possible, I felt like the very worst human on Earth for not living up to my own self. Had I inherently connected with her enough that she wanted to be friends but was now clearly not interested in a romantic connection? Quite possible, we had an inarguable degree of chemistry but maybe not enough or maybe she had seen something on this second date that completely dissuaded her from thinking of me as a potential lover. Or was she being very diplomatic as well, saying that we might not call ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend at this exact moment but that we should continue to explore the prospect of a romantic relationship? We had traded lengthy texts, poetry, conversations, and laughs, so this was certainly a possibility as well.

I lived a thousand lifetimes in the three second pause between her outline and her answer. I had no expectations whatsoever, our first date had been a “ten out of ten” in her words, but maybe she was being polite? Or maybe this second date was simply too abysmal? Or maybe I was just anxious and she actually enjoyed the connection between us.

She said, with a smile, “At this point, the third option is not possible.”

In the most polite, kind, and transparent way possible, a torpedo zipped straight across the picnic blanket and struck me broadside. I wasn’t surprised, just quite obviously disappointed. Maybe she never thought of me as a potential romantic partner, maybe she felt that way within the first minute of meeting me, maybe something did or didn’t happen on that first date to lead her to this conclusion. Or maybe something on this second date, in regards to the fact that I was not myself (but not that she knew that), was all it took to confirm her disinterest.

I remember my body language changed as I deflated but I obviously didn’t want to make a gigantic scene. I’m an adult. Internally, however, the battleship had been hit and was slowly taking on water. I’ve been rejected before, I’ve had unrequited feelings for another; I don’t particularly enjoy the experience but it’s not something I have a fear of. Much like Babe Ruth pointing to the home run he was about to hit, I set my sights on a person, what I want to do for them, what I’d like to be to them, and do my best when the pitch comes my way (like I said before, “Je m’en foutisme”). My entire life is defined by aiming for the rafters and snickering if/when I fall in the mud. However, and maybe it was because of that child-like awe that Mary reduced me to, my inner psyche had never ground to a halt like this. My crew may have been hurt before but my boat had never been rocked.

I had never met a woman quite like Mary nor fallen for someone in the way I had with her, more than once I had sincerely joked that she was ‘my exception,’ and in addressing this uncomfortable moment she proved to be so.

I’m not sure who reached out first, but shortly after the torpedo, she swam out to meet me and hold my hand. I’d like to think she embraced me but I’m almost certain that I diplomatically requested it. I was able to open up to her about my disappointment and perspective about how I thought things were going between us. She reacted not simply by patting me, “There there, it’s okay” but illuminating her interpretations and opinions about the events of our two dates. I don’t think she was performing or being inauthentic before, but unfortunately the most true Jesse and Mary met each other for the first time when discussing that there would be no more dates between them.

We stayed in the park for three or four hours, holding hands and hugging. I had never reacted in this way to a disappointment but had certainly never met someone who would stay with me and help me find my way back to shore. Of course, I imagine that she would have rather left a bit earlier than we did, but it was in embracing her for so long that I was able to understand that the second option for us, the one of a potential friendship, was actually possible.

The last thing that a young person might want with a connection that was formerly romantic is to transition to friendship, far too often the notion can be insincere and unrealistic. In the instant that she said “We can be friends” I remember outright rejecting it internally. Every sailor on that battleship was screaming that it’d be lethal to fraternize with the vessel that just ‘attacked’ us. I absolutely adored Mary, simply being ‘friends’ sounded like a mountain too daunting to climb. But her kindness, generosity, and selflessness in holding my hand during this episode helped me to realize that my fortune in meeting her needed not be based on romantic potential but the possibility for a profound positive influence to be present in my life.

I hugged her goodbye, tightly, and urged her to be careful in driving her motorcycle into Colorado. I knew we were unlikely to talk again before her adventure, so I wished her safe travels before we parted.

My inner sailors debated whether I should have worn a different shirt, or not been so clean-shaven, or not worn shorts (I have runner/cyclist legs, not ‘leg day’ legs), but these were all pointless and superfluous details that wouldn’t have made a difference. On the drive home I thought I was fine, but my ship was not just taking on water but slowly sinking. I had not realized just how unique Mary was, not only in general but as a force in my life.

I don’t have enough pride or fear of embarrassment to stop me from admitting that I was inoperable for a long time after Mary’s rejection. It absolutely devastated me, tearing a hole through so many aspects of my life that I didn’t grant it any permission to enter. Laced with radiation, my heart, mind, body, and soul became gangrenous.

My reaction was completely unbecoming of the ‘supportive advisor’ role that I tried to embody for others. In the slowest meltdown of the modern era, I completely withdrew from the world. My professional, social, and familial life deteriorated. I couldn’t talk to anyone, other than very close friends, and became so detached from my immediate reality that any sense of who I was as a human being sank completely below the surface. All because of a young woman that I knew for all of three weeks, who just wasn’t into me. I didn’t understand why my reaction was so monumental.

I deleted a lot of my social media. I had to give interviews about one of my short films winning awards, and did so with the fakest smile in history. I couldn’t even hold my pillow in bed at night, pushing it onto the floor. I saw myself as amoeba floating through a starry void, empty of any and all interaction.

Writing poems or songs about Mary obviously stopped the night of our parting. Even if they were composed in sadness, it would not be appropriate or healthy to ruminate on someone who was so polite in declaring that she doesn’t want to interact with you. In truly dismal moments I recited a somber mantra, “She doesn’t like you, she doesn’t care about you, she doesn’t want to interact with you.” It’s not that she disliked me, but I needed to coax my restless heart to return to a more silent state.

We had talked about sending writings to each other, for feedback and critique, and I took her up on that offer. I had a collection of poems and short stories that I had wanted her take on since the day we met, so I sent that over and requested that we meet in person to go over her thoughts. Text and phone calls are very unconducive to creative growth, every wonderful note I’ve ever gotten on a screenplay was gifted to me by someone sitting across from me.

She started reading my writing and texted that she “LOVED” it and asked if we could meet two weeks from that point so she’d have time to not only finish it but reread it. Her words were obviously a bit of sugar for my inner ego, it’s nice when someone you hold in such high esteem enjoys what you’ve poured a little portion of your soul into. She might not have loved me but admiring the first few entries of my work was a vain consolation prize.

I quadrupled-down on my lack of expectations and hopes for our meeting in the sense that I set it up in my head as the very last time I would ever see Mary. She didn’t really text me all that much, we don’t cross paths as often as I’d want, and I doubt she would ever actually send me any of her writing. I resolved to go into that meeting, savor every word that floated from her tongue, absorb her probably-brutal notes (Mary was always very direct with me about the quality of my metaphors and wobbly meter in some of my casual poems, a sassy honesty that I cherished her for), and understand that the hug we’d share at our parting would be the last time I’d ever see her. We’d drift apart, not because I wanted to, but because I was just some guy that she didn’t have feelings for and only went on a few dates with in her twenties. I wanted to be as positive of an influence in her life as possible, but our level of interaction was more dependent on her interest than mine.

Independent of this meeting, I tried to get my life back in order. My battleship had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, killing most of those on board, so I set out to build a new one. I reached out to a very important and influential friend with a gift and a letter, attempting to mend the wonky relationship between us, but only ended up burning that bridge unintentionally (I’m sorry, Alyssa), which set me back. I focused on better goals for myself, independent of my career, aiming to infuse my life with a bit more happiness. I became a bit more open with my friends and family, choosing to ask for help more often. I started writing more public pieces, in an effort to help others in ways other than direct affection.

Five days before Mary and I were set to meet, I received a text message from her that started with “Hey Jesse! Hope you had a good weekend :) I’m sorry to do this but-” and my heart sank. Ah, she has a boyfriend now, and it’d be inappropriate for us to meet, right? Or she just realized that she doesn’t even want to be friends, right? I opened the text with some hesitance but wasn’t ready for her actual revelation.

Mary had crashed her motorcycle in the Rocky Mountains a week before we were to meet and was regretful in informing me that she’d need to recover for a few weeks.

“Captain!?”

“Full steam ahead!”

I’m not sure if my heart had ever beat faster than it did in that hour. I did the math of how quickly I could pick up red lilies, some of her favorite foods, and aspirin/medical supplies before arriving at her place. It took all of my effort to stop and repeat, “She doesn’t like you, she doesn’t care about you, she doesn’t want to interact with you. You cannot go over there.”

Had our final date only been a week before, I would have gone. She would have been offended and probably creeped out, but I would have at least had the appropriateness of recency on my side. Had we gone out on a third date or more, it wouldn’t have been a question: I would have distracted her with texts as I raced over to the florist, food, and pharmacy before knocking on her door.

It absolutely destroyed me to not be able to comfort a young woman that I had tremendous fondness for, it was contrary to the fabric of my very being to not race to embrace her.

When we were going out, I didn’t actively ‘fantasize’ about a relationship with Mary because I wasn’t giving myself any room to have expectations of who she was or what she would become, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t succumb to split-second daydreams. No matter if ‘we’ were short, medium, or long term: I wanted to make her laugh and feel safe and happy. I wanted to learn her fears, feel her impatience, and witness her anger. To make her bad days better and her great days stupendous. To amplify her successes to the world and reassure her in quiet moments of failure. To teach her and learn from her. To take photos of her, professional and personal. To tell her my tales and soak in her stories. To play chess in the park. I wanted us to define ‘trouble,’ get into it, talk our way out of it, and snicker all the way back.

To dry the tears she couldn’t hold back and fill her smiles with hope and joy. To make her pasta and eat it by the fire. To genuinely flirt with her and make her truly blush so that she’d fake punch my arm in fake disapproval. To learn how to cook her vegan foods and then learn how to do it better. To protect her (I didn’t lose a fight after seventeen). To go on a motorcycle road trip somewhere, someday. To cool her in the summers with silly dances and warm her on a frigid New Years with a kiss and a goofy wink. Even if we only made it to a third or fourth or fifth date, I wanted to hike a valley full to the brim with wildflowers, read our books on the shore of a quiet forest pond, fall asleep on one another, and melt…

…Or, who knows, maybe I wouldn’t have liked her after a third date. But we didn’t get that far. And that’s not why we met.

I don’t believe in destiny or fate, or that there is even a god to have a ‘plan,’ but it was in my extremely stifled reaction to her motorcycle accident (“Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything”) that I heard Mary’s melody.

The song I heard in Mary’s heart when taking her hand, each time, sounded something like this. There’s so much of her that I’ll never get the opportunity to experience, but when I was able to hold her I heard chords unlike any I was familiar with, full of her melancholies and hopes. I saw streaks of color in her, combinations that I had never considered before and wanted to see more. My brain was forced to reconfigure and reprogram, changing me. I didn’t have enough time with her to flesh out those chords, to wade into the waters of that sapphire soul, and to contribute my own melody to the auditoriums in her heart.

But she didn’t need to be held. It was not I that was hurtling toward her hand, but she mine. To teach me that, after twenty-five years of listening to other’s melodies, maybe I should acknowledge the one inside myself.

I lost the idea that someone would ever love me for more than just sex when I spent time with Jane. I lost my faith when walking with Betty. I lost my health with Stacy. I lost a close friend on the short film I made with Julia. They bulldozed the building where I went to daycare, which I would be sentimental about if it wasn’t the also place where I was abused by an employee when I was only three years old, too small to fight and too naïve to scream.

I’ve spent the last quarter-century squeezing other’s cheeks to make them giggle and holding their hands so they could find peace, expecting that maybe someone would reach out and hold my hand with the intentions that I had when holding theirs, like a sentimental idiot; a true romantic, a Narcissus not drowning by embracing himself but others as a defense mechanism. A distraction, directing attention to Helen so that no one thinks to ask that traumatized little boy how he’s doing. A diversion, so that no one notices the teenage asshole David who starts unwise brawls with drunk Goliaths so that his outsides will hurt just as much as his insides do. A mental negligence, searching for the melodies in others to deafen the silence inside of himself.

The most important part of holding hands with another is understanding that your grasp is just as important as theirs. When your “best friend in the entire world” is a girl you’ve known since you were a toddler, people are quick to assume that you’re some combination of “gay,” “delicate,” or just “hilarious,” which was always fine by me, as the truth that she earned the title by simply holding my hand while I cried in the bathroom and drying my tears with her bib isn’t quite as humorous.

Maybe Mary never liked me, maybe she’s just that nice and charming to everyone, but I do wish I had learned my lesson earlier in life so that I could have at least played my song for her. I felt so empty on that second date, like I contributed nothing to her, because I didn’t allow myself to. I was so moved by her that I wrote literal songs about her that I could have literally sang from literal mountaintops, but somehow couldn’t find the strength to lower that last wall and just be myself, angel and asshole alike. I’ve been described as a “goofy motherfucker” in so many young women’s giggles, and never seized the opportunity to attempt giving her that kind of joy.

It’s still likely I’ll see Mary again. If she remembers, we’ll meet in a few weeks to discuss my writing and I’ll hold my breath the entire time. Not because I expect her to say, “Actually, about that third date…” but I’ll be committing as much of her existence as possible toward clarifying my chords. I’ll strip-mine her for every last bit of positive influence I can, both for my art and my self. She’ll have some critique that will be instrumental toward improving my piece of writing but she’ll play some other silent note, unintentionally, that’ll reverberate inside of me, one that I’ll use to echo-locate some of those missing notes in my melody. Who knows, hopefully it’s in a major key.

Then we’ll share a warm hug goodbye and it’ll slice me like a paper cut. I’ll either never see her ever again in my entire life or she might reach out again. She’ll be some new Helen, where we share laughs and works for twenty years, or she’ll be some new Betty, where we both die without a thought about that random person we went on a couple dates with in our twenties. Though I’m sure that’s more true of her than me, her kindness was a lifeboat for me and I’m not all that sure I made an impression on her, which is not a ratio I will accept ever again:

It is very important that you make an effort to fully grasp the hands of others, even with the knowledge that life or death will inevitably pull your fingers apart; much in the same way it’s important to play your song even if there isn’t another on stage to sing along.

Mary and I shared a call where she clarified why she held my hand for so long that night, “Because it seemed like you needed it.” Like I said: sweet and smart, the man that gets to date her better enjoy the music. She said she’s probably going to buy a faster motorcycle sometime after she recovers. A woman after my own heart; a shame I didn’t get that invitation to hers, but her kindness when I needed it the most was a blessing all its own.

I’ve spent recent nights not only hugging my pillow but reaching out and holding my own hand. Maybe this is the behavior of ‘the world’s loneliest boy,’ but I’m not that boy. I have three screenplays to write, two films to produce, a university to attend, and an apartment to design; I’m too busy to be lonesome. No, I hold my hand to find my melody, so the next Helen, Julia, Stacy, Betty, or Mary doesn’t have to play ‘our’ chords herself. Sometimes I think I can hear it in my heartbeat.

“Captain, we’re getting something over the radio. Is it a distress signal?”

“Nah; it‘s a bit rough, but I think the boy’s finding his tune.”

“Catchy.”

Jesse Stewart is an American filmmaker, writer, and heartened-hand-holder for Epocene Motion Picture Company.

Others in the ‘How To’ Series:

How to: Keep a Journal and Your Sanity

How to: Write a Thank-You Letter to a Mortal Enemy

How to: Be More Virtuous (with the Help of a Drunk Nudist)