bakerstreet | The Nonsexual Intimacy Meme

The Nonsexual Intimacy Meme

The Nonsexual Intimacy Meme

Intimacy is NOT necessarily about full sexual contact. Intimacy is all about two people forming a connection and bond between them. That involves becoming best friends, trusting each other, knowing each other, understanding each other. Intimacy is grown and developed, it can't be rushed.

Nonsexual forms of intimacy can add a great deal of depth and variety to fiction. On one end of the spectrum, they provide extra steps to support the journey from meeting a potential mate through romance, sex, and marriage. In the middle, they convey the import of family and professional connections, distinguishing those from more casual acquaintances. On the other end, they form much of the glue in primary relationships for people who don't base their ties on sexuality. Sex and romance are valuable, but they're not everything.

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Hair care. Brushing, braiding, washing, cutting -- all of these involve a lot of careful touching in ways that many people enjoy. Hair braiding is a bonding experience in some cultures. In fact, grooming is a bonding technique for social primates in general. People without close ties to others often treat themselves to regular salon visits as a socially acceptable way to meet the need for touch and interaction.
Shaving. This involves an unusually high level of trust, especially if the person is using a straight-edge razor or something else with an exposed blade rather than just a buzzer. Although it can apply to women, shaving is one of the few forms of physical intimacy that is most closely associated with men due to their facial hair. Initiaton into shaving is a major milestone for becoming a man, not just for boys during puberty but also for transsexuals during transition.
Bathing. This varies by culture; in America most people bathe alone but some other cultures practice communal bathing. A bath is usually more intimate than a shower, although a public bath can be non-intimate and small shower stall can be intimate. It's also different when two people wash each other (an exchange of intimacy and affection) than when one person washes someone else (more of a caretaking or protective gesture).
Feeding. A classic romantic motif involves lovers feeding each other, but it works as a way of providing and caring for someone in any context. Like bathing, it can also clue whether both parties are participating equally or one is taking care of the other (temporarily or regularly). This one has an existential flavor since survival depends on food supply.
Seeing someone without their adaptive equipment on. This includes glasses, dentalware, prosthetic limbs, a wheelchair, etc. Adaptive equipment is part of one's presentation to the everyday world, and taking it off can be as intimate as removing clothing, for many people in many contexts.
Holding Hands: There can be many reasons for this gesture. Physical closeness, offering comfort, or staying together in a crowd, all may have you reaching for someone.
Undressing someone. This can be kind of a one-way experience if the recipient isn't awake, and is often awkward for both people if they are awake. Sometimes it happens because hands are out of commission, but a more common example is someone passing out drunk. Overheating is another good reason. Different circumstances can imply different levels of intimacy.
Sharing secrets. This especially applies to talking about personal issues that aren't widely known. An exchange of secrets is a common ritual between "best friends" among girls and women, but appears elsewhere as well. Some things are only discussed among people with a common reference; veterans may be more comfortable discussing war memories with each other than civilians.
Ordering for someone in a restaurant. Acquiring food, without asking the other person what to get, shows a knowledge of their needs and desires. Providing food is also a gesture of support and sustenance.
Providing moral support at a major event. Helping someone get through a funeral, a trial, or other intense but not crisis situation is usually performed by a very dear friend. This is a situation where lovers or family members may be too close to the matter to be much use.
Crying on someone. When you cry, you tend to let your guard down. Most of the people close to you will see you cry at some point, so that can be a milestone in a relationship. Actually crying on someone, letting them hold you, is even more intimate.
Serving in a primary role for someone during a wedding. This includes the best man or maid of honor at a wedding, or stand-in for absent parents, etc. as well as the traditional family roles. One aspect of intimacy is sharing each other's lives, including ceremonies and transitions.
Comforting someone after a bad breakup. Moments of great vulnerability can bring people closer. While this role sometimes falls to family, breakup repair more often goes to a woman's female friends or a man's male friends.
Listening to someone's heartbeat or breathing. Close body contact, enough to carry soft personal sounds, tends to be comforting as well as connecting, as it touches on positive childhood memories for most people. It is shared between parent and child, sometimes between siblings, and later between lovers. Tight nonsexual partners may also do this.
Putting someone to bed. Interestingly, this activity can happen among people who are just getting to know each other -- most often if someone passes out drunk, but exhaustion can have a similar effect. It's a gesture of caring to put someone to bed rather than leave them where they drop. A milder version involves draping a blanket or coat over a person asleep on a couch or the like.
Sleeping in the same bed. This is an act of shared vulnerability and intimacy. Lovers customarily do this; so do some siblings or friends, especially as children. People may also be driven to share a bed, sleeping bag, etc. for warmth or lack of other accommodations in challenging circumstances.
Watching someone sleep. There is more vulnerability on the part of the sleeper, and more intimacy from the watcher, when only one person is asleep. Parents often watch their children sleep. Lovers sometimes do this with each other, which can be cute or creepy. It's also a guard position, useful for showing that one character seeks to protect another.
Waking someone up from a nightmare. A subtler form of rescue than more physical actions, this is still a gesture of protection and caring. It often leads to comfort afterwards. A typical courtesy between parent and child, or lovers, this can also be an early threshold for characters thrust together unexpectedly if one of them has sturdy daytime walls and a lot of issues. It is common, but often unspoken, among war buddies or veterans, many of whom have nightmares.
Sharing clothes, jewelry, other personal items. This is common between siblings or close female friends. Sometimes roommates do it too. Wearing someone else's shirt or bathrobe is typical in romantic relationships, so can suggest a similar level of intimacy even in the absence of sex.
Cleaning someone else's living space. This shows care and knowledge on the part of the cleaner, and trust on the part of the recipient. You have to know what NOT to throw away or move. It's typical of family members and roommates. Coworkers may clean each other's desk, office space, etc.
Living together. This is a big step, even if it's just for a little while. Housemates are in each other's pockets; it's hard to keep secrets. Family members and lovers often live together, but housemates who are family-of-choice form a category of their own. If you don't want a romantic partner, a permanent housemate is a good choice for someone to share your life with.
Childbirth. Attending the blessed event entails providing a lot of moral support for hours under high stress. It can create a bond with the baby as well as with the mother. When planned, this opportunity is only offered to the closest family members or friends, barring professionals. But it can happen by surprise in very awkward circumstances, a popular motif in fiction.
Saving someone's life. Quick action in a life-threatening situation demonstrates how much one person values another. This can create a strong sense of connection, and sometimes obligation. It often, though not always, entails personal risk for the rescuer. This is fairly typical for military buddies or police partners, etc.
Risking your life for someone. Placing someone else ahead of your own life shows their importance to you unequivocally. This often, though not always, involves trying to save or protect another person. While it can create a sense of gratitude, it frequently causes anger as well -- someone who loves you will generally object to you endangering yourself, even to protect them. Military and police buddies protect each other regularly.
Making emergency decisions for someone. This reveals both how well you know the person, and how much you care about them -- whether you know what they would want, and act on it even if it differs from your personal preference. Unlike some of the other options, in this one the initial action is often outweighed by the aftermath. Both characters have to deal with the results of the decisions, good or bad.
Deathwatch. Dying can be as intimate as giving birth. Staying with someone while they pass is an act of love; so is providing moral support to someone sitting deathwatch for a family member or other person. Many soldiers and police have done this for someone.

(taken from here)

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"If I had a dollar," Jim replies, waving an arm, "for every time you wanted me to wait and see that I was still a jerk. I could. I could."

Oh, God, thinking is so hard right now.

"...pay somebody else to wait. Or get rid of my body." Oh, Jesus, are we back to that now?

"You'd have to pay someone a shit-ton of money to get rid of your body, and you wouldn't have that much from when I've told you to wait and see that you were still a jerk." Leonard's got Jim as undressed as he can without shoving him around too much, so he throws the sock-ball across the room and, unceremoniously, drops on the bed next to him. Getting to his own is too much fucking effort. "I've only done it ... twenty times."

A month.

Which, okay, adds up.

"That's still a lot."

Jim turns his head slightly, blinking, bleary-eyed. "Hey, if I'm such a jerk, how come you're going to bed with me?"

"I'm not going to bed with you, I'm going to bed ... next to you," McCoy points out, determined to get this right, because he's pretty sure he'll never live it down if word gets out that he went to bed with Jim Kirk. "There's a difference."

"You're still in bed with me," Jim replies, with a hilariously bad attempt at an eyebrow waggle. It looks like he's got something in his eye and he's grimacing about it. "Same difference."

"You got something in your eye?" McCoy asks, rolling onto his side and poking underneath Jim's eye with his thumb. "Looks like you do. Need some help?"

"...Bones, get your thumb out of my eye." He bats his friend's hand away gently. "Unless you're flirting, are you flirting?"

"Why would I be flirting?" He frowns, lowering his hand. "I'm not flirting. Although I did undress you."

"Why wouldn't you be flirting?" asks the man whose entire life thesis is apparently this very question. "Also I've totally used that line on people before. It's surprisingly effective."

"You've told people you undressed them?" Leonard asks, still trying to grasp on this situation and not, frankly, doing so well at it. "Did you actually undress them or did you just tell them you had?"

"Wait, what?" Jim frowns, rolling onto his side heavily. "Why would I tell someone I'm undressing them? They can tell. And if they can't tell I'm undressing them I'm not undressing them because they're in no condition to be undressed."

But after a moment, Starfleet's finest tactical mind reaches through the alcoholic fog. "...The eye thing. You have something in your eye, let me help, and then I lean in close. That's what I meant."

"Oh." McCoy blinks at Jim, one of the sharpest medical minds in Starfleet struggling to process this. "I wasn't hitting on you," he repeats, in case Jim didn't hear him the first time. "You were doing this thing with your eyes - " He bats his own lashes, managing to look like he has something large in his eye. "And I was saying you had something in it."

"...I'm sure it doesn't look like that when I do it."

Jim flops back over, sighing heavily. "You think if I sleep enough, I'll sleep through the rest of being drunk, and all of being hung over, and wake up all right?"

"That depends on how long you're planning on sleeping," McCoy lectures, one hand lifting, finger pointing at the ceiling. "A hangover for a man of your weight mass and age should last about twenty four hours, unless a medical professional treats it earlier, which he won't, because you're a jackass. So probably not."

"You think I can't sleep for twenty-four hours straight?" Jim rolls over, gracelessly punching his pillow, fluffing it under his head. "You just watch me."

...Starfleet's finest, aiming for being the best sleeper this weekend. The academy would be proud.

"Fine, I dare you," McCoy mutters, watching Jim as he settles in, and stretching out alongside him. "If you wake up before ... " He squints blearily at the time. "...two thirty tomorrow morning, you owe me dinner."

"I'm gonna win this bet," Jim declares, waving an arm. "Just you wait, I'm gonna sleep forever."

For a moment it seems like he might be about to say more, but he's already out cold.

McCoy stares blearily at him, then vaguely yanks the blankets up over Jim so they sort of cover his feet. He shakes his head - a bad idea - and then closes his own eyes, unconsciousness stealing over him.

The night moves on, growing more dark and cold as the hours roll toward morning. Jim stirs after a couple of hours, barely awake--there's just enough consciousness to grasp I'm cold but not enough to think through any sort of reasonable solution.

So he rolls toward the center of the bed, where he senses there's some heat, and he presses himself up against it, throwing an arm over it. He drops right back into sleep, settled against McCoy's back, his arm around his friend's waist.

Spoiler alert: McCoy does not sleep until 2:30 the next morning. He does sleep until well into the next day, but it's closer to 2:30 in the afternoon. When he wakes up, all he's really aware of is that he's hung over as shit, and that he's very comfortable and warm - more so than he has been in a long time. He settles in to get more comfortable, then memory begins to slit back in.

...this isn't the view from his side of the room.

But it is his view from his side of the bed. His side of Jim's bed. With Jim on the other side--well, marginally. Jim is mostly draped over his roommate, like a cat. He's even almost purring.

Wait, no, no, that's just the heavy breathing of someone dead to the world thanks to alcohol.

He's still out, not even remotely awake, and it certainly hasn't registered that McCoy is conscious.

...it is the view from his side of the bed, on Jim's side of the room. McCoy squints, trying to figure out how the hell he ended up here. He doesn't remember last night in the least - at least, not after the fourth or fifth round of shots. He blinks hard, then shoves Jim's arm off his waist, kicks his leg off, and stumbles to his feet, swaying as he makes his way to the bathroom. He'll probably panic about this later, but right now he's too goddamned hungover to do much besides focus on breathing.

The bathroom is an ordeal, and when he's done, he looks at the distance between his bed and the bathroom, and Jim's bed and the bathroom. Jim's bed is, unfairly, closer - which was why he had chosen it. McCoy scrubs his hands over his eyes, then stumbles back to the bed. At first, he lands on his back, but then Jim's gravitational pull makes him roll onto his side, pressing his face into Jim's chest.

Jim doesn't stir for any of this--look, he was being as serious as he could be while drunk of the entirety of his ass, when he said he'd sleep forever. McCoy gets up and comes back and Jim doesn't move.

But he is apparently accustomed to bodies rolling into his in bed. He shifts a little when his friend settles against him, once again gaining just enough consciousness to register a body against his. He throws an arm around McCoy again, drawing him close with a contented little murmur, drifting right back off to sleep.

McCoy is barely conscious enough to notice that he's being cuddled, and even if he had, he likely wouldn't have cared. He's prickly enough to ignore his utter lack of human contact for the most part, but it's times like this, when his guard is down, that he gives into it.

Within seconds, he's asleep too, face pressed against Jim's chest, feeling his warmth and surrounded by his familiar scent.

Jim is a veteran at having random bodies curled into his in bed at night. It's near automatic now, no matter how hard he's sleeping, to cradle someone against him, to hold them close, to slide fingers into their hair. And to stay still so he doesn't rouse them.

When his eyes finally do open, he lets out a soft groan, squeezing them closed again to block out the afternoon light. Someone's in his arms--that's kind of nice, he thinks, fingers carding through their hair.

Then memory returns, and his eyes snap open. Well. This is interesting.

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