an aspect of intimacy
the most intimate spots on my cats - the parts of their dwarfish bodies which most people never get to see up close or touch - are the cottony tufts behind each ear and the beige creases of fur between their jawlines and their necks. today, while i was lying on the couch and george sidled up next to me and prepared to take a nap, i stuck my index finger out in the air and waited until he rubbed his soft neck-crease up against it. and i grinned and thought: this is intimacy, this generous permission to tickle my cat in a place which nobody else ever gets to see!
now i am thinking about how the most intimate things about me are probably not my secrets; not my hidden body parts or my OCD or other flavors of neuroses which i have tried to mask in the past by acting more laidback than i feel. the truth is i bet most people who meet me - or read my online drafts! - pick up easily on these “secrets” despite any efforts i’ve made to hide them. so i suppose the most intimate things about me are, as with the cats, those glimpses which are not deliberately hidden per se but still rarely witnessed by anyone. like the fading spot under my left chin where my violin “hickey” used to reside, or the rough callouses on the bottom sides of my feet, or the tattoo behind my right ear which often passes as loose strands of hair (a plum-sized silhouette of a fairy-tree hybrid which i got during a honeymoon while my ex-husband got a half-sleeve on his forearm). or perhaps it is the look on my face when i’m practicing the violin alone, an expression that even i have never witnessed for myself, but which i imagine looks something like a cross between consternation and bliss.