CONNECTION
"Sex is everything."
"No it isn't.
"It really is."
"It really isn't."
"OK. If the world was going to end in an hours time, everyone, and I mean everyone," a steady stare was aimed directly at me for some reason, "would be having sex."
"No they wouldn't."
"Of course they would."
"No. That's your perspective. That's you thinking below the belt. Life really isn't about that."
"It is!"
I sighed.
"Sex is important, but it isn't everything. I'll tell you what IS everything."
"What?"
"Give me your hand."
Hesitation.
I sighed.
"Give me your hand."
Reluctance.
I rolled my eyes.
"I'm not going to do anything. Give me your hand."
Hesitantly he extended his hand across the table. Knowing his imagination, he probably thought I was going to stab it with a fork, but as I was only armed with a teaspoon, what was his problem?
I grasped his hand in mine.
"That is everything."
"A handshake? That's what everyone would be doing with one hour of the world left?"
"No! God, you're impossible!"
"What then?"
"Connection. Two humans connecting. Not having sex, not thinking about sex...just making connection."
There was a moment of quiet.
I continued.
"OK. Someone is dying at the side of the road. They've been in a car wreck, run over by a bus, something like that. Do you think that while they are slipping away from this life they are hoping for some sex before they go?"
"That's different."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"Don't you think that all that dying individual really wants is to hold a hand, stranger or friend, to make that one final connection before they go?"
"I suppose."
"you suppose?"
"Yea, I suppose."
He stared at his hand in mine, stared up at me, shrugged and pulled his hand back to his own space.
I sighed. I was doing a lot of that.
"Organs. If I think with the one between my thighs, then you think with the one that's beating in your chest."
"Maybe I do."
"Your perspective."
I smiled.
"And your undoing. You're going to get scorched."
"Maybe I will."
I sighed again, and we lapsed into silence.
