2001-09-09 - 5:20 a.m.

It's 5 in the morning, and I've been tossing in bed since I woke up at 4. That's what I get for sitting on my ass all day and stuffing myself with pizza and breadsticks until the point that I went to bed.

As I lay there, my big metal green seventies box fan blasting on high in the other end of the room to drown out the annoyingly whiny sounding fan of my laptop, which was laying, closed, in bed next to my head, the odd acoustics of my room produced a sound from the box fan that I can't hear now, sitting up here and writing. It was about an octave higher than the fan and pulsated with an odd syncopated rhythm. It rang in my ears deeper than sound, almost like it was forming out of my own consciousness rather than any outside stimulus.

And the odd thing is, as I listened to it, it mingled with my own half-asleep thoughts, and formed into a woman's voice, speaking in a monologue the origins of which I could never begin to try to guess. This nonexistent woman told me of how she was a chain smoker, but got to the point that cigarettes no longer held anything for her. That she would smoke and smoke and never stop, but the problem is, because she didn't have time to crave it any more, they almost didn't seem worth it. She didn't feel the addiction, the hunger, any more, she just did it out of habit before the want or need ever kicked in.

Then my mind jumped subjects a bit as I turned my head and the sound went away, my ears no longer angled right to amplify whatever it was that was causing it. I've been thinking a lot lately about personal closeness, personal contact, things like that. And while I thought about what the chain smoker voice had said, this concept came into my head of the chain hugger. You know these people, they're all around. The touchy-feely types who don't understand the concept of personal space and hug everyone. Get these people together with the types of people who just don't touch friends, and this is a friendship that will fizzle and die before even getting off the launch pad.

I'm an odd breed, where I love—and even crave—physical contact of any kind, but I'm not comfortable touching just anyone. Any physical contact with me is a very personal thing, and if I will actually touch you first, unless you are a very good friend of mine, it'll probably consist of nothing more than a poke in the side. To me, that's my way of opening the door, showing that I would be comfortable with any form of physical contact from you (hugs, arms around shoulders, etc.), though I'm never comfortable with initiating it.

So when I do feel comfortable touching someone, and they feel comfortable touching me, it's a wonderful feeling. I get goosebumps from close contact with someone like that. I even get goosebumps now, thinking about it, though that may be facilitated by the large box fan blowing in my face.

But now I wonder, because of the chain smoker talking to me through my fan (wow, I sound like a psycho), if there are some people who lose the importance and wonder of a really good hug. I mean, if you hug everyone whenever you can, do you miss the little things after a while? The way someone who really thinks more of you will hold you closer, tighter? The way their arms slide slowly down your back as they let you go? The smile you get from someone who actually really wants to hug you? Is all of the impact of a good hug when you really need it lost when you're always hugging whoever you can?

If so… I feel really bad for those people.