When I was very young, I could get by quite comfortably letting people touch me. I wasn't very beautiful, but I was young, which is its own kind of beauty--at least, there are plenty of people who are drawn to youth. They would touch me; I would touch them. I could obtain travel, lodging, liquor--whatever I needed--in this economy of touch. But I knew even then that bodies diminished, and that at some point I, too, would be as untouchable as the ones visibly infected.
My second resource was my wit. Though obviously it was unreliable, I felt that I could lean on it, practice it, and--if kept honed and polished--it could last a bit longer than the flesh. Wit, too, opened doors: it allowed me to move through the world in ways that my body had allowed, and in new ways, too. To be the troubadour. The fool with no king.
I'd love to say that there is something noble to writing. And, in fact, there often is. But at a more basic level, I write as a form of intercourse; it is my body of work that gets to be fingered, tongued, penetrated, used, and eventually dropped into someone else's lap.
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