You Don't Hug Properly

Let’s continue the theme on how I’m completely deranged, shall we? In my previous entry I talked about how I struggle with physical contact with another person, in any way, shape or form. But there’s another aspect to this which probably needs saying, too.

‘You don’t hug properly, Daniel.’ Somebody said that to me when I was fifteen. It’s stuck with me ever since because it’s true. It was said to me by a friend at the time, who happened to be an extremely thin girl. I’m uncomfortable with small, skinny women. Always have been. I’ve always been attracted to fuller figured rubenesque women. It’s been years since I’ve really considered a skinny, fit woman as being compatible in any way. The same way a man or woman wouldn’t consider being paired with an umbrella or hat stand, the thought of me asking out or dating a small, skinny girl seems, well just wrong.
I don’t know why. There are a number of reasons probably, but something happened when I was young, which I think has added to these troubles. It all began in 1991 when I was about seven years old. I was in year two of primary school and had recently changed schools and befriended somebody who lived nearby. We’ll call him Jake for the purpose of the blog.
Jake and I used to hang out fairly often. His family was also quite active. My own parents rarely went out and almost never took all of us kids out for the day. I don’t necessarily blame them either. I know I was an unbearable brat when taken out for the day. I was far happier being left to my own devices. Anyway, his family went on these day trips quite often. A few times Jake asked me to come along. After a while I just started asking if I could tag along. I think I started to annoy him in the end. I certainly bugged his mum.
Jake was a mischievous kid. I was not. My parents were firm but completely fair, I thought, so I usually followed the rules. I did what I was told and believed what they said. Jake was much more of a brat. He was way more hypo than me and probably corrupted me a fair bit. He showed me how to break into his grandmothers house, who lived nearby. He did this fairly often if he wanted to go there and nobody was home. He also invented a lovely little game which involved taking rocks as big as our heads and putting them onto a road overlooked by a pedestrian bridge. The objective was to place them on the road so that a passing car would hit the rock with its tyres. We’d then sit on the bridge above and watch the chaos unfold. Charming little game, huh? We did this only once, although I’m sure he’d done it plenty of times before. After about twenty minutes the police turned up. Terrified the hell out of us, too. Or it terrified me anyway, being such a goodie goodie and all.
One day Jake was over our house. It was a hot day and we didn’t have a swimming pool or anything, so sometimes we’d play with the hose out the back. Jake had the brilliant idea for a game which involved filling up empty bottles with water and running around the backyard trying to pour them on each other and get them wet. We used some empty coke bottles and whatnot but after a while we realised that it was taking too long to fill them back up again. So we went and looked for some more bottles to use. We found some glass bottles. Perfect!
Yeah. A couple of kids running around the backyard, aiming glass bottles at each others heads trying to get each other wet. Running on wet grass and giggling like maniacs. Great idea, huh? (I’d like to point out that my parents were around at the time, but they’d seen us playing with the plastic bottles and didn’t see us when we sneakily grabbed the empty glass bottles.)
Of course there was an accident. My fingers slipped and I ended up whacking poor Jake right in the head with the bottle. The glass didn’t break. There wasn’t any blood. It was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. It must have hurt like hell though and he cried. Mum came to make sure we were ok and scolded us for using the bottles and whatnot.
The next time I was over Jake’s house, I remember the mother cornered me in the kitchen. I remember she had a long face with fierce eyes that were slightly exotic. She was a single mother and always seemed slightly defeated. There was also the faint hint of disgust lingering when she had to deal with me. Maybe because of all the times I asked to come along with Jake and his two sisters. Anyway, she cornered me.
‘So Daniel,’ she said calmly, looking down on me. ‘Why were you throwing bottles at my sons head?’
‘I.. Uh.. We, er, came up with a er.. Game,’ I mumbled. ‘It was nothing… he’s fine.’
‘You think it’s fun to throw bottles at Jake’s head?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said in absolute terror.
‘In future I’ll thank you not to smash glasses bottles on my sons head.’ And then I realised. She thought I was to blame. This whole thing was my idea and I was some kind of troublemaker that was corrupting her son. Her son, who put rocks on the road for cars to hit. Who came up with the idea of using the glass bottles in the first place.
That’s a little background for Jake’s family and me. It’s important to know these things before we continue. What I’m about to describe has affected me my entire life.
Jake lived in a house nearby, as I said. He had an older sister who was in year 7, I believe. She was tall with blonde hair and played the trumpet. He also had a younger sister who must have been about three or four. I can’t quite remember. I just know she was very young, but able to run around and talk. She didn’t go to school or kindy or anything like that.
Going to Jake’s house was always fun. It was a much nicer house than our own. Jake’s mum clearly had a lot more money than us. They had a two storey house with plush carpet and a plethora of new electronic toys. A huge sound system with cd player adorned the lounge room in a fancy glass cabinet. The house had a swimming pool out the back, too. We just had a ratty, narrow backyard and thin, dirty carpet inside. Our CD player was a tiny black box, which sat on an old, rickety wooden trolley. Theirs was three layers of shiny, silver boxes with a display which lit up like the space ships in “Close encounters of the third kind.”
I can’t remember his younger sisters name, so we’ll call her Ashley. Ashley was a bright young girl who loved to play. She adored her older brother and sister and absolutely loved spending time with them. She’d often hang out with Jake and me and we’d all play. Now Jake liked to get worked up. He didn’t really have a restraint button, as many kids don’t. But he was especially bad. The whole thing with bottles was more a result of that and him pushing things too far, than me. I was terrified of adults and doing something wrong.
One day we were in the upstairs lounge playing with Ashley. I think we were pretending the floor was lava and were jumping from sofa to sofa, trying desperately not to touch the ground. Jake would also jump onto the coffee table, but I didn’t dare. Anyway we were all playing this game together and getting quite worked up. Jake was getting carried away and his young sister was too, of course.
Somehow, Ashley ended up falling from the couch onto the floor- which was lava! I grabbed onto her arms and tried to pull her to safety. I was so caught in the moment of the game worked up by everything that I had no idea what was going to happen.
Ashley started to scream. She burst into tears and screamed louder than I’d heard anybody ever before. Her voice was so shrill it hurt my ears. Her face contorted in absolute agony. And she kept screaming and screaming until their mum came racing up the stairs.
‘What happened?’ she screamed as she came to help. ‘What happened?’

About forty minutes later we’re standing in a hospital reception. I had to go with them because my mum and dad had gone out while I was at Jake’s house. So they had to take me along when they raced to hospital. They’d managed to piece together what happened by then. Daniel was to blame. Daniel had done it. Everybody seemed to ask me if this was true. I didn’t understand what was going on. I told them we’d been playing. I told them what we’d been doing when she started screaming.
We waited. It felt like days. I have no idea how long it must have been. Hours probably. But it felt like days. Jake’s mum seemed to come and go. She made phone calls to the father. Everybody talked to one another urgently, looking back at me accusingly from time to time. Finally, she came over to me.
‘You pulled her arm out it’s socket,’ she said calmly. Her eyes told me she hated me. Despised me. ‘You did it. Look at what you’ve done.’
I had nothing to say.
‘Look at what you’ve done to my daughter.’ There it was again. What have you done to my son. Look at what you’ve done to my daughter. ‘This is your fault,’ she said.
Honestly I can’t remember what happened next. I have no memory. I was absolutely mortified. The guilt overwhelmed me. I had broken her. Those cries of absolute pain… the pain she had felt was my fault. I had done that. I had broken her. I didn’t mean to. I was sorry. God I was sorry. We were just playing after all. How did this happen? I never meant to hurt anybody. I wasn’t thinking, we were all worked up. Jake was crawling around the coffee table for gods sake. I never meant to do this.
‘This is your fault.’
That was when I became afraid of touching people. Girls in particular. Tiny, skinny girls who were shorter than me. I’ve never gotten into a fight either, in my entire life. Whenever I have had to touch somebody, for ballroom dancing or some kind of activity.. It’s been difficult. I’ve been gentle. Far, far too gentle.
I’m still terrified of breaking people. I’m 6’2 now and reasonably fat. When skinny girls try to hug me, I hardly touch them back. I feel like I am going to snap them in half. And they complain.
‘Daniel, you don’t hug properly.’
No, I don’t hug properly. I break people.

Song: "Chain of Flowers," by Grinderman.