Nintendo

I've always wanted to touch men, but I never knew how. Sorry to Caputo, Horstmann, Lapinig, Buan, Sim, Coughlin, and whoever else might be reading this. I am not coming out of the closet. I will not be wearing pink feather boas and Abercrombie shirts. I will not be ordering Queer as Folk online. And I will not be your gay best friend. In fact, this is the whole dilemna. I want to touch men, but I do not want it to evoke some sort of homosexual catalyst for me or for him.

According to The Five Love Languages, there is the language of speech, time, gift, service, and touch. Thoguh we all possess all or at least most of these love languages, there is one or two that define us. After years of hugging my pillow every night before I can go to sleep and hating the handshake as a way to say hello, I have realized that my love language is touch. This does brings along difficulties towards family (Asian American families way of love is more of a "SHUT UP, HOW COME YOU GOT AN A- INSTEAD OF AN A, NOW SIT DOWN AND EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT" kind of love) and difficulties towards girls (Should I touch her, I don't like her in that way, but I do like her, and this is how I show that I care. Crap, no, she's expecting me to do something, AWKWARD HALF HUG, crap, that sucked.). But aside from these two, there is not even an opportunity for awkwardness within the love language of touch from man to man because it is as an unspoken rule as not talking to someone on the phone when you're taking a dump. You just don't do it. You just...don't.

But shouldn't this cause some sort of psychological trauma for all of men since touch is a neccessary component of our lives. Maybe this is another reason why we are so sexually driven, because our needs of touch have not been met and engaging in the horizontal polka might be the only "manly" way of touching someone. Don't even bring up cuddling. For the most part, however, we deal. And there are moments when men can still feel close to each other and they aren't even touching. And no, I am not going to get all Notebook on you. I am not talking about how you can just talk on the phone for hours and hours though separated by hundreds of miles, and at the end of the day, you felt like it was the most intimate time ever. I am not talking about meeting her eyes with mine when we are off in the distance, and at that click of an instant, I feel her heart beating and she feels mine. No. I am talking about something deeper. Something weirder. Something men call love. Something women may never understand.

Something I'm not sure men understand either, but it drives us. It moves us to jump to our feet and scream out in celebration. It moves us to mourn, but our brothers console us to try, try again. It is almost like Nintendo transmits my powers and his powers and his through these plastic wires (or air waves if you have the new XBOX 360) onto the computer screen, so that with our powers combined, we are Captain ManlyLove, and whatever happens on that screen is unpredictable, but somehow controlled. It is calm, but we wait for its climatic moments. It is communal, but yet it is exclusive. We can talk without stopping, but we may stare in silence. It is what it is, simply magic. Simply irresistable. Simply love.

And I guess I will never be able to hug a man in between the quick pat on the back, good job with scoring the bucket and the emotional hug. I don't know what the gray area looks like neither am I sure that I want to find out. But all I know is that in those moments when those wires are plugged in together and Baby Mario is chomping the hell out of Waluigi on his way to victory...we touch.