Excerpt: My Barbaric Yawp: A Memoir of Touch in a "Hands-off" America

I enjoy blues music, but not being a connoisseur of the genre, most of it sounds the same to me. No, I'm at the Blues Festival to watch people more than anything; the music is just a nice bonus. I take advantage of my credit union membership and sit in the section labeled “members only,” in the cool shade of a tent, where I can take in the sights and sounds of the festival in relative comfort.
It isn't long before my attention is drawn to a boy and girl dancing around one of the poles of the tent, the boy's face painted like a tiger by one of the festival's face painters, their ages around 4 or 5. The boy and girl's respective parents apologize to the other for their own child's boldness, but when they realize that no one is bothered by the children at play, they make no move to break it up.
Each child has a hand on the pole and is spinning around it. When the little boy decides that the girl is spinning too fast he stops, turns around, and plants his hands firmly on her chest.
The scene is transformed: the tent pole becomes a stripper pole, the boy and girl both age twenty years, cans of soda become beers. The song continues, but it is metamorphosed from jazz guitar to electronic beeps and boops. The bouncer makes his way over to the boy to escort him out. The face paint is gone, but the predator in him is apparent in his actions, his movements. “You know the rules, buddy. No touching,” the bouncer says.
And then I'm back to reality. The boy and girl, with their underdeveloped lexicon, negotiate—in a way that most adults I know couldn't manage—at what speed they ought to be spinning around. Neither of them comments on the sexuality I have imposed. I know it must be possible to get back to that innocence.