Clammy

In grade 6 I was so enamoured of a kid named Teddy that I would write secret love letters to him or romantic stories about the two of us, but never show anybody. One day after school, near the coat closet, Teddy was talking to me about hockey and I was dreamily responding. I was positive he was going to ask me to 'go around.' As he said, "Hey, I have a question for you. I wanted to see if..." I leaned toward him and put my hand on his lower arm. I was touching him for no more than three seconds when he jerked his wrist back and said "EW, gross! Your hands are so sweaty!" and then proceeded to ask me about my math homework. In that instant, I silently died.

There I was, an awkward, insecure adolescent, and the one thing my paramour had commented on were my clammy palms; the same one thing that I had absolutely no control over. I regressed so deeply in my self-loathing and pity that I did not show affection for a man again until high school.

It’s not like shaving my legs where I am one hundred percent in control of how beastly or silky my limbs feel as they intertwine with my partner’s. I was ‘blessed’ with an exothermic soul. Short of inhabiting an igloo, there is nothing I can do to prevent the misty vapour from condensing on my palms. In sunlight, in darkness, in humidity, in arid heat, my hands glisten. It’s the most humbling physical imperfection I can point to.

So of course, unbeknownst to him, when my body heat and my moist hands were the only attributes of mine that Charming Fellow addressed one evening as we lay and watched TV together, I was sent back to the dark moments of my childhood when I had a self-worth the size of a sesame seed. I became so self-conscious that by the time the lights were off, I was curled up by myself so far at the corner of the bed he couldn’t even reach me to put his arms around me.

Even the most confident of women can become crestfallen and ashamed given the wrong kind of feedback. This is why you’ll be hard pressed to hear me utter anything but a well-deserved compliment. Because I know what it’s like to experience those pangs of self-doubt; an emotion I wouldn’t even wish on my worst enemy (that is, if I had one).