As we stand on the edge of another national lockdown, there’s a lot of things I’m finding hard. But one of the hardest is how much I’m missing a certain level of intimacy with my nearest and dearest pals.

Sure, my mates and I can and have been staying in touch. I’m grateful for all the tools we’ve got to facilitate that. But what these last seven months have taught me is how much of the friendships I treasure most are grounded in our embodied experience of sharing physical spaces.

Dancing at the disco. Laughing into each other’s shoulders at the pub. City-to-city night drives caterwauling along to Aerosmith at maximum volume. Sitting cross-legged on each other’s kitchen counters in our socks while making post-rave tea and toast. Falling asleep on each other while we watch that 90s slasher film we’ve seen together a trillion times. Kissing each other’s cold cheeks before we part ways.

I love physical nearness and affection. It’s not a new revelation to me: last year my partner had double shoulder surgery, meaning they spent most of 2019 physically unable to even put their arm round me. And I didn’t even realise how much it was impacting me until a mate put his arm round me in the pub — literally only to move me out of the way of someone behind me trying to get past — and I burst into hysterical sobs. So believe me when I say how important platonic intimacy is to me. And let me tell you, I miss it more than I can say.

I’ve literally been dreaming about sharing sofa beds and nights full of whispered secrets with friends I haven’t seen properly in way too long. My head’s mostly shaved at the moment, but I’m still fantasising about having someone braid my hair. The characters in the thing I’m writing are doing a lot of totally unnecessary making out and accidentally touching each other. I’m thankful to be spending this pandemic with someone I have an affectionate relationship with, but I still miss platonic intimacy in all its glorious forms. So here’s hoping it’s not too long until we can hold each other’s hands, give each other bruising hugs and hang out somewhere other than Zoom.

In the meantime, I loved the bittersweetness of this NYT article on platonic intimacy (and you can even have it read to you by John Cameron Mitchell, always a bonus in my book). Or if you’re missing sitting up with your mates talking bollocks after a night out, here’s me and my mate Amy eating crumpets in my kitchen last summer, discussing who we’d bone from the bands we’d been to see (which is probably not funny to anyone other than me, but still). You’re welcome.

Originally shared as part of my newsletter in November 2020. Here’s a lovely article about queerness and platonic intimacy, published via Them in 2022.