Ann Friedman - Skin Pressed Against Me Tight

I'm on leave until March, and this week we've got a guest essay about the pain and beauty and peculiarity of having a body—particularly a body that's covered in skin—from one of our inaugural writing fellows, Nereya Otieno. This piece brought me back to my own teenage awkwardness and also prompted me text her, "Oh no, I have nonconsensually hugged you so many times!"

By Nereya Otieno

Apologies in advance, I’m going to briefly take you back to that time. Spring 2020 to late summer 2021. Within those ramshackle “months,” I had a certain joy I’m not afraid to admit: I loved wearing masks. Absolutely loved it.

Why? I’ve had acne since I was 15. Not just hormonal teenage acne but the kind that deserves a capital letter. Acne. I still do, though it’s not nearly as bad. It was really terrible as a teen, the kind that my multi-award-winning Stanford dermatologist said she didn’t know what to do with. My parents paid her anyway to try. So, when a global pandemic brought a time when half my face was always covered in public and I didn’t need makeup that improved my self-esteem but surely aggravated my inflammation, I was all but ready to oblige. And now, I kind of miss it.

I know no one else misses it, so let’s go back to my bad teenage time instead. My Acne made me not touch people. I didn’t really hug my friends in high school. I saluted people a lot. I started shadow-teeing a golf ball as a means of greeting. I perfected the art of showing affection without proximity. Sometimes I was forced in close quarters: a school bus ride, a team huddle, a friend who liked me too much to realize I didn’t want to hug. In those times, I panicked. Ready to either quickly run away or offer an apology at what was sure to be their discomfort. I still do that today, even though I love hugs.

Reading Ann’s essays about letting go, about understanding control as an illusion in biological matters, brought back a memory of my own Acne acceptance. A 2006 music festival called BFD, a yearly event by Bay Area alternative rock station Live 105. BFD stood for “Big Fuckin Deal” — and it was. In 2006, my Acne was at full mast. It was also a time when the band She Wants Revenge was playing alongside Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Panic! At the Disco, Thursday, Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes and more at an outdoor venue in the Northern California sun. It was a time of all glory, strong angst, no parents. 

I was deeply obsessed with a She Wants Revenge song at the time, “Tear You Apart.” I sat through the entire Yellowcard set (sang along at full volume to “Ocean Avenue,” though) and shuffled forward during changeovers to position myself perfectly at third row, center stage when She Wants Revenge finally came on.

It was close quarters. Very close quarters. I now know I was in what we call “the pit.” My self-awareness rocketed at the realization of how many people (strangers!) were within high-definition viewing of my face. But then the guitarist struck the first chord and the snare drum tot-tot-totted into an aggressive front and there was little else I could do.

If you’ve never been in a mosh pit, I highly recommend it. As long as you don’t have any strong respiratory, heart, or anxiety issues. It is a living mass. Chaos is constantly morphing back into order before relinquishing itself again. This was my first one. Though the band’s sound was relatively tame, a festival with an expletive in the name demanded otherwise. Bodies were colliding and moving together. It was a choreographed mayhem.

My Acne didn’t matter because no one had a face. We were all a blur of flesh and sweat and blood and mucus. I fought it for a bit, tried to keep upright on my own volition and face the stage. But I learned quickly that this force will not take if you do not withhold. 

So I gave in. And my shirt was torn and my arms became slick with sweat and saliva, almost none of it my own. I was breathing a scent of heightened biology, air teeming with life. My face was flush against someone’s arm then what felt like a chest then another arm and then a back…And no one was pulling back. And no one was staring at me. And I wasn’t self-conscious. I probably hadn’t put my face against someone else’s skin without worrying since I was sick in middle school and cuddling with my mother. Years. 

And yet here I was. Touching people again, feeling my face again. A whirling dervish of contact. Screaming bleary-eyed and hoarse-throated: “I want to hold you close / skin pressed against me tight…So lovely it feels so right…I want to fucking tear you apart.”

Nereya Otieno was a 2021 writing fellow. She is co-Founder of the Rising Artist Foundation and a board member for Future Female Sounds. Sign up for her newsletter, which exists at the delightful intersection of food and music.

Thank you, Nereya! Next week, we've got a dispatch from dreamy 2022 writing fellow Autumn Fourkiller. Trust me, you'll want to press against that essay, too.