Cuddles Only.
She means it.
Before this week’s longer-short story, I want to tell you another shorter-short story.
2023. I was just returning to my estate (flat block-type not countryside-type) when I saw a ‘record card’ pinned to a tree.
<Sidenote: I had to Google the name for that type of card and added the above picture so you know the kind I’m talking about. Anywho…>
On the note was written something along the lines of :
‘Elderly male, 71, seeks genuine companionship.’
And it ended with an email address.
The existence of this card generated soooooo many questions for me:
Was it legit?
Did they write it themselves?
If they had an email address, why were they using such an old-skool method to advertise the need for companionship?
Who were they hoping would see the note pinned to a tree on a housing estate?
Who were they expecting to respond to the note pinned to a tree on a housing estate?
The list went on.
And it included ‘What if…?’ so, I wrote this:
She needed to be specific. She knew what she wanted and it was very specific. Cuddles only. No sex. No weird feet touching, no voyeurism, no webcams. A real, live human being who would embrace her, hold her, how she needed to be held.
She wanted to avoid any opportunity to be tracked electronically, so she was very specific about using a newspaper. At least people who took the time to read its back pages were less likely to be members of an online population. She needed someone with a decent attention span. She needed someone kind, someone genuine. She only needed them for a short period of time.
There was no one else available to her. She felt awkward asking the few people who were in her life for cuddles - the handful of colleagues and acquaintances. No friends remained, no lovers, no family members. Everyone was gone. She hadn’t meant for it to turn out that way. It just had.
She could manage everything else herself. The shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the distracting; everything but the cuddling. Cuddling wasn’t something she could do solo. God knows she had tried wrapping her arms around herself and squeezing as hard as she could. But there was no fooling her body, it recognised the mind attached to those cuddles. Her body knew the self-cuddles were fake, a poor substitute for the real thing. She needed to convince it she was loved outside of her portly, squidgy-in-the-middle frame.
She could give good cuddles, she had been told that. She just wasn’t able to do it for herself.
‘You’re not fat, you’re cuddly.’
She smiled at the memory of being told this. Soft, warm, enveloping – like the rising dough of baking bread. Edges squeezed by a container just about holding her spreading flesh in place.
‘Cuddly woman (38) seeks cuddly man for cuddles only.’
Should she add an age? She imagined the demographic of the newspaper and felt confident that nobody below thirty-five would apply.
What about the top end?
Arthritic cuddles. Frail cuddles. Death-adjacent cuddles.
‘Cuddly woman (38) seeks cuddly man (35-50) for cuddles only.’
Did she want someone younger than her? Would they be more likely to pity her?
‘...cuddly man (40-50) for cuddles only’
Would her age put off the pool of candidates?
‘Cuddly woman seeks cuddly man (aged 40-50) for cuddles only.’
That felt better. Her budget and letter count was limited. With more resources, she would have added:
‘No groping. No fondling. No erections.’
It would have to do. She could filter out candidates with a phone call. But, maybe she didn’t want to speak to them beforehand. Or at all. Maybe she wanted them to enter her home, silently slip their arms around her, embrace, and then leave.
That was all she really needed. No strings, no explanation, no justification.
Cuddles only.
I found out a few years ago that there are people who cuddle as their profession.
Cuddle therapists.
AKA Cuddlists.
<You can listen to ‘Cuddles Only’ being read over on YouTube >
And as for the record card? It disappeared after a few days.
But the concept of it stayed with me.
Something about the longing of it.
Or maybe it was the hopefulness.