hug

Who here remembers the best hug of your life?
If you have to think about it, don't bother - you haven't had it. I would say "yet", but that presumes that everyone will have a best hug of their life. As counter-intuitive as this sounds, i don't think that's true. I think a "greatest hug ever" is a combination of so many factors, few of which are easy to measure or track, that a good many people will live their entire lives without ever having one.
There are also some people who will experience two or more. There's nothing fair about that.
My first greatest hug came in college. I was smitten with a vivacious sprite named laura. In my own gentle way, i chased her for a year or two. I gave her attention and affirmation. We got along well, and i became a regular visitor at her dorm. Despite one or two moments of seeming possibility, we never did connect in love. Sometimes when i would stop by her room, she would be out, so i would chat with her roommate, who i think was amused by my pathetic forlornness...and we shared ever longer visits, as the months went by. She wrote sonnets, and had a brimming heart, despite having lived through some horrible darkness. Of course i had eyes only for laura, so i didn't think anything of it when this roommate started to give me very sweet goodbye hugs. These hugs grew longer and longer, and began to feel like being bathed in a half-drunk warmth. Finally one day, we held a hug for around twenty minutes. I even got a classic henry miller erection (a piece of lead with wings). Yet even then, i couldn't see what was in front of me! Was it just an overblown sense of loyalty to a woman who had never wanted me? Maybe it's just that i used to be a little slow. Too slow, as it turned out. Some family emergency forced her to drop out of college - i found out second-hand. We'd never exchanged phone numbers, and when i tried to look her up years later, i'd forgotten her last name.
The second greatest hug of my life (not second-greatest, but second greatest) came when i was working as a mascot for a peanut butter company. I was a baby monkey. We had a booth every year at the New York Chocolate Show. I would wander alone in costume all over the convention center leaving a trail of amazed and delighted kids and adults (particularly asian wimyn - i have no idea what was going on with that, but it was nice). One day, a vendor from another company left her booth to hug me. It was obvious she was a little sad, and then the most amazing thing happened. Through about seven layers of costume, i could feel her heart beating against mine. It was possibly the most startling feeling i've ever felt. She cried out "Omigosh, i can feel his heartbeat!" We let that monkey hug last as long as we could (stay with me...this isn't even the hug yet). It was the last day of the show, and when i finally got out of costume, she was gone. I spent a year hoping she would be there again...and she was! When i introduced myself out of costume, she knew who i was before i said it, and we started sharing out-of-costume hugs. On the last day of the show, the costume put away, we came together in the aisle near my booth. Even though this hug was probably only ten minutes, that drunken feeling may have been even more acute than the first time. She said it was like melting into the floor.
Over the following months, it became apparent that we had profoundly different core values. She was a born-again, with strong opinions concerning romantic possessiveness. I was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and too my credit (or not), i told her i would meet her halfway. I clearly wasn't going to start praying to any invisible rabbits, or whatever it is, but i told her i would marry her if that's what it took for her to feel comfortable with being held by me every day. Hormone-induced temporary insanity? Did her ability to walk away, keep me from the worst decision of my life? I don't know. I just knew what it felt like to have that feeling, and then lose it. Call it wisdom or stupidity (it's probably both), but i'd vowed to never let my ego get in the way of keeping that feeling, if i ever found it again.
And now, foolish me, in a new city, i shamelessly, greedily hope that the lightning strike of hug perfection will find me yet again.
If it comes, i hope i won't have to sell my soul to keep it. But given the semi-insanity of loneliness and alienation that comes with living in this society, i wouldn't put anything stupid past me.
Next week's question - do you remember the greatest sex of your life?