Lend One
When I’m stumped for a weekly writing topic, sometimes it cartoonishly knocks me over the head.
It was my lunch break at the office and I had just cracked open a new book—Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. I reached the second chapter, entitled “HANDS,” when my phone buzzed. When reading in public, I like to cultivate a persona of total engulfment. Being distracted by my phone threatens the chance that others might perceive me as a thoughtful, literary individual: I resisted temptation and read forth. I reached the paragraph that began to justify the chapter’s title:
Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression. The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.
I enjoyed this description for two reasons:
I am a somewhat fidgety person, so I appreciate the representation. While I’m no nail biter, I’m often guilty of nervous digital articulations—fiddling with rings, bracelets, necklaces; tapping various surfaces; ripping and folding scraps of paper. Gesticulation also lives in the arsenal of my body language.
When writing fiction, there is nothing more tempting than defining a character by ONE STRIKING ATTRIBUTE that explains every other part of their personality. It’s a delightfully reductive artifice that we authors exercise in our God games. Wing Biddlebaum is a walking synecdoche—the part represents the whole. “The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands.” Wouldn’t it be nice for human stories to be so comprehensible?
Back at the office, my phone buzzed again. I’m only made of flesh and blood. I capsized my book. A text from a friend.
—“Do you have nice hands”
Amused, I snapped a photo of my right hand and replied:
—“Dece. Why?”
He explained that his friend needed a hand model for a photo shoot this week—the gig probably wouldn’t pay, but I might get a free manicure. And that’s the story of the beginning (and probable end) of my hand modeling career.
The next day, I arrived at a dingy building near Wall Street. The studio was on the sixth floor. Over the next few hours, I grasped, clutched and dangled a series of designer handbags. For some of the pictures, I hid behind a curtain, my disembodied limbs protruding through holes to display the products. It reminded me of the 1946 film La Belle et La Bête. We’re all familiar with the Disney version’s methods of bringing the Beast’s castle to life—anthropomorphic teapots, etc. But, the chilling choice in Cocteau’s version was to imbue human limbs into the architecture.
It was an intriguing foray into self-objectification. And, the hardest arm workout I’ve done in weeks. I suppose hands are one of the less fraught parts of a woman’s body, so it didn’t make me feel bad to be so scrutinized. Parts modeling is an intriguing enterprise as it seeks to suggest the human without representing one’s full humanity. The Chad-esque PR rep for the fashion house made a chilling unprompted remark. He said: “You know, there’s this one particular skin tone that brands always prefer to hire for hand models. It can be edited to look like any skin color.” I raised an eyebrow, “But, isn’t that… super morally objectionable?” He shrugged. “Would you rather hire one model or two?”
It’s hard to have faith in social progress in the fashion industry when even the lowliest twerp at a disorganized shoot is so repugnant. While he didn’t say what this supposed magical skin tone was, the implication was clear that it wasn’t dark skin being edited to be lighter. What he was referencing was the very definition of tokenization. And from his tone, it was clear that he viewed it as a neutral, if not good thing.
After a pregnant pause, I joked: “Well, I got you, because I’m not actually a hand model: I’m a journalist.” We all laughed. No one knew that I wasn’t actually kidding. Parts models can hide in plain sight without being recognized. So, too can writers. It doesn’t hurt to remain incognito from time to time: people will show their true colors when they think no one is paying attention.
Be Real.
Hands are popular in the realm of idioms. Hand-me-downs. Off-hand remarks. Get a grip! I gotta hand it to you. I’m his right-hand man. It was the hand of God. Things got out of hand. He’s handy. They were caught red-handed. He needed hand-holding. I had her eating out of the palm of my hand.
In most of these phrases, hands are the body part that represent agency and action. Hands are the doers of the body. (Will I ever escape ruminations on embodiment?) Though, it’s worth noting how hands are intimately linked with the sense of touch. We experience touch throughout the body. But, hands feel. To discern a texture, you reach out and touch an object with your hands. This is intuitive and pragmatic because your fingertips are full of nerve endings. Hands experience the tactile, so are symbolically associated with emotions.
I recently finished the psychotherapist Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity, a book that delves into the intricacies of love, desire, and eroticism. In one chapter, Perel explores the pitfalls of modern intimacy, focusing especially on the American cultural supremacy of talk over touch. Her metaphor associates hands with the social connections we pursue.
Intimacy has become the sovereign antidote for lives of increasing isolation. Our determination to “reach out and touch someone” has reached a peak of religious fervor. Just this morning as I was penning these thoughts my home phone rang; and when I didn’t answer, my cell phone chimed in. It was followed immediately by my computer beeping to let me know I had mail. After my private line joined the cacophany, I gave up and allowed myself to be “touched.” In our world of instant communication, we supplement our relationships with an assortment of technological devices in the hope that all these gizmos will strengthen our connections. This social frenzy masks a profound hunger for human contact.
We mustn’t forget that this book was written in 2006. Facebook and Twitter were but fledgling projects. It would be years before the birth of Instagram and Snapchat. Yet the “social frenzy” of being online was already a’brewing.
This week I’ve adopted the latest way to digitally “reach out and touch someone:” BeReal. It’s an app currently ranked at #18 on the leaderboards (betwixt Shein and Spotify, if you were wondering). The premise is that you receive a notification once a day when it’s “time to be real.” A two-minute countdown begins and you are expected to take a picture of whatever is in front of you. Simultaneously, it snaps an image with the front-facing camera. The results are a generally unattractive but apparently authentic reflection of your day-to-day life. People are already pontificating on whether this social media moment is just as fake as the rest of them.
I have my doubts. After all, you’re allowed to post late. In the week I’ve had it, I’ve already caught myself feeling disappointed that the app has seemingly caught me at the most boring part of any given day. Why show my 11 BeReal friends another picture of me, horizontal on the couch, when I have plans to go out later?
I suspect the allure of BeReal will fizzle over time. They say it takes 18 days to form a new habit. Perhaps another 12 days of conditioning will have me singing a different tune. For now, I will say that I find it to be a charming way to “reach out and touch” friends I don’t get to see every day.
Off-hand thought.
The colloquial names of each finger are categorically so different. In looking into this, I was entertained by this website that feels like it was written for aliens unfamiliar with the concept of a hand.
Thumb (name)
Pointer (thing it does)
Middle (position on hand)
Ring (thing it might wear)
Little (comparative size)
I find this to be funny. I guess not “ha, ha” funny, but… sort of interesting. Idk!
5 Songs About Hands
Well, kind of.
“Bird Gone Wild,” Bedouine
🎶 Daddy was an electrician, fingers to the bone. Mama was a seamstress, stitched everything she owned. 🎶
“Harness Your Hopes,” Pavement
🎶 I’m asking you to hold me just like the morning paper: pinched between your pointer, your index and your thumb. 🎶
“Touch,” Frog
🎶 Don’t say too much don’t talk just touch. 🎶
“A Pearl,” Mitski
🎶 Sorry, I don’t want your touch. It’s not that I don’t want you. 🎶
“Human Hands,” Elvis Costello & The Attractions
🎶 All your toy soldiers and scaremongers. Are you living in this world? Sometimes I wonder in between saying you’ve seen too much and saying you’ve seen it all before. 🎶
🫖 Thanks for reading! It’s official: one month of Insecure Tea, in the books. If you’ve been enjoying, spread the word to someone else who might. Thoughts, comments or suggestions? Feel free to reply to this email, or leave a comment on the substack page. Please give me music suggestions or challenge me to come up with songs on a certain theme! 🫖