I've finally finished reading S. Bear Bergman's book, Butch Is A Noun! It was just spectacular. There were a few chapters that particularly touched me (namely, "Being a Butch with Young Men", "Virtual Butch Reality", "Passing It Along", "Where Butch Resides", "What My Daddy Taught Me", "Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones, but Words Will Kill Me", "My Butch Brothers", "Faggot Butch", "What The Stone Is Made Of", "An Apology to My Mother", "Laying Down with a Butch", "Touch", "This Gesture", and "You"), but the ones that I've thought about the most today (I finished the book last night) are the ones about brotherhood, friendship, and connecting with other people who are like you or look up to you. The parts entitled "Touch" and "This Gesture", which are towards the end of the book, describe how important of a role physical contact played in the author's home-life as a child and how ze has brought that aspect of physicality over to hir adulthood, and how much a simple yet intimate backwards hug (meaning, a hug where the hugger embraces the huggee from behind) can convey in terms of love and trust, moved me very deeply because they taught me that Bear and I are the same in that we both welcome touch and find it extremely important in relationships, be they romantic or not. Some people in my life would find the openness that Bear expresses both in-person and in hir writing unsettling because they're just not comfortable with it, but not me. I think Bear is amazing, and I cannot wait to see how our friendship progresses and grows.
