I love hands.  I’m going to say that again.  I frickin’ love hands.  They say so much about a person.  If you have callouses on them you’re probably used to doing manual labor of some kind and what kind can usually be determined by where the callouses are on your hands.

These are my hands:

(Left-top, right-top, left-palm, right-palm)

What could my hands tell you?  Well I have short stubby fingers and small palms which doesn’t tell you much except that it runs in my family and I could tell you it comes from my dad’s side.  I would also tell you that the general shape of my fingers comes from my mom’s side and when my nails are long my fingers start to resemble hers more closely than my father’s.  You could see my cuticles which might generally tell you that I don’t get manicures that often and don’t really care to do them myself.  The wrinkled skin and wrinkled knuckles would tell you that I love using my hands and have for quite a while.  If you look closer my fingernails show little to no signs of bruising, which shows that I generally take in enough vitamins to keep my nails healthy.  You might also see the little scraped scars from my roommate’s cats which might indicate that I scar fairly easily since those normally heal rather easily.

My rings indicate lots of symbolic things and you can read those if you know what they mean.  Beyond that though, I might tell you that my mother’s side of the family loves to wear rings, especially my grandmother, and that I have gone from wearing two rings back in high school to the four I regularly wear now, with a fifth I wear on special occasions.  If you move my rings you’ll see indents that the rings have left in my fingers from long usage and at this time of year tan-lines, which shows that I tan pretty easily.

If you look at my palms you’ll see well-worn lines from being a musician, writer, lifter of various objects, typer, and nervous fidgeter, some of which you might actually be able to guess.  I also have permanent callouses on the pads of my middle and rings fingers from the above activities.  I still have very slight callouses on the tips of my fingers built up from years of being a string musician.  You would also see that I am actually fairly pale when I am not tan, since you can see the veins in my hands.

And you can tell all that from just looking at my hands.  Pretty amazing stuff, huh?

I love holding hands.  It is my favorite in-public thing to do with someone I’m in a relationship with/sexually involved with/intimate in some way with since I have some boundaries on PDA.  Kissing is okay as long as it’s just pecks, don’t put your arm around my shoulder because it makes me feel owned, please don’t grope me in public because it makes me feel like an object, et cetera.  Holding hands there are no restrictions on, other than who I do it with.

I love holding women’s hands. They are generally softer and smaller and fit better within my own than any man’s ever could. To this day, my favorite person that I’ve held hands with was a gal I dated a couple years back. Her hands fit perfectly within mine, which gave me a certain kind of joy. Never found anyone since who could hold my hands like she could.

Which brings me to the inspiration for today’s post: a podcast from Sex Is Fun. Which you should listen to if you don’t already. First link goes to the particular podcast I’m talking about, second goes to the actual website. This particular episode is on non-sexual touch and how prudish our society is about it. They talk about how we don’t tend to hold hands with our friends, just generally the people we are intimately involved with in some way, which tends to be true.