{"id":8745,"date":"2014-01-30T11:43:47","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T16:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=8745"},"modified":"2014-01-30T11:49:44","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T16:49:44","slug":"starving-for-communal-spaces-and-communion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/01\/starving-for-communal-spaces-and-communion.html","title":{"rendered":"Starving for Communal Spaces and Communion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over at\u00a0AmCon<\/em> today, I\u2019ve got a piece up \u201cStarving for Communal Spaces\u201d<\/a> and here\u2019s how it opens:<\/p>\n

A man walks into a business establishment and pays a small sum of money for the use of their premises. He\u2019s slightly furtive about it, and the proprietor would probably deny the nature of the service provided, but the gentleman is seeking companionship, and doesn\u2019t have anywhere else to go.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not describing the kind of tawdry hotel that rents its rooms by the hour, but a coffee shop or a fast food outlet. And the gentleman in question might be an elderly Korean man, one of the group that\u00a0got ejected from a McDonald\u2019s in New York City for repeatedly lingering too long over their coffees<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The retirees weren\u2019t really there for the McCaf\u00e9 lattes, of course. I\u2019ve pulled the same trick, scanning a Starbucks menu for the cheapest drink, picking out a chair, and pulling out a novel. The drink is really just a ticket, that, displayed properly, entitles the bearer to one seat and a bit of table space for up to two hours.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite reasonable that the baristas would rather sell me coffee, not lease me real estate. After all, if someone behaved this way in a restaurant, pulling out a laptop and settling in after their meal, they\u2019d be behaving badly. But I\u2019m not sure who we\u2019re supposed to patronize for communal space instead.<\/p>\n

Read the rest at AmCon\u2026<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The whole time I was working on this post, I kept thinking of an article from The Good Men project that I\u2019d read a while before, \u201cThe Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men\u2019s Lives is a Killer.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 The author talks about how there\u2019s very little cultural space for casual person-to-person contact for men. \u00a0Handholding, mussing someone\u2019s hair, or just sharing a couch without an inch wide DMZ is perceived as sexual, whatever the gender of the person you\u2019re touching.<\/p>\n

As I read the piece, I certainly agreed it was a problem, but it hardly seemed exclusive to men. \u00a0Now that I\u2019m single again, the sign of peace at Daily Mass is usually the only time I touch another person. \u00a0And, even then, everyone tends to space themselves out, one person every other pew, so we\u2019re too far apart for anything but a quick wave and a mouthed \u201cPeace.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I went on my exchange trip to China<\/a>\u00a0after high school, I remember being jealous when, during the briefing sessions, they warned us that in China, friends of any gender combination hold hands, and we shouldn\u2019t assume our hosts were hitting on us if they reached out to us. \u00a0I missed it when I returned stateside.<\/p>\n

In college, there was a lot more platonic touch, which might be partly a knock-on effect of the casual social environment, but seems to also be driven by the availability of common spaces. \u00a0When we were frequently in literal \u201ccommon rooms\u201d it was natural to all wind up draped over a couch or hitting each other affectionately. \u00a0Now, as an adult, when I see more of my friends for coffee or at the theatre, our personal space feels more inviolate in these scheduled, structured times.\u00a0When you don\u2019t touch anyone for long periods of time (and, perhaps when you\u2019re also a recovering gnostic) your body can feel a bit less real and a bit more tool-like, since it exists primarily to manipulate objects.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at\u00a0AmCon today, I\u2019ve got a piece up \u201cStarving for Communal Spaces\u201d and here\u2019s how it opens: A man walks into a business establishment and pays a small sum of money for the use of their premises. He\u2019s slightly furtive about it, and the proprietor would probably deny the nature of the service provided, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":8746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-8745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morality-in-practice","tag-no-war-but-culture-war"],"yoast_head":"\nStarving for Communal Spaces and Communion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Over at\u00a0AmCon today, I've got a piece up "Starving for Communal Spaces" and here's how it opens: A man walks into a business establishment and pays a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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