For the subject, the moment when metal or fingertips begin to move across the skin has nothing to do with surprise.
Surprise fades very quickly.
What comes after is something else.
At first I still try to anticipate the next contact. I think it will come to the shoulder and it appears near the ribs. I assume it will stop and it continues a few centimeters further. For a few seconds I keep trying to predict it.
Then I stop.
Not because I can’t.
Because I keep getting it wrong.
And there comes a point where being wrong all the time becomes strangely tiring.
What the Operator controls is not the intensity of contact. Not even its direction. What is controlled is the space between one expectation and the next. That small territory where my body still believes it can organize what is happening.
The skin tries to adapt.
It never fully succeeds.
A light touch on the forearm can linger longer than firm pressure somewhere else. There are moments when I keep thinking about a specific point several seconds after it is no longer being touched.
It is ridiculous.
I know exactly where the hand is.
And yet I keep paying attention to a place it passed half a minute ago.
I start noticing things that normally would not exist.
The difference in temperature between a wrist and fingers.
The edge of a fingernail.
The way certain muscles tighten before I’m even aware I’ve reacted.
There is a small mark near my left elbow. I’ve known it for years. I don’t remember where it came from. Suddenly I spend more time looking at that mark than thinking about anything else.
I didn’t expect that.
I thought I would be paying attention to control.
To authority.
To surrender.
And instead I end up watching a skin mark the size of a lentil.
Sometimes it even annoys me.
Sometimes it feels strangely interesting.
Meanwhile, the movement continues.
I don’t feel like I am being immobilized.
I feel like something is being rearranged.
Each contact shifts something.
Not necessarily where it touches.
Sometimes it happens several centimeters away.
Sometimes it happens inside the head.
There are moments when I want to react and I don’t react.
And others when I react before deciding to.
That is what ends up taking over.
Not stillness.
But the inability to know exactly which part of me is ahead and which part arrives late.
On the other side of the room something clicks.
I think it is the heating system.
It has been doing that all afternoon.
I hear it three times.
The fourth one doesn’t come.
And I end up waiting for that sound longer than I think about the next touch.
I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
