Guests, Hosts, and the Meaning of Home
a creative writing post (#19)
This is paywalled, so housekeeping first.
This is the nineteenth edition of a creative writing feature for paid subscribers, who are also able to comment on this post (and most posts). If you would like a paid subscription but can’t afford it, send an email to hollymathnerd at gmail dot com and I’ll hook you up with a free year.
Context: I started this feature to give me a place to put little writing experiments, descriptions, or other things I felt moved to write but had no large plan for and no real place for, so to speak. This is one of those.
I’ve given a lot of thought lately to human intimacy, particularly in non-sexual relationships of the sort that will never become sexual (such as friendships between straight women and gay men, straight women with each other, gay men and straight men, etc.). When the questions of sexual tension or potential eventual consummation are completely off the table, human relationships have a different, and in my opinion—in some ways, at least—deeper type of potential.
“Make yourself at home.”
Spoken by hosts to guests, these words are often meant to be taken, well, nowhere near literally.
But sometimes they are.
I’ve said them when I meant them only as a kind of rote welcome, and I’ve said them when I meant them literally.
What do I mean by “make yourself at home,” when I mean it in the literal sense?