Keep your hands off me!

If you know me enough you’ll know that I don’t touch anyone unless I’m hugging them or making out with them. (Friends, I hope this doesn’t terrify you)

I think people should keep away from touching others. Your skin has its own chemically-formulated coating that protects it and leaves a stain on others when you touch them. So if they don’t like you to touch them, then back off nicely.

I don’t feel comfortable sitting shoulder-to-shoulder next to people. I always skip a seat wherever I sit, and I always inch away if anyone decides that the perfect spot to sit is where our butts are touching. I’m not ready to have people smell me. I might have bad breath, I might smell like khara, so until I show the signs that I am willing to have you sniff my disgusting bodily odors, please stay away.

At work, I live in a constant state of worry. I have a colleague who likes to touch me all the time, repeatedly and on different spots in my body. She finds it very functional to stand next to me, and put her head on my shoulder and then let out a wheezing sigh. I feel the warmth of the sigh on my face, and the wheezing starts gnawing at my ear. Then she says in a very nasal sound, “How are you doing, Hussain?”

It doesn’t end here. Her hand stays there, waiting for a response from me. I try to move away as politely as possible, but her hand stays glued to my shoulder. She finds comfort touching me like that. Her hand finally moves, but she remains. She stands there, peering at my computer screen. I might be writing an e-mail to a friend, having cybersex, checking nude photos online. She remains there. At first I started opening a blank Word document and keeping it minimized, just in case. As soon as I hear her dragging her feet (she doesn’t walk, she drags her feet on the floor very noisily) I pretend that I’ve just started writing a new article on Word. But later on I realized that it still wouldn’t stop her if I’m typing or not. I could be on the phone, talking to someone while typing furiously on the keyboard, and she would still come and touch me. She touches my ear sometimes. Not the sexy kind of erotic touching, but the disgusting kind. The oh-you-have-an-ear-and-I-can-touch-it kind. She plays with my hair, too. I have short hair, very short hair and she would pluck it with her fingers and make a cooing voice. I feel like screaming! I feel like screaming and peeling off my scalp when she does that!

When order from 6alabat.com almost every day. We have a shared account that we all use. We all know the password. As soon as you’re employed here, the first thing you get is our 6alabat username and password. But she comes to my desk and says, “Are you ordering anything?”

Okay, I don’t mind ordering together, but she has her own way of sharing an online order with you. She stands behind me and cranes her neck forward toward the screen where I can smell her breath and feel the heat of her skin. And she makes thinking-noises! She’d go, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and start talking to herself. Internally! And I have to hear that! Later she touches my hand. My hand is on the mouse. She puts her hand on top of mine and starts scrolling to find what she wants. She scrolls up, and down, and up, and down, and up, and down, until she decides on something to eat. Ah!!

Today she stood next to me and started doing her usual thing, peering at my screen and waiting for me to talk about something retarded and dumb that she can relate to. Yes, kaifi, I’ve decided that she’s a total retard based on her writing skills and her dragging feet. So she was there, invading my space. I got off my desk and went to the bathroom. I went to the canteen and had my chai 7aleeb there. I came back, she was still standing there, holding the newspaper copy that was on my desk (the one that you can grab for free as soon as you walk into the office) and reading it all. All of it. She decided that it’s the perfect spot to leaf through the pages of the newspaper while I was working on an article and trying to submit it on time.

And I didn’t mind that at all. I needed the break anyway. So it wasn’t really that bad until she decided to attack me later on (a few minutes ago) when almost everyone left. She came and started touching my hair. Ah! Why!! Whyyyyyy!!

I’m talking to my boss. I want to be moved to another desk. Another department, even. Hell, I can quit the job and work somewhere where people don’t touch you like that!

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