Touch. Such a basic human interaction. We hug those we love. We kiss the cheeks of our children. We do these things things daily. The people we feel close to? We have sex with them, our bodies right up against each other. As someone who always had women around, I’m used to being touched with high frequency. A hand on my leg as we sit at a bar, a back scratch while we watch Netflix, the lips trailing down my body as fingers seek out my most intimate places. Oral sex. Fucking and slapping are all fun in their own right, but these aren’t the things that I really miss.

Prison is incredibly similar to a boy’s camp in a lot of ways. Every night I fall asleep on a bed no bigger than a couch. I can’t spread out very much, and the mattress is far from flat. We play tons of sports and talk tons shit. We watch T.V. together, tell stories of sexual conquests together. We talk about the lives we lived on the outside, about our “glory days.” All these tiny details make up life as we know it—they become the entirety of our lives. The exact same routine every day. Which, despite the regularity, still gets really hard for all of us. Having each other to talk to is nice, and we all try to do what we can, but there is one thing in life you just can’t replace: the feeling of human touch. I know how T.V. and movies portray prison when it comes to sex, but I can promise you that it’s nothing like that in the prison that I’m in. If anything, it’s more homophobic here than on the outside. Not a single person is openly gay.

Most people would say sex is what they miss most in prison, and I can’t say that they’re wrong. What I miss the most, however, is the simple feeling of being touched. I find myself longing for a hug, someone to wrap me up in loving arms and show me that they really care. Someone to rub my back for me, to rub away the stress and endless thoughts and tell me I don’t need to despair. To lay on a couch watching Netflix with a girl I care about, how she fits exactly right between my arms, the way her body shakes against mine when she laughs at something funny, the way her commentary on a scene vibrates against my chest as she speaks. I miss feeling the warmth of a hand on my shoulder, the wordless togetherness that comes with holding someone’s hand. When I’m sick, there is no one to take care of me, no one to be there with a warm towel to ease the pain.

This wasn’t something I thought about before prison, how much I relied on human touch, how much we need it as a basic experience of our humanness. I can’t wait to get out and give my daughter a hug in freedom, to kiss her on the cheek. I look forward to hugging my loved ones and not having to say goodbye, and I’m excited for the chance to find someone who loves me and wants to touch me all the time.