Relatively few nouns and verbs name tactile sensations besides words like touch, feel, tickle, brush, scratch, sting, itch, and tingle. Probably as a consequence, writers describing the sense of touch tend not to name the sensation directly or even to report the act of feeling. Nevertheless, a large stock of words describes temperature (hot, warm, mild, tepid, cold, arctic), moisture content (wet, dry, sticky, oily, greasy, moist, crisp), texture (gritty, silky, smooth, crinkled, coarse, soft, leathery), and weight (heavy, light, ponderous, buoyant, feathery). Read the following passages with an eye for descriptions of touch:
A small slab of roughly finished concrete offered a place to stand opposite a square of tar from which a splintered tee protruded.
—WILLIAM RINTOUL, “Breaking One Hundred”
The earth was moldy, a dense clay. No sun had fallen here for over two centuries. I climbed over the brick retaining wall and crawled toward the sound of the kitten. As I neared, as it sensed my presence was too large to be its mother, it went silent and scrabbled away from the reach of my hand. I brushed fur, though, and that slight warmth filled me with what must have been a mad calm because when the creature squeezed into a bearing wall of piled stones, I inched forward on my stomach.
—LOUISE ERDRICH, “Beneath the House”
Here is an example of a writer recalling a childish fantasy of aggression toward her younger sister. Notice the tactile description she uses:
She was baby-soft. I thought that I could put my thumb on her nose and push it bonelessly in, indent her face. I could poke dimples into her cheeks. I could work her face around like dough.
—MAXINE HONG KINGSTON, “The Quiet Girl”
Do something with your hands, and then write a sentence or two describing the experience of touch. For example, you might pet a dog, dig a hole and put a plant into the earth, make a pizza, sculpt with clay, bathe a baby, or scrub a floor. As you write, notice the words you consider using to describe temperature, moisture content, texture, weight, or any other tactile quality.
Turn to Brian Cable’s “The Last Stop” in Chapter 3, and read the last paragraph. Underline the language that describes the sense of touch. What does this detail add to your understanding of the scene, and why might Cable have chosen to save it for the last paragraph of his profile?