Empathic Intimacies: A Touch That You Can Really Feellllll
By Be Oakley
34 Pages
2nd Edition of 200
Risograph printed in Medium Blue and Flat Gold
April 2022

Empathic Intimacies: A Touch That You Can Really Feellllll is two essays written 2 years apart (April 2020 and April 2022 published together to create a timeline between two points in this ongoing pandemic.



This 2nd version, written two years after the first draft, speaks to the insurmountable time that has passed during this crisis. Since April 2020, many people have been able to touch again, be intimate with others, and seemingly resume life again, like picking back up after a long trip away from home. Many have chosen to race back into the world without giving themselves the time and space necessary to deal with the weight of this crisis fully. I think of those who can’t return to life as it was before due to the inaction of our governments during this crisis, of the millions and millions who have not had access to not even one vaccine dose (when many in the United States have had three). I think of the immunocompromised who may not be able to fully return to the world as we knew it due to variant after variant still plaguing the globe. I think of those (like myself) whose mental health has deteriorated and whose agoraphobia accompanies and abets this forced isolation. Many of us have always sought alternative forms of intimacy, as found on book pages.

This book is typeset in our newest protest, Seize Control of the FDA - Act Up Protest, which was made using source imagery of protest signs from this important and historic event. Seize Control of the FDA took place on October 11, 1988. ACT UP’s first national action was coordinated by an ad hoc group of ACT UP members from around the country called ACT NOW (AIDS Coalition to Network, Organize and Win). Approximately 1,500 activists from around the U.S. descended on the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, MD, to demand that the FDA speed up the research, development, and approval of drugs for AIDS. The afternoon before, in front of the Health and Human Services building in Washington, DC, ACT UP held a “mock trial” of various people who impeded the AIDS movement, and Vito Russo delivered the second version of his “Why We Fight” speech.”

The type used in this book is as important as the words written in it. Design can be a powerful tool for creating radical content rather than just a corporate tool for exploitation. Many queer people have made connections between the covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing plague of aids and HIV. The actions and (inactions in the government's response to both pandemics are not lost on many of those whose lives have been touched by AIDs and HIV.