It hasn’t been going particularly well, as I’m not really qualified for much, but recently I came upon a truly interesting and exciting possibility. A new company called Cudlers is opening up in Toronto, and they offer—for a price of $80 an hour—a platonic snuggling service for its clients, and are currently looking for a diverse array of Cuddlers to make house calls throughout the Greater Toronto Area.

I think I could do this.

I wrote the agency expressing my interest and they requested that I send them a photograph of myself, including my age and height, and a short essay on why I’d like to be a Cuddler.

This is what I sent:

Marcus Agincourt

Age: Younger than Tom Cruise

Height: Taller than Tom Cruise

I have been told that I have an extremely warm and reassuring manner. In fact, during group, I was once told, “Marcus, holding you is like stepping inside of a calming, Brian Eno composition.” I have participated in extensive Hug Therapy (HT) for my PTSD over the years, and the result of this training is that I am a very, very empathetic, sensitive and patient person.

You should know that I am an excellent listener and a natural conversationalist whom people feel very comfortable confiding in. I am, as they say, an old soul, and even if I have a slightly jittery manner and often knock things over, such as drinks, ashtrays and lamps, I’ve been told that I really know how to put people at ease. (I am a Pisces, and although many of this star sign are drinkers, I swore off the hard stuff years ago and now restrict myself to just wine in the evening.)

I dress well, in soft and reliable fabrics, and as I have very little muscle tone, my build, although slim, is very soft to the touch. I am proud to say that I have been compared favourably to Wagyu beef. Also, I do not sweat, so I emit no body odour whatsoever, and out of respect for others, have always kept my nails trim.

The truth is that I just want to help. I understand that in this modern world it’s sometimes easy to feel isolated and disconnected, and that people yearn for some simple, platonic human contact. It may sound corny, but I just want to help people heal, and if I can do that by wrapping myself around them in a non-sexual way for an hour, then I would consider it a privilege to do so.

Hugs,

Marcus Agincourt

PS: I prefer to cuddle to the music of Blondie but would defer to the wishes of the client.

PPS: A short list of dream clients:

Vintage Raquel Welch

An Asian

Jennifer Love Hewitt

Salma Hayek

Tom Hardy

Madonna (I would snuggle the mean right out of her)

Natalie Portman

Janet Gretzky

Paulina Gretzky (I would like to cuddle the three Gretzky’s all at once)

Wayne Gretzky

Stephen Hawking (I think it would be interesting and a possible learning experience, understanding that the cuddler will learn as much from the cuddlee, as the other way around!)

In talking to a doctor about this, it was suggested that I try Mindful Meditation as a way to help ground this impulse, the idea being that I’d learn to live more attentively in the moment and bring some stillness to my life. I should state that that I am the opposite of a Mindful person, by which I mean I barely exist in the moment, possessing an analytic mind that almost exclusively inhabits the future or past, and that slowing down and not thinking—just “being”–is virtually impossible for me.

Before the classes began, I had an orientation session. The waiting room had rugs on the wall, constantly flowing water, plants and little statues of Buddha all over the place, emitting an aggressively, “mindfully” organic ambience. The woman who walked out her office to greet me had a creepy tranquility beaming from her eyes and looked at me with unnerving sincerity. She spoke in an even, robotic voice that never varied. It was creepy, like Nurse Ratched, and it made me nervous, and the more she talked in this manner, the more anxious, almost angry, I felt myself becoming.

Her: What are you doing?

Me: (Hastily putting away my iPhone.) Not being Mindful?

Her: What would a Mindful person be doing?

Me: Experiencing the fabric of the chair I’m sitting on?

Her: That’s good Michael, now follow me.

Me: You know, the music in the waiting room surprises me.

Her: That’s interesting, Michael. What is it about the music that causes you such anxiety?

Me: Well, it doesn’t make me anxious, it was just something I noticed.

Her: (Silently staring back at me, waiting for elaboration.)

Me: With the whole Buddhist thing going on here, all the fountains and enforced serenity, I did not expect AM radio to be playing.

Her: I see. What did you expect?

Me: Maybe Brian Eno, some gentle, distant gongs, perhaps, but certainly not somebody excitedly trying to sell me cars, you know?

Her: Have you started your Happiness Jar?

Me: No, I forgot. I’ve been really busy.

Her: You haven’t been Mindful.

Me: No.

Her; I want you to think of something you’re happy for, write it down on a piece of paper and put it in your Happiness Jar when you get home, okay? Michael, tell me, what are you happy for?

Me: My iPhone.

Her: How about this blue, shining day, this day that just is, are you happy for that?

Me: (An angry sigh, and words now tense) Yes. I am happy for this blue, shining day, dammit.

We sat in the third row of this IMAX 3D spectacle, and I have to say it was the most concussive, punishing movie experience I have ever had.  We were so close to the screen that we couldn’t actually see the screen, and appreciating the movie was more of a physical challenge than an aesthetic one. Strictly confined within the conventions of the genre, Pacific Rim was a living, evolving piece of abstract expressionism that came screaming out at us like some terrible flying monkey.  We could only see gestures within the film– sound, colour and velocity—all swirling and spitting before us, but never did we have a clear, overview of things as they unfolded.

Of course, this didn’t really matter, because we knew exactly what was taking place. Pacific Rim is an action flick, a B movie writ monstrously large, and it followed the formula these movies always follow. This genre is now so much a part of me that I feel like it’s coded into my DNA, my understanding instinctive and unmediated rather than the product of conscious, cognitive functions, if that makes any sense.

Nonetheless, it was still a very disorienting experience ( I wanted nothing more than to inhabit a Brian Eno composition while there), and not simply because of the shock and awe campaign detonating around  us. Pacific Rim (note the name) was a movie designed for a global audience rather than a North American one. The film was so flat and one-dimensional that it was little more than a series of symbols and cues. There was no nuance or complexity, and this was intentional, because it’s built to travel, to be easily transferrable to other languages and cultures. The primary human characters in it are a diverse array of ethnicities, and the world represented a global, cultural mash-up. You simply don’t have to speak the language in which the movie is made to understand exactly what’s going on, in fact, you might even be better served if you didn’t.

For a movie that was all about fighting, there was no real violence in it, and it was more like a gigantic puppet show than a graphic representation of what a robot three times the size of a skyscraper fighting a massive alien might be like. It was a kid’s movie, meant to move merchandize and launch a franchise that will have global appeal. Last year, I think the top 10 top grossing films in North America were all sequels or prequels. Losing market share to piracy and revitalized cable television, original one-off movies that aspire to art are not where the bottom line lives, and the Hollywood arrow no longer flies no toward the heart of North America, but is now launched like a volley out toward the rest of the world, where all the money and people actually live.