Is This Soda the Closest I’ve Been to Physical Touch in Months? Is this touch starvation?

A deep dive into loneliness, gym thirst traps, and the quiet eroticism of carbonated beverages.

Do you like Itfrumbehine?

I picked up the soda because it was cold, not because it touched a nerve. But as I stared at the can — a man standing suggestively close behind a woman like they were about to line dance or file their taxes jointly — I realized something. This isn’t a beverage. This is foreplay. This is what my therapist meant when she said I might be “projecting intimacy onto objects.”

The soda is called Itfrumbehine. Say it out loud. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Now say it slower.

Yeah. You get it now.

This carbonated beverage didn’t ask to be sexual, but here we are. And honestly? Same.

My Love Language Is Soda Placement

I’ve been single for… well, that’s between me and the Google form I fill out for therapy intake. But the truth is, my standards for intimacy have collapsed like a wet lung. Lately, I feel a spark when someone adjusts the shoulder press machine after me. I get turned on when a cashier calls me “boss.” So when I saw this soda can art — two people standing in line at Target, or maybe just emotionally supporting each other in silence — I felt… something.

I felt seen. Touched. Held. Carbonated.

Fitness, But for the Heartache

Let’s be clear: I didn’t buy the soda. I don’t even drink soda. I’m in the middle of a fitness glow-down. That’s when you start working out not to look better, but because rage and despair need somewhere to go that isn’t into an ex’s voicemail.

I’ve been doing a lot of hot yoga, which is like regular yoga except you hate yourself the whole time and sweat out childhood wounds. I’ve also joined a gym where the people are less supportive and more like unpaid OnlyFans creators in Lululemon. I’ve started bringing resistance bands everywhere like a recently divorced dad on a “comeback tour.”

And through it all, this soda can haunts me. It’s not just hydration. It’s a relationship goal. Two people, pressed together, emotionally co-regulating through caffeine and high-fructose corn syrup.

Maybe I’m Just Touch-Starved

Look, I’m not saying this soda can turned me on. I’m saying I lingered. I’m saying I noticed the man’s hands weren’t visible and wondered where they were. I’m saying if this were a perfume ad, I would click “Shop Now.”

I miss closeness. Not just romantic, but the kind of closeness where someone spoons you and doesn’t check their phone. Where a friend sits beside you on the couch and you don’t have to say anything because you’ve trauma-bonded over the same Netflix documentary. Where someone texts, “Want anything from the store?” and they mean it.

Health Is a Funny Word

Every self-help guru tells you to focus on yourself. Get healthy. Heal your wounds. But what they don’t tell you is that healing is lonely. That being “the best version of yourself” is isolating. That once you stop drinking, binge-eating, or trauma-dating, the quiet is deafening.

Sometimes health looks like drinking water and journaling. Other times, it looks like accidentally falling in love with a soda mascot because he looks like he makes eye contact during sex.

Final Thoughts... I might have touch starvation

I didn’t buy Itfrumbehine. But I took a photo. And I come back to it. Because it reminds me that I still want touch, still crave connection, still hope that someone, somewhere, will stand a little too close behind me and not immediately file a restraining order.

Until then, I’ve got my weighted blanket. And maybe some fizzy water. And an imaginary man who respects boundaries but knows when to break them. You know, the essentials. Don't be ashamed of touch starvation.