Roller rinks were fucking horny places when you think about it. Disco lights bouncing off the floor, your cutest jeans painted onto your ass and some boy you’d been eyeing all night finally asking you to couples skate. You’d smuggled something boozy inside because paying for a Coke had absolutely no recreational value. By the slow skate, his hand had migrated considerably south of where it started and nobody was volunteering to correct him. Later you’d slip behind the building to share a joint and find out whether he kissed as well as you’d spent the last two hours imagining. Maybe his hand disappeared under your shirt. Maybe yours went exploring too. Then you’d skate back inside trying to look innocent while your bra was crooked and your mouth tasted like weed and somebody else’s tongue. That teenage urgency was fucking magnificent. Maya Killtron’s Touch This Body makes me want some of it back.
The production practically hands me the roller skates. Maya works in the glossy boogie and funk vocabulary she loves, with post-disco pulling the song toward the era when a dance floor could double as a hunting ground. There’s enough contemporary R&B underneath to keep the nostalgia from becoming costume. The groove feels playful because Maya’s subject is playful. This is a woman trying to remember why she once wanted to climb her man before either of them had time to get comfortable.
And she wastes approximately five seconds getting there. “Been a minute since you took me down / That sweet release.” Thank you. We can all stop pretending this is about holding hands. She misses getting fucked properly. “Sweet release” sounds suspiciously orgasmic to me, and “But we need to eat” turns their neglected sex life into hunger. They still have an appetite. Somebody needs to get off the couch and feed the fucking thing.
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Give a relationship enough time and eventually fucking has to compete with sweatpants and whatever you’re six episodes deep into. Maya has said she was thinking about keeping a long-term relationship exciting when sometimes you’d rather sit around in your cozies watching Game of Thrones. I know that woman. Hell, I’ve been that woman. Your boyfriend is ten feet away and you know what his tongue can do, yet somehow you’re both debating whether you have enough energy to start another episode. Familiarity can make even spectacular sex ridiculously easy to postpone.
Those early days were easy as fuck. Maya remembers “shivers from those early days / A heated passion storm,” before admitting “it takes effort in our current stage / To find our fighting form.” Of course it does. Early dating does half the work for you. A text can make your stomach flip. His hand on your thigh feels scandalous because you haven’t decided yet how far up you’re going to let it travel. Years later, you’ve seen this man naked hundreds of times. You know his passwords and what he orders when he’s hungover. Desire has to survive familiarity and apparently Maya intends to help it survive.
“Know you wanna touch this body / And I you know I want you bad / All we gotta do is start it / Just come on take my hand.” There’s something incredibly hot about how little convincing either of them actually needs. Nobody has stopped wanting anybody. They need somebody to fucking initiate. Take the hand. Close the bedroom door. Remember that the man asking if you remembered to buy toilet paper is also the one who used to make you lose track of where your underwear went.
Maya Killtron knows how to tease him too. “You don’t like it when I make you wait / I got you hooked.” Good. Keep him there for a minute. Long-term love gives you an unfair amount of sexual intelligence because eventually you know exactly what works on him. You know the kiss that changes his breathing. You know where to touch him when you want the evening to stop being about television. You also know precisely how long you can make him wait before he starts losing his fucking mind. Years together should come with benefits.
My favorite version of long-term horny might be the one that happens before you even get home. “When we’re out at night / I feel your gaze across the room.” Every woman in a long relationship deserves to catch her man looking at her like he’s still trying to get laid. You’re talking to somebody across the room and suddenly you feel his eyes on you. You know that look. He knows you know. Congratulations, whatever plans you had for staying out late have been canceled.
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That’s where the roller rink comes back for me. The circumstances change and the look doesn’t. At sixteen, you caught him watching you under a disco ball and wondered if tonight might finally be the night he put his hand under your shirt. Years later, you catch the same look across a crowded room and already know what those hands can do. There’s something hotter about the second version because anticipation comes with fucking evidence.
Maya Killtron has built an entire musical identity around making nostalgia move. A classically trained violinist with deep roots in funk and modern boogie, she has landed features in Noisey, Earmilk and Huffington Post, while her music has appeared in Broad City and Kim’s Convenience. Her songs have also soundtracked collections for Swedish fashion house Gina Tricot. She has performed alongside JUNO, Polaris and Grammy-recognized artists, and recently took her solo show to Japan. Touch This Body fits her world beautifully because its nostalgia extends beyond the sound. Maya is reaching backward for a feeling too.
Her own explanation nails the stakes. She talks about bringing back the confidence and sexual energy of early dating while keeping the comfort built through years of inside jokes. That comfort matters. You already know who this man is. You know what he looks like first thing in the morning and which story he tells too often. You’ve already survived enough boring Tuesdays together that one more isn’t going to kill you but girl you know Tuesday could be considerably more fun.
Maybe that’s what I miss about those roller-rink nights. We didn’t need to be reminded to want anything. Desire ran the fucking schedule. We found dark corners and made excuses to disappear behind buildings because keeping our hands to ourselves seemed completely unreasonable. Touch This Body takes that girl home with the man she already loves. She knows every inch of him now. Tonight she remembers she still wants to put her mouth on some of them.
