When I lose my sense of desire, I wash the house.
I boil the seashells from my windowsill in hot salt water. I vacuum between the memory boxes under the bedframe. I wipe coffee rings from my writing desk, and vacuum the cat hair from the bottom of my socks.
After the floor, I look at the body.
I soften the angel hair pasta. Stirring it into the simmer of oil, turmeric, and kale. After swallowing, I laugh at the orange tint on the corners of my mouth–it’s only funny because I use a turmeric facewash as well. It will cancel out. Things become spiritual when you can’t evade them. Things become spiritual with repetition. Despite , despite– here I am. Scraping the oil off. I feel like a seagull slick with grease. I muddle a foam out of the marigold gel. I love the dry crack of soaped skin. I run my necklaces under the tap. Watching the soap spill between my fingers. It’s not the right way to clean silver, but it’s something. It is something to do, or something that could happen.
When I have created a blank slate I can start to reintroduce myself to want.
I often forget what it is that differentiates desire from the feeling of enjoyment, entertainment, or pleasure.
Pleasure and desire are not synonymous.
If attention from someone feels easy to reciprocate, that is possibly pleasurable–but it isn’t sourced from self.
It feels somewhat fabricated; a process in order to remove the idea of yourself from the whole of your person.
You are able to experience pleasure and entertainment by embodying the object of desire.
It’s not always bad, it’s often fun–but true connection isn’t built where desire is manufactured.
For example, before I got top-surgery I, as a whole person, was either disconnected or disappointed in my chest, however when a lover took great interest and enjoyment in my body, I was able to disconnect from my own idea of self in order to live within the pleasure and enjoyment that they were taking in me–if only for a moment. I was able to sit in their line of vision, and I liked it. Yes, however, I was already disconnected from myself as a whole so there was no option for my own, true, core desire for them as a whole person to come up in those encounters. It’s quite selfish actually to be constantly attempting to attune to your partner’s wants. If you are always thinking of their experience, you end up thinking of yourself, and are lacking the presence required to fully show up in order to fuck with a purpose. It can be fun or exciting, but it never feels like true connection.
What about non-sexual desire?
What does it mean when i want i want i want i want i want–to see you, to paint my nails, to eat and eat and eat and cut my hair, and write and write and write and paint something or sing, or get get get get get whatever trophy job what new piece of clothing….
You want to hold something that will complete you.
You want to create something that will prove your worth or belonging.
You forget that it’s all a series of paths that have already been set out…
Desire is so natural it is unnatural, it is surprising, it comes to you at 3am and you know you have to quit your desk job to pursue nannying and herbalism, and break up with your wife, because the security you thought you wanted is in truth a box that is sucking the opportunity for desire away from you. In that moment you realize your desire is still anchored to what was or what could be rather than what is.
My wish is that I set up a life for myself, where desire is at the very least possible.
The beautiful thing about desire–is it is never expected to remain in the ways we expect our identity to solidify.
I don’t want to live in plastic rigidity, instead I’d rather be something wormish, and processing.
I think it’s possible for someone to hoard your desire away from you; because they think you owe it to them, or because you think you owe it to them. This is where devotion and desire are tied–if someone has your devotion, it is nearly impossible for your own desire to be sparked for anything else. Everything else you want feels less real, meaningful, or true. It can cause a lapse in self fulfillment, or autonomy.
But listen to me when I say; you don’t owe anyone your devotion if they are not coming to you with the same.
You can do whatever you want whenever you want to do it–but it takes a great deal of privilege to get there.
If what I am saying is true, which is always up for debate, then is all reciprocated desire fabricated?
I don’t think so.
When I feel desire it is never heady, it is extremely grounded, it is sourced from dirt and somehow is able to lapse past my usual comforts. Locking eyes, holding eye contact, intuition, guts, gravity drop. You are sleeping in a bed with unwashed sheets and wine has spilled on the vintage carpet but neither of you seem to care. You pulled off your clean shirts to lay them over the spill and remain where you are – it is past your bedtime, your outfit for tomorrow is soaking up Malbec.
Despite, despite you are naked and spinning giddy .
I have spent a lot of time considering the wants of other’s, or rather, the idea of self that is seen from the outside.
I can take a lover who is 6’5” and has a six pack and is a cis-man and knows that from the outside eye we pass as a straight couple. I can receive texts from that man everyday and enjoy the way I am being attended to, without having the desire to go to bed with him. Most likely, I still will–I am not always attuned to my truth, and I am always curious what something will be like. However the sex will feel manufactured, because it has been idolized from the dream of something impossible. It is never as embodied as the mystery that precludes it. This act keeps my ego high, and my sense of self too far gone to reach.
Sometimes, when I find myself a little closer to earth– I create a boyfriend from myself within relationships and with sex. I put these beliefs on the shoulders of my lovers. I forget to look for my own desire in the room, because I am already so busy rejecting what I was supposed to be, that I begin to replace want with removal. This is when I lose balance, I fall off the pedestal I’ve put myself on, and slam hard into my muscle and hair, sitting in the dirt.
After the floor, I look at the body.
I land in a pile of blank canvases crawling with spiders and paint splatters and I am wearing a back tank top and black pants and black boots the same as I always have, and always will. I am not worried about the dirt around me, I am being held by someone who makes me want to stretch the hours of waking time, who makes me want to call out of work just to fuck and laugh and look at each other. I am seeing every muscle on their face twitch and move and I am picturing the dynamics of their anatomy. They are looking at me not with objectification but with a sense of taking stock– what is my inventory?
I know I want you.
Desire evades when summoned, but when stumbled upon is present without a doubt.
We are naked and chest to chest. The fingernail of their index finger was recently inside of me, and is now attempting to pry off the white gold star glued to my canine. I am laughing and trying to bite them and suddenly I am alive in my teeth, and my ears, and everywhere on my skin that metal touches, because I know they will touch me there next. Our legs are threaded like dough braids.. They move their hand to my hair and shapeshift into a lover I had three years prior–she is pushing my hairline back, and looking to the place where my roots are growing–she is in awe at how small and precious the roots look under the threads of platinum. She calls them baby hairs, and sheds a tear for my follicles. I look at her scalp, which has never been touched by bleach or dye and I want to lick her widow’s peak in all of its non-chemical sweat.
Have you ever hooked up in the MoMA bathrooms?
That’s what I mean by desire.
To be seen while holding open eyes will return someone back to their body;
to be seen like that is a great way to open the door for desire.
I take inventory of your aspects one by one, and in zooming in–I am able to piece you together at a pace where I am looking at you with as much truth as I am allotted as an outsider at this time. I am giving you my time, a promise to keep looking for more, I am tracing the surface of your skin in a certain moment.
Things become spiritual when you are present for them,
over and over again.
What do you like?
I like ___________________________. (sometimes this feels empty.)
What do you want?
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