Saturday, June 28, 2008

The Desire

The desire is the thing.

No amount of good sex could ever compete with the idea of good sex.

Desire is a tickling at first, just a little irritation, then there is the inexorable swell of it, like a magnifying glass directing all that heat into a single point of need. It is so hot that you can't settle under the light of it.

I was never patient enough for desire. I allowed myself to jump into bed at the very earliest stirrings, sometimes no stirring at all, just an opportunistic coming together, an easy flesh-on-flesh, a damp parting, occasionally repeated, but never often enough to learn anything about those lovers.

On those rare occasions when I managed to hold the magnifying glass long enough to smoulder, I lost sleep. I would launch myself out into the chill of night and walk till I could imagine that the smoulder of desire had been extinguished by the sheer force of my will, but when I stopped to rest under a street light or at an intersection, I would hear the crackle of it crisping my skin.

I was prone to fixating on the object of my desire, walking past the places we had been together, recapturing threads of conversation still snagged on the brickwork and stamped into the pavement. Desire revisited and unrequited begins to look like obsession. I would become obsessed with the idea that the act of sex would release me from the intollerable state of desire.

The desire is more powerful than the fulfillment of desire.

I have learnt this over the years when the dissapointment of consumation has unravelled me. Still, it is difficult to relax under the magnifying glass and now and again I become the unsettled night prowler, the obsessive girl of my youth, the wild-haired sex addict that I will perhaps never out-grow.

3 comments:

LiteraryMinded said...

It is indeed powerful. And sometimes difficult when the person is so very far away and you're not even sure if you desire them or just a version of them you have constructed from text and phone conversations, a few photographs. Amazing, strong and powerful but where to put it as I wait?

Krissy Kneen said...

I'm sure this is a universal problem, but I always feel like I am alone with it. Good to know people actually have the same issues that I do with an overactive libido.

Unknown said...

I just see them as unique pleasures in themselves...that of the longing and that of the having. I feel a disappointment if I have heavily embellished my imagination of a potential lover, but not if I just wallow in the excruciating reality of not being able to have him/her. Then the having feels like a succulent reward for refraining from the drive to control the future.