Bill Henson

I must talk about Bill Henson. I have taken Mnemosyne off the shelf and rest it on my knee. It is a thick dark book, heavy with threat. I look at each of the photographs and I become unsettled. Page after page of loneliness. It is as if Bill Henson has climbed through my eyes and collected samples from my brain. The sad and bitterly sexual world of vacant lots, dead highways, childhood grief and the false comfort of strangers.

I look at the boy who might be a girl and I am aroused. The image reminds me of the paintings I used to stare at in the thick book of art prints on my mother's bookshelf, cherubim with their embryonic penises. The young Christ, cradled on some woman's knee. My first pornography I suppose, the Rape of the Sabine Women, Leda and the Swan, the lush canvass of human flesh and the miracle of colour, yellow ochre, cobalt blue, viridian crimson. Always the smell of oil paints in my nostrils, always a furtive hand, pressing into my crotch as I turned the page with my other hand. Art and sex. A virile combination.

I remember the images that Bill Henson is referencing. I remember the overwhelming scent of desire that accompanied my experience of them. Recently, in London, I walked through a gallery transfixed by colour and form and shadow and looked for the signs indicating the rest rooms, the WC as they say over there. The idea of sex and art is so intricately linked in my mind that these two become one.

The young boy in the photo has an erection. Looking at the photo reminds me of the constant rise and fall of my own youthful desires. I couldn't prime a canvas without imagining the sticky glue of white paint applied to my own skin. I wanted to be painted. I wanted someone to paint a picture of me and also to paint a picture on me. I wanted to be observed, desired and touched. I have not moved on. I am the young boy in the Henson photograph, so full of desire and a longing for sensation.

I don't like to be touched. I hate to be massaged. I shrink from the hugs of strangers. I came to every new lover, naked and full-bodied, pressing my skin quickly against theirs to overcome the shock of physical contact. It is like leaping into an icy pool, sudden sex and then it is over. I become acclimatised to someones touch like they cure people of their phobias, a spider in the hand, a snake on my chest, a rat in a cage.

I turn the pages. Beautiful glossy pages. I am longing to paint. I smell linseed oil and turpentine. There is dirt under my nails but it is only mud. I want the dirt to be iridescent like the wing of a butterfly, like the bright red light on plate 311 in Mnemosyne.

Everyone is talking about Bill Henson and I am leaving the cold, lonely longing of my flat and heading to the art shop in town to rub the heavy cartridge paper on my upper lip.