Thought Crime

Is it a crime to imagine.

I am spending my life sea-sawing between a shrug and a self flagellation as if such things can exist on the same spectrum. A feather and the whole chicken. It was once described as the difference between erotica and pornography, but from where I stand it is all the same but for the want of a bird.

My dreams incriminate me. I spend my mornings wracked by them. By afternoon I am bored of my dissection of fantasy and capable of dismissing the whole thing. By the evening I am dreading the next dream, the next transgression. I have the hair suit ready and the cat-o-nine-tails and my back is red and raw from the beating I have just recovered from, but there is always tomorrow and tomorrow.

I am sorry for my boy and for the current obsession, the lad or lady who I have an eye for. I am sorry for my lewd thoughts and the flirtation and the blah blah boring blah and I am hunkered down and ready for the weight of the world to fall on me but it does not.

"It is just a fantasy" they tell me. "Hurts no one." But I am exhausted by my constant and repetitive transgressions. I am tired by the disappointments that they offer me as I imagine that I might be desired and discover that, to my eternal amazement, I am not.

Their loss, I tell myself, their myopic misunderstanding - as they shrug and tell me about the other women who are foremost in their minds. Yes. I am the shoulder to lean on. I am the gay-best-friend. I am the unattractive receptacle for your hopes and fears, but I am getting disillusioned with my familiar role. I am wanting more than this, just once. Just this once. I want to be the desired as well as the desiring one, and still I know it is too much to ask as I have nothing at all to offer in return.