I don’t like being desired.
A strange truth that suddenly explained everything in my life. I can began simply by saying desire is a complicated experience as a woman.
You are desired and you are killed. You are desired and you are hurt. You are desired and your thoughts are devalued, your rights stripped away. Alternately, you are desired and you hold control over others. You are desired and you use it to your advantage. You are desired because you are beautiful, because you are deadly, because you are a woman. Desire. Desire. Desire.
Usually I would examine the way I desire. How do I desire others? How do I experience attraction to men and women? How do I experience attraction to friends? To certain sexual acts? To objects, to colors, to fetishes? My desire. I am overly concerned with it. I sometimes don’t understand it but I make peace with it. After all, I like my desire, it’s mine. But others desiring me? The possibility of it? Oh no, I tremble. I must hide now. My zodiac sign wants to perform the task of its symbol, I’m a crab, I want to hide. Burrowing myself in my hard shell, safe from being seen.
The funny thing, the ironic thing, the beautifully tragic thing is that as woman I want to be be desired. I desired to be desired. But I am simultaneously repulsed by it. I can do a quick psychological breakdown of this phenomenon in my own psyche. My mother was cruel, thus repulsed by femininity, my father kind, thus identified with masculinity. I want to constantly embody traits that remind me of him, he is dead and I’m still seeking to be a good son in some bizarre way. But I am woman and my mother was a beauty queen. I don’t want to be my mother, I want to be my father. But I can’t be him, I am not a man. I’m feminine but I don’t want to be my mother, but I’m actually the most close to her in personality, I never had the discipline my father had. I am splintered.
( It is feverish writing but I’m cracking down, splitting in the middle of my very own core so you can find the mirror within. )
You see, I have never struggled in the actual intimacy of the bedroom. I love a tinder hookup. I’ll drive an hour to see a mediocre man for some average sexual encounter. I love sex in the privacy of rooms and dark places, but never in the light of day. To be perceived as sexual is such a dread. And yet, there is a very visceral part of me that wants to reclaim this aspect. The sacred whore, the fallen woman, the femme fatale, above all, the dark feminine. I want to pull myself from the inside out.
I find myself inspired by famous women who express this duality of sex and disgust. Repulsion and performance. Androgyny and darkness. I think of Courtney Love’s unkempt appearance, red lips, black mascara, the kinderwhore aesthetic perfected, both object and subject. I think of Patti Smith’s strange beauty, black suits, black tresses, holding a flower or feather; rebellious and romantic. Witchy musicians who tether between beautiful and terrifying like Chelsea Wolfe and Stevie Nicks. I pick apart these women for specific assets, I make a Frankenstein of sorts.
The ideal woman to me is a juxtaposition of awareness and playfulness, messy and wild yet utterly breakable. It’s the performer in a play, knowing their lines and refusing to follow the script. It winks as it wears its heels, torture devices but who doesn’t love a Mary Jane? They don’t wear bras because its uncomfortable. Yes, the visible nipple is distracting, deal with it. Femininity, what a joke! Yes, lace is pretty but blood elevates it, don’t you see? Black because I’m in mourning, perpetual mourning. I’ll perform these rites for you but its so annoying, and yes I’m secretly enjoying it! I can’t untangle the contradiction so I let it hang in the air as a sentence misplaced, a poem unfinished.
But as much as I become a self-aware performer in my own play of femininity and sexuality, my real interest lies in editing desire.
I simply wish I could control how I am consumed. I want to post artsy nudes without the eternal anxiety of who’s looking over it. Judgement is not my an interest of mine, I don’t care if someone thinks I look unflattering or too sexual. My worry is that I’ll elicit a positive sexual response on someone I don’t want… well, actually the true fear is that I’ll elicit any kind of sexual response in general. See first paragraph above.
If I am desired, I risk being hurt. If I am desired, I won’t be taken seriously. I don’t want to be harassed or devalued. I don’t want my writing to lose its weight because of the way I look. I don’t want to targeted by someone for my body. There’s a feeling of perpetual peril that rears its head when desire comes calling. Perhaps there’s an ancestral line of sexual violence in my family (most likely), perhaps it is the precedent of sexual violence towards women in this society. All in all, it is devastating that something as beautiful as being desired is a struggle for me.
I understand the implications of being in this world. It’s the fine dance of taking responsibility for the reality you wish to create vs the actual tangible realm of being a woman in society. But it is dance I keep dancing anyway. Spinning faster every time to see where I land. I have my little rebellions. I refuse to not walk at night. I refuse to see the sexual woman as a woman devoid of soul. These mutinies are helpful, but the real task lies in front of the mirror. Can I see myself as both sexual being and wise oracle? No, I can’t. (I always tell you the truth, you see) It’s actually quite hard. I am even afraid of how having a semi-nude of myself in my substack will affect how people experience my writing.
I want to be taken seriously and in my mind a sexual body hinders it. That’s a disease onto itself that needs eradicating. But that’s why I am writing this. I am purging the poison by purging the words. Here is the wound: desire can get you killed but desire colors everything. I am currently re-reading Wuthering Heights, my favorite book, and it is the violence that arises with passions that interests me. The desolate landscape and the supernatural grip of a longing for another. We submit to the horrors of desire and we allow feral yearnings to wrap around our heart and throats. If a body provokes it, then so be it.
A very drunk friend at a party once asked me if he could bite me. I said yes and he gently sunk his teeth into the soft part of my arm. It hurt briefly though a mark remained. This is the ideal realm of desire. To be asked and to be allowed to be bitten by it. Let there be marks left…
This is so fantastic, can’t wait for read more for your fabulous work!