BLOG #22: DESIRE
Before writing this blog post
Long time no blog. I’ve been too busy “going defcon 5 on the symbolic order” to quote Harry. He needs Twitter. Oh also I decided I’m going full freelance since at this point I’m just of the mind that a lot of places are just…not hiring Black people. Or approving them for apartments. There is no way to confirm this but facts lead me to believe my feelings may be closer to the truth than not.
I am going to tell you a story of this thing that happened to me today. So I’m on my way home from viewing an apartment that I cannot afford, somehow one of my most promising prospects along with another that is $600 less per month but that is truly another story. The apartment, that is. Okay so I’m on my way home, transferred to the A at Jay St. like usual. Among a horde of people is this extremely tall fellow, basketball-player-brolic. My guess is 6’8” but what do I know. Could have been North African but looked just vaguely Blarab so also a mystery. Curly hair, chocolate chip brown eyes, long eyelashes, and most importantly, a big ass canvas backpack that nearly whacked me in the face because he rather rudely refused to take it off while adjusting in the crowded train car. I dodge the backpack which, at the time the doors were closing, was headed toward my face with some force. Again, big ass dude. I choose my favorite spot: right next to the door in the nook between the butt-seat-rest-thing and the handicap railing, his big ass is just squished in between the center hand rail in front of the door, close to me and others. Ok so we’re zipping along, and when we get to the next stop and hella people get off, meaning the train car is now no longer considered packed. The people on the butt-seat-rest-thing all get off. Several people in seats get off. Those few of us still standing relax a bit. And Big Backpack does not distance. In fact, he gets closer to me. The doors close; next stop skips 3 stations because we’re express, and that next stop is mine. Big Backpack is now in the nook with me. All maybe-7ft of him. He smells like a trendy ozonic perfume and oud (hence…Blarab). He’s looming trying to see my phone which has the privacy screen because I am almost always dealing in trade secrets in public. So he cannot see my phone. And the chocolate chip eyes with the long eyelashes are burning into the little thin patch of hair I have near my right temple because I was born that way, and suddenly I am aware of this, not self-conscious or insecure per se but definitely aware, and I am developing pit stains in my men’s poplin shirting, and I put my phone away. Because I want to know what happens next. And I see a reality in which he’s trying to check out my awesome rack from above because he’s really at least 7’4.” And I test the reality with my phone in my pocket and my posture straightening a bit and a little hair flip to effuse my cheap fake vanilla fragrance that I wear to seem normal in public into the train car public. And the train lurches a bit on the brakes. And in one second Big Backpack kind of nudges my foot in the topsiders with the heel-bitten jeans dragging with his massive foot in the Raf Simons Ozwego (definitely Blarab) and he also gets closer and he also puts his left hand on my right elbow right as the train weight shifts and I have to lean closer to the railing he is now also leaning on so I don’t fall but he knows that. So with his left hand very gently on my right elbow in that one second I kind of turn to him to make sure I don’t fall and for one second I look up. I blush because obviously who the fuck wouldn’t blush this is so tense. And then the second is over the lurch is over the moment is over I get a text from Jack Hermann in the GC and shift my weight back to my left side so I can retrieve my phone from my pocket, shuffling my feet to do so, my foot no longer touching the 8-foot-tall man’s foot, leaning away, him still kind of leaning in, but also leaning away, more square to the doors, and then it’s my stop, so I’m still blushing and I run up the stairs blushing and into my apartment blushing and I finish my work blushing and now this blog is my diary.
I don’t have anything stupid to say about closeness and the warmth of a handsome 11-foot stranger trying to do whatever it is that he was trying to do. If I had to categorize it it would be like whatever hetero equivalent there is to cruising. I make that comparison because of the silence, the tension, and the glamor. The desire.
I don’t know a lot about desire but I know that it is not a preternaturally sexual feeling. And I also know that it is what I felt with Big Backpack. Desire feels like it’s really about feeling some sort of comfortability in a power dynamic, one that was decided for you, or one that you decided on for yourself. Knowing that you can fuck with it. And that what you want, because it may already seem pre-determined by the power dynamic, only matters as much as you want it to. The body-excitement of knowing that. That is desire, I think. In that moment for me, at least. Giant sexy man and average height woman wearing men’s clothes and synthetic body spray. Ass kind of shows in the jeans. Maybe an accidental whale tail (they’re lowrise). Prey, I am supposed to be—he looms. Prey, I could be—I put my phone away and let him sniff. Prey, I decide I am not after a touch broke whatever narrative spell was naturally playing itself out.
I only do this with sentences when I’m up tremendous.
I am going to tell you a story of this thing that happened to me today. So I’m on my way home from viewing an apartment that I cannot afford, somehow one of my most promising prospects along with another that is $600 less per month but that is truly another story. The apartment, that is. Okay so I’m on my way home, transferred to the A at Jay St. like usual. Among a horde of people is this extremely tall fellow, basketball-player-brolic. My guess is 6’8” but what do I know. Could have been North African but looked just vaguely Blarab so also a mystery. Curly hair, chocolate chip brown eyes, long eyelashes, and most importantly, a big ass canvas backpack that nearly whacked me in the face because he rather rudely refused to take it off while adjusting in the crowded train car. I dodge the backpack which, at the time the doors were closing, was headed toward my face with some force. Again, big ass dude. I choose my favorite spot: right next to the door in the nook between the butt-seat-rest-thing and the handicap railing, his big ass is just squished in between the center hand rail in front of the door, close to me and others. Ok so we’re zipping along, and when we get to the next stop and hella people get off, meaning the train car is now no longer considered packed. The people on the butt-seat-rest-thing all get off. Several people in seats get off. Those few of us still standing relax a bit. And Big Backpack does not distance. In fact, he gets closer to me. The doors close; next stop skips 3 stations because we’re express, and that next stop is mine. Big Backpack is now in the nook with me. All maybe-7ft of him. He smells like a trendy ozonic perfume and oud (hence…Blarab). He’s looming trying to see my phone which has the privacy screen because I am almost always dealing in trade secrets in public. So he cannot see my phone. And the chocolate chip eyes with the long eyelashes are burning into the little thin patch of hair I have near my right temple because I was born that way, and suddenly I am aware of this, not self-conscious or insecure per se but definitely aware, and I am developing pit stains in my men’s poplin shirting, and I put my phone away. Because I want to know what happens next. And I see a reality in which he’s trying to check out my awesome rack from above because he’s really at least 7’4.” And I test the reality with my phone in my pocket and my posture straightening a bit and a little hair flip to effuse my cheap fake vanilla fragrance that I wear to seem normal in public into the train car public. And the train lurches a bit on the brakes. And in one second Big Backpack kind of nudges my foot in the topsiders with the heel-bitten jeans dragging with his massive foot in the Raf Simons Ozwego (definitely Blarab) and he also gets closer and he also puts his left hand on my right elbow right as the train weight shifts and I have to lean closer to the railing he is now also leaning on so I don’t fall but he knows that. So with his left hand very gently on my right elbow in that one second I kind of turn to him to make sure I don’t fall and for one second I look up. I blush because obviously who the fuck wouldn’t blush this is so tense. And then the second is over the lurch is over the moment is over I get a text from Jack Hermann in the GC and shift my weight back to my left side so I can retrieve my phone from my pocket, shuffling my feet to do so, my foot no longer touching the 8-foot-tall man’s foot, leaning away, him still kind of leaning in, but also leaning away, more square to the doors, and then it’s my stop, so I’m still blushing and I run up the stairs blushing and into my apartment blushing and I finish my work blushing and now this blog is my diary.
I don’t have anything stupid to say about closeness and the warmth of a handsome 11-foot stranger trying to do whatever it is that he was trying to do. If I had to categorize it it would be like whatever hetero equivalent there is to cruising. I make that comparison because of the silence, the tension, and the glamor. The desire.
I don’t know a lot about desire but I know that it is not a preternaturally sexual feeling. And I also know that it is what I felt with Big Backpack. Desire feels like it’s really about feeling some sort of comfortability in a power dynamic, one that was decided for you, or one that you decided on for yourself. Knowing that you can fuck with it. And that what you want, because it may already seem pre-determined by the power dynamic, only matters as much as you want it to. The body-excitement of knowing that. That is desire, I think. In that moment for me, at least. Giant sexy man and average height woman wearing men’s clothes and synthetic body spray. Ass kind of shows in the jeans. Maybe an accidental whale tail (they’re lowrise). Prey, I am supposed to be—he looms. Prey, I could be—I put my phone away and let him sniff. Prey, I decide I am not after a touch broke whatever narrative spell was naturally playing itself out.
I only do this with sentences when I’m up tremendous.
After writing this blog post
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