Here I am caught in the grip of lust
Often it just happens that way. What was an abstract kind of appreciation suddenly becomes a different thing entirely – and after a first kiss and the intimacies that follow, you lie awake fantasising furiously about a friend that you really, really, really want to fuck – again.
Anne Sexton, 28 Jun 2010
I shake out the tangle of blankets, turn over in the bed and thump the pillows. The sexual frustration is compounded by personal frustration with myself. I am a joke, a laughing stock – lying in bed alone and feeling tragically desperate. An idiot, a fool – if I had asked you here you would have said yes, but I didn't.
I had my reasons, they seemed like good ones at the time, but I can't even remember them now.
Instead, I remember the lines from Edna St. Vincent Millay:
I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast.
Fucking poetry.
For a long time I didn't think of you much, perhaps in passing once or twice. If someone had asked, I would have described you as ‘a nice guy' or ‘a cool person' or some other bland term to denote someone you like, but not in any particular way. But that was before I knew better; and you are many things, but you are not bland. If you were, you wouldn't be keeping me up now, thinking about you.
Asked to describe you I could have done so with ease – your height, weight, the way you hold your body, the angle of your jaw – I'm good at the details. "Very attractive," I would have conceded, nodding my head like an art collector at an exhibition, because my appreciation was aesthetic not sexual.
It's not beauty that turns me on – it's imperfections, the dents, flaws, vulnerability, the humanity. I needed to see that.
Show me yours and I'll show you mine.
It began, like so many Irish tales of romance or debauchery, in a pub. We were just talking, flirting a little, yes, but not in any real way, just because you're a man and I'm a woman and that's what people do. I was amusing myself. I had no intentions; I'm not sure you did either.
You offered me a drink. I could have walked away, I might well have crossed the room to chat to someone else, but I accepted because I liked your self-deprecation, your considerate behaviour and because you made me laugh.
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