Desire walks into a bar, because of course it does. Desire is a flirt, likes to tempt fate, likes to tempt people, likes to hold eye contact a little too long and then pretend to be surprised when the person at the other end of that eye contact, I don’t know, sends desire an email or gets their number from a friend and texts them or stalks their website, even though desire knew exactly what it was doing. The sexy thing about desire is its nonchalance – desire, which does not feel indifferent to experience, depends on a perceived indifference.
Desire looks away first, desire looks through eyelashes, desire wears a loose dress that completely obstructs its form (but, pay attention, the dress is slightly translucent, especially when desire is backlit). It’s about edges and makes us perceive the edges of ourselves. (Oh why is there a limit to closeness, why can your body not be my body as well, why are your thoughts so stubbornly yours when I yearn to understand them). Desire depends on lack. (Because it is a cliché but water when you have drank a liter is utterly repulsive but when your tongue is dry and your swallows painful, water is the most enticing thing in the world, better than [_____], worthy of fantasy). And desire is generative, an orientation-towards. (As in, the room is crowded but I always know where you are. As in, it is midnight and my eyelids are heavy but I must keep reading, keep kissing you, keep touching the soft untanned skin at your neck’s nape. As in, I’m having dreams not nightmares even though those dreams throb and are painful).
When you’re in the throws of desire, nothing makes sense but everything can. Chris Kraus finds desire in the therefore placed between two non-sequiturs, meaning desire is connective and apophenic. It takes liberties and encroaches on the gap.