On good days I'm a beast

I photographed myself, and my arched-out butt and the curves of my body turned me on even more than thinking about how I could kiss you on the beach, how I could touch you through your trousers in the elevator of our office.

A succubus looked at me from the mirror: hungry eyes, cheeks burning as if with fever, traces of insomnia. I had never looked so good. I imagined you looking at these photos and burned with thoughts of how I turn you on. In the photo of reflected reality you couldn't see the gray hair I had pulled out of my bangs that morning, you couldn't see the wrinkles of a cracked facade; I was smooth, soft and unattainable. I looked at myself through your eyes and saw only something alluring and out of reach. How pleasant it was to look at myself and see only the lines of a body, a half-open mouth and desire. In a world ringing with my shame, in mirrors you can be shameless.

I existed at once in the world of the permitted and in a world parallel to it, where everything that can't be done in the light was hiding.

My palms and feet are thawing. My breathing is evening out. So strange: I hadn't even noticed I was breathing somehow wrong. But now I'm breathing evenly and slowly. And this I do notice. Somewhere in my belly a hot ball is born. I relax: I'm safe.

The moment anxiety recedes is overwhelming. Thoughts flicker: "everything will be okay", "how good I feel", "how I love you", "thank you". Two words remain: "thank you" and "love". They layer on top of each other; I see them, hear them and touch them. I kiss you on the cheek. Again and again. I kiss you on the shoulder.

You wake up fully, turn to me and take my face in your hands. You kiss me on the lips. We kiss gently, just lips touching lips.

On the back of my head, suddenly, a gust of wind. Photos from the news feed seep through "love-thank you", but they don't destroy the words. Suddenly, they coexist.

You jump up. You take off your cross and put it on the nightstand. You take off your underpants.

I kiss the head of your penis. What drives me is not desire but an intoxicating pull toward intimacy.

I take off my underwear too; you lean down to me and kiss my clitoris. I want you to enter me as soon as possible, and you do.

We... Thrusting always arouses me more than foreplay. My favorite position is me on top. I take off my T-shirt. You pinch my nipples. I touch your earlobe with my tongue and run it along your neck. I kiss you on the lips, wildly, devouring you, the way actors in Brazilian soap operas used to kiss.

It feels nice, it feels good, I like it. I am a body. I am a body. Let's change position. You from behind? Let's.

"Mom! Dad!" an anxious little voice calls from the next room.

We stop. I'm so frustrated. But it's funny. You smirk too.

on good days i'm a beast: hungry, smallish, say, an island leopard. since morning the cat has been poised to spring, darting along a red branch, arching and brushing the forest floor with her tender belly. i flirt with you desperately at lunchtime (you're still at the office), and after our meeting you still have half a day of work to get through, serious and focused. you stare straight at me over the coffee pot, we melt, kissing under cover of some random archway. i go back to your burrow, to wait, wait. the cat lashes her tail, leaving bruises behind my knees. without you i manage to draw half a kingdom: on the floor of the forest, f*cking jaguars and thin bodies like ours; there'll be something to show you when you finally come, look at what's possible, guess. that's done.

i go out and come back, hauling home poultry, cheese, olives, bread, the most beautiful-delicious things i can find, and spread a new throw over your bedspreads.

the gray throw has a print like a cat's, big spots. your pillow smells of you, your t-shirt, forgotten on the floor nearby, smells of you, i roll across the sheet, burrowing in, breathing in as deep as my lungs allow. it's only 5. i gather the tracks we've listened to together into a bundle. room in rome, nirvana, your heart is as black as night; danger, danger, high voltage; your tracks hold me by the scruff of the neck, i listen to the same thing on repeat until the words lose their original meaning. rhythm echoes in my ribs, in my belly, lower, exhaustingly hot. 7. i close my eyes and think about your fingers. another half hour and you'll come and

good sex is a thing that's hard to remember in detail. good sex molds headbody into a single moaning lump of plasticine, and i feel difficult picking that.

i can only describe before, above, after, around, but the actual inside and close by come out blocky when i try to describe them in words or even in a picture.

I had three lovers. But I no longer know whether I enjoyed having sex with them. I liked being desired, being loved, giving myself to them. I felt arousal and desire, I liked what we did. But the whole thing seemed to be about my ego rather than my body. I needed adoration, compliments, a blush on someone else's cheeks and a voice catching in their throat. But once I'd received admiration, I didn't know what to do next. Sometimes during sex I simply got bored.

In one TikTok a girl says: "I'd go somewhere, pick out the most attractive man and try to get him to like me. Because if he liked me, that meant I was attractive. I wasn't guided by my own attraction, I was looking for social confirmation of my worth."

I know what she's talking about. But right now I don't know who or what I like. A conversation about sexuality is sort of a conversation about possibilities, and I don't see any for myself.