Desire.
What a strange and fickle creature this is! I possessed many t-shirts at one stage in the eighties, all purchased from a rather wonderful company in London’s Covent Garden called Millenium, run by a Spaniard, who conjured up some beautiful garments at oh, so very reasonable prices. I had a pretty much skin tight, bright blue t-shirt once with DESEO in orange letters on the front, which I wore for a year or so, without realising quite what it (and I) was proclaiming. I still have some of their pieces that I can’t bear to throw them away. Not because I want to wear them again (if only I could!) but because of what they represent, the memories they carry with them.
One of the first life lessons we learn, as we grow up as toddlers, is that whilst we may desire something, it doesn’t mean we can have it. Smacks follow, as we cry hot, salty tears, when told ‘NO! I won’t tell you again’. And therein lies the start of many an S/M fetish. I digress. Desire, we come to realise, as we are a little older, is an entirely fickle thing. When you get what you desire too often, it becomes cheapened, meaningless. But when you don’t get what you desire and it is paraded in front of you, again and again, desire becomes bitter or bittersweet, especially when others seem to be fulfilled by it and you are not. And society of course co-modifies desire, as it does everything. Tells us how it expects us to live with desire and cope with its slow loss. They say they are four different stages of desire in a relationship, each more ritualised than the other. Yet some still choose to try and subvert desire. Play by different rules allowing for a little more freedom, flexibility, creativity. Is there a rulebook.? Rip up the rulebook! Is there a template? Expand, push back against those confining edges!
You also come to realise, that desire is almost always not an equal opportunities employer. Whilst you might desire something, someone, there’s no guarantee the feeling is in anyway mutual. So our society employs a gamut of signs, symbols, codes and yes, those rituals to ensure that we know if it is. A stolen glance, a fleeting smile, a loveheart, a clue in our speech, our body language. But perhaps the hardest thing is when our hearts desire is not returned. How often is desire ever truly, completely equal? I fancy him so much, why doesn’t he fancy me? I’m in love with him, surely he can reciprocate.. even just a little? But no, we come to realise, it simply doesn’t work like that.
And when it happens, when it all seems to fit into place, to work out so well.. there’s nothing worse than being told by your sweetheart that they are not in love with you anymore. The vast collection of songs written about tainted love, broken love, lost love- all attest to the emptyness left inside, a ‘hollow space inside’ we say. It’s funny isn’t it, almost as if something physical inside has left you? I suppose that we discover all this bit by bit, as we mature because, if we knew it all too early, we would likely be devastated by knowledge of the loss to come. The pain to be endured. And the more we decide to play it our way, the more pain there is, it seems, to be endured.
As I sat on that London bound train, in the mid seventies I had all this to come! Sex, love, life? It’s a funny thing.
ON to Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.1 Exploration with some trepidation..
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