If I weren’t built like a boy, I might have more luck in the world. I would like to know what it’s like to be a woman. All of that skin. The pleasing tilts of the skin. Pleasing for no other reason than beauty. Sex thrives on beauty, but beauty is not necessary for sex. That being said, maybe even you have taken great pains toward the fallacy of beautifying yourself for sex. Case in point: any first date. Hours of grooming. All for what? To make conversation with a stranger in hopes of gaining approval? To hold your face in the most appealing posture, afraid to turn it an inch, in case the light hits it wrong? I prefer the idea of beauty existing for its own sake, with no hope of an outcome. Though I am built like a boy, I am confident I could apply this preference in real-time. Say there were an incredibly desirable female body before me: I could separate her curves from our potential sex. I swear it: I could look upon her body on its own terms. You may be scoffing right now, considering I am technically a boy. You may cite my breed’s incapability of taking a cool look at desire. But in fact, if I were to actually have sex with this hypothetically beautiful woman, I would likely stop thinking about her beauty. In all likelihood, having achieved my aim, my mind would latch on to other things, subjects having nothing to do with sex. I would fly back into my personal history, explore those things I’d been lazy about remembering, acts of faith I had forgotten to maintain. The refrigerator door left open. And so, when you have working eyes, and are desirous only of beauty, sex with a beautiful woman is doomed to be empty. Precisely because there’s supposed to be nothing better. If I do ever have sex, I hope it’s with a woman containing some major physical flaw, the kind that makes God look like a senseless maniac, as bizarre and deleterious as the one akimbo fact in magical realism. Something tragic to gaze upon while we’re having sex, so I can think of her and not other things. Like a flaw to bind me to her. I should read more Borges; this would make me a well-rounded person. How did Borges have sex? How do blind people have sex? Do they get to imbue a body with all their finest mental characteristics? Can they fill a body with desire and therefore achieve maximum fruition? The height of desire? I must admit, it sounds appealing: I am fifteen; I keep a slab of an IPhone 6s in my pants pocket at all times. The phone is so large that, when it vibrates, I nearly get an erection. I have constant access to porn. I don’t know what to do anymore. Everyday, I am losing more desire. I watch it flee me like helium hissing off a balloon.
Image Credit: Alex Fry / @wordswefeel
