The Mortality Rate of Desire
The superstitions of wanting
On spontaneous sun-stricken New York days, the gravitational center of our universe with which this solar system revolves I believe shifts to land in Washington Square Park. Mid-February such a day presented itself and I was not immune to the desire to abandon my work early for a walk through Manhattan. I found, as I walked through Alphabet City, that very draw towards the park. Veering into its leased-out grassy space I crossed the threshold to the west side on the hum of jazz bands and skateboarders. I noticed as reached the edge of the park a circle drawn on the concrete. People walked around it respectfully. It wasn’t until I got close enough I understood why. Within the designated space I saw in a light pink, nearly mistakable for white, chalk written words.
Kissing Spot.
I laughed. Kissing spot, its image imprinted itself on my mind. A scene of possibility. Where instead of admitting you wanted to kiss someone, you could step inside and the unsaid becomes immediately understood. I felt the brief simplicity of it. I pictured myself crossing its border, but the current of the park took me onward, kept me moving, and I was not so brave to risk being understood. I kept my mind moving in a similar fashion, finding a train of thought and riding it out. Terrified I was, that if I spent enough time thinking about kissing I’d remember the long stretch of years between this moment and the last time the tender act was given to me. Worse I’d remember what it is deep down I truly desire.
In H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald briefly tells a story of an endangered species of bird. She says animals have begun to mean less. When a species becomes endangered we don’t see its wildness, instead, it starts to stands only for loss and disparity. The rareness of it counteracting any other meaning we might form in relation to ourselves. These two stories seem unrelated and yet are, as they stand, everything I believe about wanting. For years I have been denied desire. Its meaning has been lost in its relation to me and symbolically stands now for tragedy, stands for rejection.
When I tell this story of the kissing spot someone asks me what would happen if I let myself want. I walk home and listen to a sad song turning to look at my desire, but not to feel it. I feel it anyway. A tension rising in my chest tethering my heart to my spine. The pain settling somewhere between the vertebrates but I can’t tell which and I cannot relieve it because I am single, because though I am going home no one is waiting there for me to kiss hello or goodnight. When I go to bed I place my hands around me but feel beneath their touch a palm shaped muscle ache and frustration that this is not what I want at all, not even close. Anger festering beneath my skin. Why am I not as good as everyone else at being alone? I fall asleep and tears take residency in my eyes. They arrive whenever I try to face my want again. I think of my answer to the original question. What would happen if you let yourself want?
“It’s too excruciating.”
Historically, to want anything, we’re taught immediately disqualifies us from receiving it. Orpheus looks back, Gatbsy reaches out. Each delivers a death of a certain kind. We lose entirely what we want or else we lose ourselves. My tactic for dealing with my own wants has been to look away from the object of my longing. When I left the park I listed a memorized series of reasons why my life as it stood was everything I needed. Feeling a distinct shame in not having recognized it immediately. In my bedroom after the pain subsided, I retreated to a daydream because it’s easier to let my imagined self have than to let my real self want. I remember the absolute rule of the universe: In order to be kissed you must first enjoy what it means to be alone. Maybe I’m not being kissed, but I remind myself I am being loved and loving. I reach my hands out and there my friends and family are. I hold myself close, I keep myself warm. Knowing, though, I had already made a fatal misjudgment in feeling the desire to be kissed at all. Even briefly, even just adjacently. A piece of hope within me died, thinking now that I had acknowledged what I didn’t have all I’d find was more vacancy.
The proximity of my loneliness makes everything harsher. Though I think I am denying myself these feelings what I instead invite is shame. I write a story about how the world sees me because I can’t bear to let it look, my existence tender to even something so simple as that. I conclude the hunger of the touch starved can easily be misconstructed as naivety. People will assume I believe once I have this small thing I long for everything in my life will be fixed. I feel trapped. Wanting only contains rejection. I don’t want to be naive, I want to be grown up and independent. I let myself believe to deny the opportunity of being understood is far less painful than being misunderstood entirely. I exist only in my own confirmation bias. I know I will need to be brave. I know I will need to risk wanting eventually if I ever wish to have.
Something has gone unsaid. Who has poached desire to endangerment? Me. I was the author of such symbolism, of letting something large stand for something constrained. This occurred to me after I was asked to feel my want. When I sat in my bed and found myself feeling desire it was the first time in a while I had admitted to myself outright that terrifying truth—I wanted something. I wanted something which at present I didn’t have in my life. Of course it hurt as I had expected. It felt like being a kid again frustrating and tantrum-like. Something overstimulating across the body which made it hot with anger. I felt the painful awful hollowness, the microscopic sensation of touch starved absence, in not having what I desired and retreated to an imagined life where I had it. When I pulled back again to the real world I acknowledge what else was true. I didn’t feel the premonitions of doom or denial. I had not broken a great monumental rule of the universe like I once believed. I had felt the humane act of wishing you weren’t so alone.
When Gatsby meets Daisy at Nick Carraway’s house Fitzgerald informs us that the green light sitting across the bay had lost its significance. Gatsby’s count of enchanted objects, he says, had diminished by one. Mine were dwindling too. As desire grew in symbolic nature the kissing spot was lost along the ordinary regular happened upon art I remembered from years of walking on those warm days. The fear etched within it released on the premise that my desire was mine to be felt, not contained. I was right though to be afraid. If I thought long enough that day I would have remembered everything I wanted. My desire neither begins nor ends with a kiss. This specific thing I want but couldn’t say has a name. I know you won’t misunderstand me, I can say it now even if I feel a little afraid, but I’m willing to be brave.
I want love. I want someone to come home late at night excited to see me. I want to sit in a dimly lit restaurant and have someone watch me eat soup quietly because the food just arrived and we have waited so long that our hunger ate the rest of our conversation. I want to read books on the couch and show each other the parts we think they might like. I want to kiss and to laugh while I’m kissing. I want to take someone home and look at the ocean. I want to introduce them to my friends and I want them each to like each other. Mostly I want to go to sleep and feel just one part, a hand resting there on my arm because love doesn’t come singularly from my palms anymore. I’m not ashamed, I’m alive. I will breed my desire back from endangerment. I want, I want, I want. And I will not let anything keep it from me. I will be excruciated by it, but I will have it. Let me have it.
A kiss from someone who loves me (willing to wait and want until it arrives).
A 7$ glass of wine.
3 hours of Taylor Swift karaoke.
The perfect loose-fitting pair of jeans. Like the ones you thrift but without the work of having to do the looking.
An astrological event that will make all my wishes come true.
My bartender crush to remember my name.
Jojo the cat to not yell so loudly when I am sleeping
A spot of sunshine.
My new shoes to fit so I don’t have to go through the trouble of returning them (this one will not be granted. That is okay, sometimes we want things we can never have)
A ham and cheese croissant
Rest
A boyfriend (sue me!)
To run into Jude Law in the West Village
One good hair day.
A delicious perfectly ripe pomegranate.
Inspiration to write after a grudgingly cold and grey February.
To finish my book. (45,000 words to go)
Book recommendations
botox (just kidding)
All the right words exactly when I need to hear them.
A comprehensive fluency with the french language through no practice or effort.
A photo booth photo with no one in particular but with someone nonetheless
Likes on this newsletter and comments because I am stressed out by my lack of inspiration and doubt
Unfiltered desire even when it hurts.
Joy.
“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are.” H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
A light had been turned on and in order to see how beautiful love is I must first walk backward from where we’ve been. If not because the pain of looking directly at this newfound brightness would hurt my eyes, then to see what I have for many years missed. February 26th, 2022 1:46 PM
It will be cold again tomorrow but today it was warm. A tree with unfallen leaves rattled in the wind and it felt like may again. February 15th, 11:28 PM
A year ago I welcomed March with the strange understanding I was getting older. This March I feel the same sense of movement in my life, but it isn’t so terrifying. Something about 25 though monumental in its own right isn’t as horrifying as 24. This photo was me about 10 minutes away from crying my eyes out on the floor with some of my closest friends. We had just sung Love Story (Taylor’s version) and I felt an overwhelming amount of emotion when it came to being in the now. A couple of weeks ago the same friends drove around upstate New York and Landslide came on. I didn’t want to cry but it alluded to the same feelings. I was comfortable in the space of my understanding time. The unlearnable lesson that it is moving and it will always surprise us just how fast and how much it is. I don’t have any real feelings about 25 perhaps because I felt them all last year for 24. I’m at a perfect equal as far as tension. Often I long for other worlds but this March I’m happy just to be where I am, with those same friends celebrating another year. So much has happened, great beautiful things. I suppose what I’m trying to say really is I’m getting older too. My review of 24 is that, despite what people will say, it is indeed very old. Terribly old. My premonition of 25 is that it is monstrously young and inexperienced. But even so, isn’t every age?
Find your March mood board here!
Next Friday my Paid newsletter comes out where we will be finishing our book group book Before the Coffee Gets Cold, looking at some poetry, and answering this question from Lover Girl:
My girlfriend broke up with me. We had been dating on and off for about 3 years. She is one of my greatest friends. I believe our breakup was inevitable…
Just to name a few things. You can subscribe now or get a free trial week and then cancel it once it ends. I support you either way.
If not, don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other somewhere groovy soon.
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters
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My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here!
Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, uncertainty, and the arrival of February as expected.
Love always,
Chloé
Imagine being able to form thoughts this beautifully.
"I was not so brave to risk being understood." OOF! Your newsletter is the best part of my inbox.