desiring desire

if my desire had a name, perhaps it would be guy hocquenghem. or rather, if my desire to desire and to be desired had a name...

in melbourne i stumbled upon the screwball asses. amazing. i'm in awe. it's the most lovely, crazy, throbbing rant i've read in a long time. i'm now charged by thoughts of queer revolutions.



the following passage was written for me to read now. and to keep reading, for now.

"I would like to be a gigolo offering myself to all. But when I meet a gigolo who dazzles me, who seduces with even more insolence than myself and with more of that desire to be desired, am I not just as scared of a trap as everyone else, just as scared as he is? Scared of the trap of being less desired than I myself desire, the trap that is called being in love.

"This is where we should scramble the flows, de-desire, en-desire, switch the current, disrupt the machine. But instead, we turn off the power because we are scared of suffering or of being swindled. No discipline is more sentimental than the one that represses sentiments. (p38)

and there's so much more. throughout he addresses the tendency for queer male politics to sever desire from thought. political brothers do not fuck, they only speak of fucking. because desire belongs outside of politics. but not according to hocquenghem, who addresses this paper "to those individuals with whom I cannot make love".

we speak so much of desire, always and often. we analyse it and seek to know it, as though to extract it. but why can't we speak of non-desire? why, he asks, can't we be critical of our non-desire? who in the room do we not wish to fuck and why might that be? and there's so much more. he asks:

"When shall we be able to shatter the power of words by the movement of skins?"(p84)

this statement relates to my ongoing musings (here and elsewhere) about desire. it lies beneath my own attempts to express something (here and elsewhere) beyond words. because words can't do what bodies can. words don't make me come here.

today I startled myself in the change rooms, when i caught sight of (in my reflection) a bruise above my left nipple. 'what the fuck?' then i remembered him, biting me, several days ago. a nice memory of a playful moment. a bed, a suck, a sensation. and now we're left with stains on the surface of our skin.

we exchanged words too, but these are forgotten.