I catch her eyes across the room—not the casual sweep of strangers but something that stops a feather mid-air. Her gaze cuts through my careful armor, past flesh and bone to something I’ve kept hidden. Not the hungry look of wanting what I have, but the fierce recognition of who I am. Like finding yourself remembered in a language you’d forgotten you spoke.
She knows I’m pretending—pretending to be the untouchable lover of women, the one who could bed everyone here if he wanted. She knows she could go deeper, could hurt me if she wanted to.
But that’s not why she’s getting closer.
She could squeeze this pimple of performance and manipulation in front of everyone here, break the illusion right there in public—But instead, she brings a cigarette to her lips, smearing it with red lipstick, her gaze sharpening—not with judgment, but curiosity.
It’s not beauty that does this. Not the cheap voltage of lust. It’s rarer—that moment when someone’s eyes refuse to treat you as scenery. When they see the shipwrecks and constellations mapped beneath your skin.
Even if it’s painful. Even if it’s terrifying. It’s about being treated as a person.
Desire, in our culture, has been hollowed out. Reduced to friction and release, chemistry and instinct. We say “sex sells,” but it doesn’t. What sells is validation. The fantasy of being wanted, not for who we are, but for what we represent. Curves, abs, status, escape. The body becomes an advertisement for something it was never meant to be.
But real desire—human desire—is something else. Not animal. Not just about pleasure. It’s about relation. Recognition. The mystery of seeing another person not as flesh, but as a soul you can touch through skin.
Roger Scruton wrote that desire aims not at a body, but at the person through the body. He challenged the cold language that reduces sexual experience to nerve endings and hormones. Because if we reduce sex to function, we strip it of meaning. Without meaning, what remains?
Performance without presence.
We become men trying to win women. Women trying to keep men. We compete, seduce, swipe, ghost, rebound. But in all that motion, we miss stillness. We miss the other. Not as prize or mirror, but as a person whose body carries mind, memory, history, and hope.
This is why a real kiss matters more than any perfect profile. Why the wrong touch can shut down the body, while the right one—gentle, awake, intentional—awakens something forgotten: reverence.
To desire well is to re-learn reverence.
To understand that arousal isn’t a private itch to scratch, but a response to another’s presence—how they look at you, speak, hesitate, laugh. And yes, how they walk, dress, move—but not just that. Desire begins in the soul. The body is only its voice.
So maybe the question isn’t: How do I get what I want?
But: What presence do I bring? What gaze do I hold?
Not every glance must lead to seduction. Not every desire must end in conquest. But every genuine encounter, if we dare, can lead us deeper into being human.
She slips onto my lap. Her dress falls just enough to bare her thigh.
She doesn’t say a word—just watches me, curious, like a cat studying something that might bite.
Then she lifts her cigarette to my lips. Still warm. Still stained with her lipstick.
An invitation. Not a game.
She’s watching to see who I am when I’m done pretending.
Not technique. Not power. Not performance.
But the sacred art of seeing—and being seen.
* * *
