The Conflicted Desires Motivating Me

There is a distinct sense in which I recognize the ugliness of all this. For example, the last entry, on the Jewish ex-girlfriend, I wrote some extremely loathsome stuff. There is indeed a sense of conscience that accompanies all of these meditations.

Sometimes, when in the throes of desire, this conscience is silenced. Then I can allow language free reign to speak of R's body and how it reflects me and my desires. Even as these words pass onto the screen, a certain rush betrays me. I want to talk about the sex I had with her, how I videotaped it (with her consent) and the images, after the relationship was over, that bedeviled me. And still do.

Yet, when emotional exhaustion strikes, the conscience reassumes dominance, and just as Freud and Nietzsche said it would, it terrorizes me. This morning I could barely get out of bed. I huffed over and over with anxiety and self-loathing, wondering how I could present myself confidently before my students, when the only image of myself was torture to look upon.

I credit myself with not being attracted, for the most part, to my students--young college girls. That seems like some kind of moral achievement. And in fact, I am striving to be moral. Why friends, I've even told R that I cannot speak with her for sometime for the sake of my sanity. At least, until this stressful period is over and my heart is less liable to its whims towards the desire that seduces it.

Yet, a lack of desire is not really any moral triumph. So long as morality remains the struggle of judgment with desire. But perhaps I'm not willing to admit that altogether. My philosophical formation struggles against it at every turn. But I was born and remain a Christian, if only in the shape of my soul and its forms of neurosis.

But let me say something about the desires which lead me here. Let me try to give an account of their first feast: the discovery of erotic images in a book in the closet of my father's bedroom. This book hidden away. I found it, took it to a place where I could be alone, and pleasured myself before these images. The pleasure of this moment had almost less to do with the scopophilic desire being sated, than with the happiness in my transgression. Because I hated my father then. That I could take this object and vandalize it, without it being known--that I could abuse its contents (not literally of course, because I had to replace it where I'd found it) and then return to my hohum existence. This excited me: I had my first transgression.