I refuse to "just" do it.

Ever looked a woman deep in her eyes after the deed was done, seen her sweat glands make her eye bags glisten, her features twisted into a lewd grin of satisfaction?

Certainly an archetypical pattern, maybe best represented by the succubus.

Oh, how often I am visited by the succubus, whispering promises of pleasure into my sleeping ear. Often she visits me, in that dream of mine, tantalizes and seduces me. Vivid, as my dreams are, I can smell her, taste her, even love her.

Yet, the dream goes as quickly as it comes and leaves me empty, longing and searching for the missing puzzle piece.

Desire is a most peculiar thing. We claw, scratch, and reach for shinies, whatever yours might be, even convince ourselves that this indeed is going to fill the hole in our hearts.

Not once was I able to be intimate with someone I didn't have a connection with. Frustrated, embarrassed, confident I am broken, is how I get away.

"Maybe if I did the pill it would work," I'd reason. Ready to do anything for my shinie, this marble, like a crow collecting and protecting its glinting silver. For god knows, exactly he and no one else, what would happen if I were to give up on my shinie, what darkness would beseech me, what demons would sit at my dinner table.

I am ready to accommodate them, yearning to meet them, so that I may move on. I wish I could, yet I cannot rationalize it away. Merely having the knowledge that it won't satisfy me doesn't intervene the circuits which induce the pursuit. It's as if, indeed, I am possessed.

To have our culture sexualize everything, and promote it as the thing to strive for, makes it no less difficult.

"How could you be an extrovert?" A close friend asked. "I'm a very hurt extrovert," I said. Abandoned early on, I at first adapted, later accepted and relished my solitude, as if I grew into a mold. Like a turtle's shell, deformed by the plastic string wrapped around its torso. Does the turtle's shell revert once you cut the string? I wonder.

Even with two pills, after all, I wasn't able to perform the deed. Someone cut the string finally. I will give up on it, just set me free.

I wonder, should I dive into my solitude? Is that the place for me to be? Or will I ever make a lasting connection? Sore as I am, I just might.

Sex means nothing without connection. It's like stuffing yourself with twinkies until you puke. It's being skin to skin with a breathing and vulnerable human being, beautiful and ugly, and disregarding all that, just for one's own sick need. Much more than I want to look at your nipples, I want to look into your eyes, see your pain and your heart. When I hug you, I want you to feel safe, like you've just arrived at a haven, weary from your long battle, and feel the same when I am hugged.

"I missed sleeping with someone," she says, laying in my arms.

"I could never really enjoy it," I reply.

"Why?"

"I'm afraid of closeness."

Afraid of closeness, yet yearning closeness. Laying in someone's arms is like licking a yet to be unwrapped lollipop. Yes, the lollipop is in my mouth. Yes, I can feel its shape, suck on it. But, I can't taste it. So close to what I want, but never reaching it. Like trapped behind thick glass, I look at my lover, just to drown in the same solitude.

I wonder if the turtle wants its string to be cut after all. Perhaps it became accustomed to it. Maybe it's afraid what would be if the string came off. Maybe it grew to love its string.

Fuck the turtle, and fuck the string. Let this heart love again.