Jessie Cole - Desire: A Reckoning

What to do with the intensity of longing that occasionally arises? Sometimes I hug my pup so hard he growls. When my pup growls, I realise I need to find some other way of letting off steam. Its easy to imagine I could just touch myself and be done with it, but no matter how many times I make myself come, that feeling of wanting doesnt subside. A friend has a term for the need for touchskin hungry. Lots of people live without sex, but I find it a kind of deprivation.

What does it mean to be awakened? To want? To love? Jessie Cole is in her late thirties when she meets a man twenty years older than she is. They become lovers. Both passionate and companionable, fraught and uneven, their relationship tests her fears and anxieties. Through their interstate affair, through bushfires and the pandemic, she learns about herself, how her initiations into womanhood shaped who she is now, and how the shadow of family trauma still inhabits her body.

Jessie Cole has written an unabashed, thrilling exploration of the very nature of desire, a story about vulnerability and strength, loss and regeneration. A memoir of the body, Desire is a visceral book in which feeling and longing are laid bare.

This book was written on the traditional lands of the Moorung-moobah people of the Bundjalung Nation. The author acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which she works, and pays respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. As the traditional custodians of these lands, the Moorung-moobah people have lived in and derived their physical and spiritual needs from the forests, rivers, lakes and streams of this beautiful valley over many thousands of years. Sovereignty has never been ceded.

For the forest and all my forest kin

~

~

At dusk, in springtime, there is a stretch of trees in my homeplace where the fireflies sometimes hover. I might walk there, by chance, at just the right time. Caught in this rare moment, standing amongst them, Im awed by their tiny luminescent bodies. Each creatures light is intermittent, blinking, so I lose sight of them for several beats, only to have them reappear beside me, slightly out of place. Keeping still, the night darkening around me, the light of the fireflies invisible then not, invisible then not, I try to hold the moment, wishing time would stop.

The first night I spent with my lover was like standing amongst the fireflies. Desire incandescent, but the knowledge of its fleetingness always in the room. I thought, I may never see this man again. I thought, the memory may be all that remains. And I tried not to let that knowledge change me. I tried not to pre-emptively grieve. Be here now, I told myself. Be here now.

Some days, especially when Im away from my forest homeplace, I stumble around, bumping and bruising myself, taking off skin. I cant gauge where my body is in space. I cant feel my edges. I feel pain when I come up against a hard object, but Im shocked by the pain, surprised that my body has come a cropper. The supermarket trolley jerks against my ankles. My elbows bang against walls as I walk past. Hallways dont seem to contain me. I ricochet from one knock to another, bump bump bump. It all seems like extreme clumsiness, but I wasnt a clumsy child. I cant bring any sense of self the boundary lines of my body with me from the forest out into the world.

~

What to do with the intensity of longing that occasionally arises? Sometimes I hug my pup so hard he growls. When my pup growls, I realise I need to find some other way of letting off steam. Its easy to imagine I could just touch myself and be done with it, but no matter how many times I make myself come, that feeling of wanting doesnt subside. A friend has a term for the need for touch skin-hungry. Lots of people live without sex, but I find it a kind of deprivation.

~

My local vet is preposterously handsome. Dark-skinned, almond-eyed, of indeterminate (to me) ethnicity, youthful. When I first walked into his surgery with my scab-nosed cat, I sucked in a breath in surprise. He smirked, as if his appeal was written all over my face. The last vet was an old, gentle, dishevelled bloke, who wiped up the urine of nervous pets as if it was nothing. This new young vet had the cocky ease of someone aware of their charms. I wondered about how hed see me. I lived in a house with few mirrors, days might go past before I caught sight of my reflection. Self-conscious, I glanced down at my tatty jeans, untying my messy hair while he spoke. I pondered our age difference. I guessed it was about a decade. I wondered if hed see me as old. There was something in his manner that hinted at an awareness of me as a sexual being. Was he flirting with me? Or did I imagine that because I found him attractive? The sexual undercurrent caught me off guard. I tied my hair back up, alert, my body tingling. He stared into my eyes and told me he suspected my scab-nosed cat was allergic to mosquitos, but that Id have to pay six hundred dollars for a biopsy to check.

I did not have six hundred dollars.

But how would you treat it, if it was mosquitos?

The old vet had always prescribed the cheapest possible option.

Well, there is a range of potential treatments, but Im not willing to go ahead with any of them until we know what were dealing with.

Cant we just assume it is mosquitos, and give the simplest treatment a go? It was tricky to broach the topic of my limited income.

He shook his head.

I sighed in frustration.

Have you thought about getting pet insurance? he asked. I mean, you wouldnt go without car insurance, right? Its pretty much the same.

Id only ever had third-party car insurance.

Im a single mum, I wanted to say. Or, even more financially damning, Im a fucking novelist.

I did what any desperate owner of a scab-nosed cat would do in this scenario. I walked outside and rang around until I found a vet in the area whod treat my cat without the six-hundred-dollar biopsy. The next vet was a tall, slim, balding redhead, with freckled, sun-damaged skin. He was softly spoken and kind and I fought the urge to stretch up on my toes to place a gentle kiss on his cheek in thanks.

~

Its hard to define the feeling of mutual sexual attraction. Is there even a word that sums up that strange physiological awareness? The one I usually reach for is vibe, although, coming from northern New South Wales, Im conscious of our embarrassing hippie lexicon. So, what is it, this vibe? Its easy enough to identify your own physical attraction to another person. Hyper-alertness to their presence, focus on their physical attributes, an elevated heart rate, tingly skin, the need to make eye contact, and if youre me difficulty in expressing yourself clearly, a fumblingness, or outright clumsiness. But what is it that makes the vibe feel mutual? Ive been around people who dont show any of my overt symptoms of attraction, but in whom I still detect a sense that its there. Perhaps Im subconsciously picking up on subtle biological cues dilated pupils or the faintest of flushes. I often perceive their state as a type of stillness. While I am spilling over, the other person is calm, but somehow receptive to all my trembly sensuality. Its as though I have their attention and they are making room for me. But how (without asking) could I ever confirm such an indecipherable thing?

~