That Feeling Begins

Do you remember that last urge? That recent impulse that arrested your body and left you helpless, witless and cowering in the wake of your will? The potency of that moment is a bitch.
Maybe it was right before that second pint of Hagen Daaz Mayan Chocolate. Or the second before the movement of a tiny, digital decimal point. Maybe it was that lingering moment - nose poised between the collar of her silken blouse and the curve of her ear - when you were expected home 45 minutes ago.

That crumbling aftermath known as hindsight and the crushing rockslide of consequences that follows exists somewhere on the other side of the world. Until it doesn’t. Why does giving in to these raw and utterly honest desires of our heart always make us feel like shit afterwards? And for that matter, why are the desires of our heart made up of things that - apart from that amoral alternate universe known as the dark recesses of our soul - are generally bad for us?

For once, I’d love to face the temptation of abstinence. How great would that be? My wife’s still hot after 10 years of marriage, but she’s very supportive of extra-marital affairs. Meanwhile this even hotter blonde, at the office Christmas party, smells just like strawberries and cream and has got one hand clutching a Passion fruit martini, another hand all over me and keeps talking about going to the copy room. Just say no to abstinence? Hell yeah! Nailed that one! I will resist! No more NOT having sex!

But that’s not how this whole thing works, now is it? Instead we are lured, prompted and cajoled every second of every day by what feels good, what looks good, what tastes good, what sounds good and what smells good. Not a single body part is immune to the sensory decadence that takes us captive and wraps us around its painted burgundy fingertip.

As I languish here in my bad decisions, I can feel the eyes of the upright citizen’s brigade burning a hole through my dirty body. You mockers. You chastise the majority of us - the victims of temptation. Maybe you believe that the will can be controlled. That temptations are mere tests where only the strong survive. That choosing to do the ‘right thing’ is just that…a choice. Well, I guess you’re just a bigger person than me, and I salute you. I pray you enjoy your sublime life of ordered perfection.

As for the rest of you out there - you daily denizens of vice and moral inconsistency - for whom the world becomes gray in moments of pure passion - let me be your champion. For though we might fuck up, we get off the mat and are not afraid to fuck up once more. Take great comfort in the fact that in this supreme boxing match of unruly appetites, we’re not really battling flesh and blood anyway. Now are we?