Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

I lived most of my 20s and my early 30s as a single person in New York City. Everyone we knew was on what my friend called “The Discovery Channel.” The city, and Brooklyn in particular, felt like one enormous street party. I’d go dancing at Bembe with one friend one night, and drinking at Iona with its big outdoor area and bistro lights on another. A new restaurant and bar was popping up every two seconds and everyone looked famous or bound to be famous. It was, for the lack of a better term: sexy. Everything was sexy about that time. 2 AM was sexy. Broke was sexy. Uncertainty was sexy. Even hangovers were sexy.

Those times felt like there was some sort of unwritten agreement towards pleasure. Do what makes you happy. One year, my friends and I actually had a motto: “Do whatever’s funner.” Don’t say no, don’t say yes, do what you want to do. Of course there were consequences and broken hearts and necessary sobriety down the line, but right then pleasure felt like its own goal. Its own island everyone was swimming towards.

If there was one serious dividing line that everyone could agree on: it was the difference between sex and love. One was for pleasure and the other one was for a long time from now or at least not right now. Now was not for settling down or commitments or anything that could come with strings. That dividing line was clear to everyone. It was an unspoken contract that you signed, if you entered Brooklyn in the early 2000s, whether by bridge or by train. No one was out for love, or we were out for love, but not that kind of love.

In today’s tremendous poem by Dorianne Laux, we are struck by the pure beauty of sex and perhaps sex without love, or sex with a love that’s stubbornly refuted. Either way, the poem reminds me of those days when seeking pleasure was the end-all be-all. The pure body meeting the pure body without all the attachments in between. Even if that sort of devotion to desire can be a lie in the end, this sensual poem celebrates the power and pull of the body’s pleasure.

This Close
by Dorianne Laux

In the room where we lie, light
stains the drawn shades yellow.
We sweat and pull at each other, climb
with our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.
Wherever our bodies touch, the flesh
comes alive. Head and need, like invisible 
animals, gnaw at my breasts, the soft
insides of your thighs. What I want
I simply reach out and take, no delicacy now,
the dark human bread I eat handful
by greedy handful. Eyes, fingers, mouths,
sweet leeches of desire. Crazy woman,
her brain full of bees, see how her palms curl
into fists and beat the pillow senseless.
And when my body finally gives in to it
then pulls itself away, salt-laced
and arched with its final ache, I am
so grateful I would give you anything, anything.
If I loved you, being this close would kill me.

"This Close" by Dorianne Laux from WHAT WE CARRY, copyright © 1994 Dorianne Laux. Used by permission of BOA Editions.