Clavicles and Conjecture

Yesterday, someone remarked that I had a beautiful décolletage. I thanked them, and then when I got home I spent a while looking at my clavicle, not a part of my body I’ve really considered before. I ran my finger back and forth, feeling the hardness beneath my skin, pressing down a little. It made me think about other body parts, the ones we don’t pay attention to but that possess a strange beauty. The crook of an elbow, the skin pale and almost translucent. The crease of your hip, or the back of your ankle. I’ve always found it fascinating how some parts of the female body are sexualised and others aren’t. Who made that decision? Was it a collective consensus that we’d find breasts inordinately sexy, but elbows mundane? I’d love to do a photography project on those forgotten body parts, up close shots of knees and heels and clavicles. Perhaps it might stir unknown desires in people and we’d be able to solve the mystery of what makes an inch of skin erotic or not.

I love the idea that we’re driven by these minute characteristics - the way someone pushes hair off their face perhaps, or the way they move their hand. We all want to believe we are capable of intense connection, of seeing someone’s soul and attaching ourselves to that - but I get a perverse joy in thinking about how maybe it’s all out of our control, and that the shift of someone’s hips might be all it takes to make us fall, head over heels, into love or lust or heartbreak. I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of this - noticing the way someone’s back moves when they dance, or a rippling of the skin when they smile, and being completely undone with lust. And I’d like to think that some of my small gestures have had the same impact on my suitors. Would they tell me what these are? Or would that ruin the magic?

I’ve never really thought about the trajectory of my own desire. When I’m in the maelstrom of new emotions I rarely have the capability to step outside and think about what drives me, but I feel many of us share a similar potent mix of wanting to deeply desire someone’s mind, but also feel that intense physical connection. It always makes me laugh when people describe themselves as purely sapiosexual. Whilst I respect someone’s right to identify however they please, it sometimes smacks of a certain smugness, as if to say, I’m not driven by the same base aesthetics as you. And I feel they’re missing out, frankly. Missing out on the obsessive joy that can come from being so totally enamoured with someone that you have decided their earlobe is the most beautiful thing in the world, or spending hours just staring at the curve of someone’s shoulder. You know the type of feeling which makes one’s imagination combust with the possibilities for physical connection, of touching every millimeter of each other’s skin, to discover new bodyscapes. 

The nature of desire is truly astounding, and there’s something quite magical about being caught off guard in that way. It often happens to me when I’m kissing someone - the moment that things turn from a physical enjoyment of each other to something more, something intangible. What happens when someone kisses you, which can change the line between friends and more, between interest and obsession? Why, when we kiss one person it can be simply pressing our mouths together, a mundane exchange; and with another, ecstatic, transportive, maddening?

The other day, someone asked me how I like to be kissed. I hesitated, and even now I’m not sure how to answer that, kissing is such an impossible thing to describe in a way which captures the essence of the act. I could say I like to be kissed softly and slowly, which is true; but then it would be equally true to say I like to be kissed hard and fast, like the other person will die unless they breathe the same air as me. I want to be kissed until I am sick of kissing. As Sylvia Plath said, “Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”

I never want to limit myself, but I suppose it would be fair to say - I like to be kissed as if I am the only person in the world for my lover, even if just for the time our lips are touching. Does that make sense?

Back to clavicles - after examining mine for a while, I made a lover start kissing me there, then tracing the structure of my form, down my arms, paying close attention to my elbows, lingering on my waist, on the back of my knees. I wanted him to focus on these oft-ignored body parts. The sensations were fascinating - I’d never had my knees kissed before. These spots on my body were more sensitive in some ways - I closed my eyes and concentrated really hard on the feeling of my lover’s lips. Eventually I stopped concentrating, I stopped thinking, and I just felt.