If I lie naked in a bed with someone else, touching their body and seeing only the fantasy of them that I’ve created, are they even there? What if it’s just me and my imagination, something I created on the scaffold of their flesh? I often imagine the aesthetic of our bodies in proximity — this dark warm skin, thick black hair, white teeth breaking apart in pleasure. Maybe we are alone together and that is a tender choice, to avert our gaze, to allow each other some privacy in the midst of such terrible intimacy. Maybe we are two dead things tangled up like chains, maybe we resurrect when we are apart.

Source: New York Times August 29, 2020 09:00 UTC