The Altar of Want

For much of my life, my definition of pleasure was tied to sex.

Our relationship felt fleeting, stolen, driven by scarcity.

Like a fox darting into the henhouse, I’d snatch what I could before shame or discipline caught up. I’d reach for pleasure like someone who hadn’t eaten in weeks, panicking, starving, despairing. Then I’d feast, binge, and starve myself all over again.

I kept pleasure at arms length, hidden behind the excuse of delayed gratification.

But now?

I follow pleasure’s sweet rosy scent like a wolf. 

I dance. I indulge. I savour. I have. 

I sing. linger. I purr. I devour. 

I flirt with life’s little, quiet moments—be that greeting whoever is working the front desk at the gym, smelling a flower, or catching a stranger’s eye in the grocery store.

I bring a rose to a knife fight, and win.

I built a temple for pleasure. 

She lives inside me now, folded intimately into my rhythms and rituals.

I’ve tethered my everyday existence to ecstasy.

I aim to infuse everything I do with pleasure—because if I’m going to do something at all, why not squeeze as much juice from the fruit as possible?

In doing so, I’ve discovered what living from devotion is like. 

I let what stirs my cells steer the ship.

And pleasure isn’t just sex, or escape. 

Not consumption, not thrill.

Pleasure is dancing between sets at the gym, tending my plants and garden as if each one is a piece of me, singing to Yuki, not leaping out of bed when I first wake up.

Pleasure exists in slicing an onion or frying rice. In taking a spirited drive with no destination. In challenging my body’s physical ability again in new ways.

Pleasure is eating a cheese bun in the moonlight, bare feet tickled by cool grass.

I massage or touch myself without driving towards a sexual outcome. In this, my body is an instrument, not a vessel. A body not to merely live in, but to fuse with.

I take breaks throughout the day to inhale the garden’s flowers simply because they ask to be adored. I let a lollipop, Mario Kart, and drum’n’bass be late-night ecstasy.

I sit in the shower, simply because I think better down there.

Pleasure has become the prologue, the story, and the epilogue of each day.

Not just a carrot dangling at the end of the tunnel.

And perhaps most crucially, I’ve realized that:

Pleasure isn’t a reward to obtain, but a frequency you can live.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander