Fire!
Love Me Stone · Personal essays
We’re feeling
the fire today.
Two years. A body reclaimed. And a desire that has never felt more alive.
Two years.
Two years to wake up. To feel my own power. To let desire move through me and recognise it as mine.
It’s taken time to hear myself clearly. To know what I want, what I miss, what excites me, and what I’m no longer willing to talk myself into.
And today, I’m feeling the fire.
So yes, there are a few things I need to say.
Fuck you to those who used my body and never wanted to know me.
Fuck you especially to those who took what they wanted without consent.
Fuck you for treating me like a body without a mind, without a heart. For being interested in touching me but incurious about the person you were touching.
That anger deserves some room here. I don’t need to make every part of this story graceful.
I took it back. My body. My choice. My right to decide who gets close and what happens when they do.
Let’s not get carried away.
Now, let’s not get carried away and think I’m a nun.
Far from it.
I am full of desire. I own the sensual side of myself. I love my body, and I embrace the erotic. I like the anticipation. The flirting. A conversation that gets under your skin and stays there long after you’ve said goodnight.
I’ve never felt more fire than I do now. Not even in my twenties.
There’s something delicious about feeling that much desire while knowing I get to choose what I do with it. I can enjoy the attraction. Let the tension build. Decide whether I want to take it further.
And this is the part that might confuse some people: abstaining doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy sex.
I enjoy it enough to care about how I experience it.
For the record, and it shouldn’t need saying, but I’ll say it anyway: there is no judgement here. I love seeing someone at home in their body, open to experiences, enjoying pleasure freely. There’s something beautiful about that.
I’ve had casual sex. It was fun. There was pleasure in it. I don’t need to rewrite those experiences to make my choices now sound more meaningful.
And I might do casual again.
But there will be connection and conversation first.
Talk to me.
Casual can still involve curiosity. Attention. Enough conversation to discover whether we actually like each other. Enough honesty to say what we want and enough care to listen to the answer.
I don’t need to know where something is going before I can enjoy it. But I do need to feel a connection with the person who’s there.
Talk to me. Make me laugh. Tell me something that makes me want to ask another question. Be interested in the answer when you ask me one.
Let’s find out whether there’s anything between us worth leaning into.
Because my mind is very much involved in my desire. A good conversation can leave me thinking about someone for days. The way they listen. Their humour. Their willingness to be honest. A little confidence, a little wit, the nerve to hold my gaze.
That will do more for me than rushing ever could.
I want to feel safe enough to say exactly what I want. To slow down, change my mind, or lean closer. I want the person with me to feel that freedom too.
And when that connection is there? When the curiosity is mutual and the conversation has already lit something?
Oh, he’s in for a treat.
I’ve learned a few things along the way.
Including how much more I can enjoy myself when I’m actually listening to myself.
Where I once felt hollow, I now feel full of sensation, ideas, appetite. A full-on energy portal, if we’re being dramatic. And today, we are. I feel capable of taking a willing co-traveller to another universe.
This fire has places to go.
For now, though, this fire has plenty of places to go.
I’m pouring it into my art. My writing. My mind. Letting that restless, sensual part of me have a voice on the page. Giving it colour, language, somewhere to move.
There’s a term for this: sexual transmutation. Some modern tantric teachings also describe channeling sexual energy into other forms of expression as sublimation.
I like the idea of desire becoming creation.
I can feel something intensely and make something from it. Sit down to write with all that energy humming through me and see what comes out. Let myself be bolder. Say the thing I would usually soften. Follow an idea because it excites me.
That’s where some of this fire is going today.
And to those who cared.
And alongside the anger, the desire, and the sheer pleasure of feeling like myself, there’s gratitude.
To those who showed me tenderness: thank you.
To those who gave me safety, who listened, who cared about my pleasure and my heart: thank you.
I remember that care. It matters. It’s part of what I want to carry forward.
I love this body. I love the mind that wants a good conversation before anything else. I love that I can still feel this much curiosity, this much heat.
Two years.
And here I am, full of desire, making art, speaking my mind, and deciding for myself what comes next.
Fuck, it feels good.and FUCK YOU!