Status Updates From The New Life

That sense of himself, as a marvellous secret, persisted. […] He had seen this quite quickly, seen that the sex instinct might be a great engine for happiness, if only it could be liberated from shame. […] His determination to realise this role was the life spring concealed behind his shyness, the motive that, in his own mind, excused it - indeed had come to justify it, as a necessary shield against distraction.

“And their cocks: delicate, caressable things, so simple in the daylight, making no claim. The way they nodded and rubbed against the slouching, jostling testes as the men walked down to the water.
‘Poem’ was Whitman's word for a man's cock: ‘This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that all men carry.’”

“How to define extremity? The greatest extremity? Lust, not as quickened heartbeat or lurch into dizzy possibility, but as lagging sick-ness, a lethargy. Lust as slow poisoning. Lust as a winter coat worn in summer, never to be taken off. Lust as a net, cast wide, flashing silver, impossible to pull in. Lust as a thousand twitching, tightening strings, sensitive to every breeze. Lust as a stinking, secret itch.”