Many A Hungry Wish

The body craves intimacy. It enjoys feeling safe, loved, appreciated. Touch starvation is a real thing that can cause real stress. People start to get real weird if they don't engage in any sort of intimacy for a long time. Talking to friends, confiding, cuddling, sexual intimacy, bedsharing, even petting an animal--these things are intimacy. They keep the body regulated. They release chemicals that make us feel better.

So Shane has this Thing with Ilya Rozanov. This deeply problematic fucked up thing that he MUST PUT AN END TO--but he won't. And Shane, so he has discovered, has an appetite for sex. He never percieved himself as someone who did until Ilya Rozanov cracked him open (physically, conceptually, emotionally) on his dick that night in Montreal, but yes. He is a person who feels better, more himself, more regulated perhaps, after he has sex. It feels good. It feels right.

Shane is also a person who grew up with plenty of platonic intimacy and affection--parents who hugged and kissed him whenever he wanted, who he could confide in. He also, at some point, became a very lonely child outside the safety of his own home. It really IS lonely at the top. The boys in his room always adored him but considered him vaguely untouchable. The boys outside his room were jealous and mean about it. Girls were--better left unconsidered. Nice, but in ways that Shane didn't know how to address. And expectant, after a certain age. Or so it felt.

Ilya, due to the nature of their relationship, becomes one of the most consistent venues of intimacy in Shane's life just by virtue of being one of the ONLY venues of intimacy that Shane has. And more or less the SOLE source of sexual intimacy--which Shane has now established with himself is something that he needs.

But their sex is not what is traditionally considered intimate. It's quick, a lot of the time. It's rough. Shane has an appetite for these things too--he loves the sex he has with Ilya. He loves the challenge of it, the way they push each other. He loves to choke, down on his knees. He loves the sensation of Ilya's whole body weight pressing down on the side of his face. He loves being called a slut, whore, hole. Ilya slaps his ass and says, "Come on, Hollander, I know you can cum on this big dick," and Shane feels appreciated. He feels acknowledged.

So when they are officially together, and there are feelings involved now--or, rather, they are allowed to show their feelings--it's a little overwhelming. Because Shane has never really crossed the streams of those two sources of intimacy before. Without his strict permission, his brain has thoroughly compartmentalized those two things--the overwhelming relief and release of sexual intimacy and Ilya, versus the gentle pressure of emotional intimacy, the way it seems to cradle his brain and body when he's with someone he knows loves him.

And once Ilya is both of those things--bringer of Shane's deepest pleasures and also someone he knows loves him, loves him in ways that he's only just learning a person can be loved--it is, for awhile, almost too much. Ilya'a favorite thing for awhile is testing the edges of this new awareness within Shane, seeing how many times he can call him sweetheart and say oh my love, my sweet boy, sweet thing, how does that feel my baby--before Shane is just. Aaaaall the way down. Before he's whimpering and crying and completely untethered. And then Ilya brings him back a little, with a slap or a bite. Flipping Shane onto his belly and telling him it's time to do what he was made for, now. Time to spread his legs. Just because I fell in love with a whore doesn't mean I don't expect him to do his job.

soliloquy by an immortal cave painter.