Wanting, but Not Having

Lessons from New Orleans on desire

Happy Lunar New Year - Happy Mardi Gras - Ramadan Mubarak - Blessed solar eclipse, and a peaceful new moon. Laissez les bons temps rouler, monsieur Fire Horse.

We spent a leisurely week in New Orleans to begin February. We filled a sprawling, comically vampirical mansion with several of our dear friends. Chandeliers constructed of lush white ostrich feathers hovered above all-black couches, settees, armchairs and poufs; small brass hooks in the shape of human hands emerged from the walls to swag back the ceiling-to-floor velvet curtains, and ghostly women in various states of undress loomed in black-and-white photographs in the hallways, as line drawings over the distressed layers of half-stripped paint on the walls, and in an imposing mural perched above my bed. High camp, in all the best ways. In fact, our party was so numerous that we spilled over to fill the mansion across the street as well, a sun-drenched, white-linen-curtained angel to our house’s dark wraith.

The wildest part is I ended up taking a job interview from this bedroom…

Andrew flew down a few days earlier than anyone else, and I stayed a few days later than everyone, so that we could each enjoy a childfree weekend on our own. This was not an immaterial sacrifice, in that we each had to fly one way singlehandedly with a highly motionsick two-year-old. The less said about these unpleasant episodes, the better. We continue to push the limits of a hero’s dose of Dramamine on an undersized frame, and leave the rest to the gods. It’s all worth it. Vacation is great with him (he loves every outing, to do anything at all), and vacation is also great without him (more spontaneity, cocktails, and aimless wandering on foot).

Even the 5 minute ferry to Algiers Point was the thrill of a lifetime

Last year’s trip to New Orleans found me reflecting on death and the ominous morbidity of Vanitas painting, because this is the sort of mental relaxation that vacation apparently brings me; sweeping all the inconsequential mental knick-knacks off the table to make room for the juicy stuff. These deathly reflections also ended up being accidentally germane to the rest of that week, because not long after writing last year’s dispatch, I would spend the rest of vacation bedridden with one of the worst flus of my life, weakly doordashing gatorade and saltines whenever the filaments of consciousness briefly threaded together long enough for coherence.

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New Orleans, Mon Mort

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Meanwhile, this year’s recurring theme was the condition of wanting. Carnival season brings to New Orleans an inescapable cadence of anticipation – for weeks on end – a particular recurring rhythm that remains virtually invisible to every other region of the country.

The common view of Mardi Gras season is one of overindulgence, of gluttony and vice. In reality, of course not many locals do the season in this way; you could hardly make it in that mode for long. The pleasure comes not in the indulgence itself. Not from being the blackout drunk capri-pant’ed, sweater-set’ed 60-something woman I saw being futilely propped back to her feet outside the Rouse’s market in the French Quarter, on a sunny parading afternoon (although I do hope she salvaged the rest of her weekend).

The real pleasure comes from desire – the part where you want, but haven’t yet fulfilled. The entire season is a slow, anticipatory build to the fever pitch of the weekend comprising Mardi Gras, the proverbial “deep gras” that leaves the city emerging from a foggy haze in the days that follow. Even when you are overindulging, sure, a bit – it is still about longing for just one more slice of king cake, even though the green and purple sugar crystals are still dusting your lapel from the last taste. It’s yearning for the thing that’s going to hit the spot, just so.

one more king cake, one more throw, one more martini

I’ve sometimes had a difficult relationship to my desires. Not in the manner that an addictive personality might, where their fulfillment becomes a destructive force. No, rather I’ve sidelined and devalued my desires, failing to recognize them as the key ingredient to a propulsive life; the thrumming drumbeat that carries the parade forward. I’ve resented my desires, and wished them gone, when I felt frustrated by their lack of fruition.

If only I didn’t want this thing / this person / this circumstance that I cannot have, I would think. Then, surely I would be less tormented. I would be in peace. There have been times I’ve felt so desperately frustrated in my wanting I can still feel the knife’s edge of the grief I walked. The weight of rejection (or sometimes even the prospect of rejection), drove me to wish I didn’t want the thing in the first place.

My wants were of many shades: personal, professional, self-aggrandizing, and sensual. To this last point, there were times I felt so sad and sorry in my singleness, my sexual frustration, that I would try to comfort myself in the knowledge that surely there would come a time when these feelings would fade – I would no longer want to be the object of someone else’s desire. Physiologically speaking at least, surely my body’s needs would someday be muted. How liberating it might feel to be free of this, I thought.

I cannot say that exact day has come to call quite yet. But I realized a general mutedness in myself recently. I’ve found myself somewhat stultified: uninspired by my surroundings, disillusioned by the ambitions I once held, unsure of my professional path, nary a crushable new person in my social orbit for miles, and for the first time I can remember, hardly yearning for something at all. Certainly not in the sharp, 4K way I nearly always have. Unsure of what exactly I want, to the point of not desiring anything at all.

I found, with some surprise, that the lack of desire did not feel anything like relief. It felt like the engine conking out on an airless day when your boat’s still in the middle of a mirror-still lake. Satisfaction is one thing, and complacency is another. This feeling was not quite either of those things. In some ways, sure, it feels freeing to no longer care about the approval of establishments and creative gatekeepers I’ve come to view as hollow. I really do feel happily liberated from the expectations of traditional romantic relationship building. And I suppose there’s something that could be called satisfying in the understanding of how little any of this matters amidst such troubled times. But mostly, broadly, it just felt dispiriting and dull.

And then, New Orleans.

The sensory clash of the weekend parades we stumbled upon, of recurring traditions patiently awaited, an entire year in the making. In the soup of pre-Mardi Gras desire all around us, I felt a kick of wanting. Not a jumpstart, but just the softest kick. In this season, the feeling of anticipation is so big you can’t possibly actualize all the things you want to see, and eat, and feel, and touch, and do. You cannot have it all. The wanting is too big, because the wanting is the point of it all.

I came home thinking: the waning of desire feels like an absence of color and vibrancy in my life. If I wish to move towards my purpose, I need to want, and to strive towards it. Uncomfortably, this also means relishing the unrequited desires, even the ones that feel crushing in their enormity. They are the hook in my chest that propel me forward to the life I want, with the people I love. As for the things I cannot have in this season of life, well; at least the next slice of king cake is just one Carnival season away.

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I suspect I’ll be doing more thinking – and writing – about desire this year. Material desires, sexual desires, craven professional desires, empty desires. But next week, a lighter post with a new podcast appearance and thoughts on some links that keep landing in our inboxes. Please subscribe to keep in touch with our writing on human connection and nontraditional family, and invite anyone else who should be at the party, too.

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