Caleb Crain has written an essay in which he enumerates the parallels between cannibalism and male homosexuality in the work of Herman Melville. Now, it seems likely that Melville was a great big queer -- if you've read the letters he wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne, you know what I'm talking about -- but I don't think it's only great big queer sexuality that can be equated with the act of, you know, eating people. Who among us has not felt the frenzied urge to become one with the object of desire? And what could be a more efficient way to go about it? Frankly, cannibalism seems to me like a natural extension of the sex act.
Fortunately almost all of us stop short of actually eating people, but only just: we suck, we lick, we bite. It's frustrating enough! Frustrating enough to be separate, always separate, even when the object of desire is pinned beneath you, your hands clutching his hands, your mouth on his throat, his pulse beating against your tongue like a voice repeating I am yours, I am yours -- but never I am you. No matter how hard you try, no matter how many fingers you cram in there. But we never learn! We have to keep trying! And that is why I am a werewolf right now.
Most of the time I am perfectly normal. But oh God, men are beautiful. Oh God.
It is celibacy that has done this to me.
