Not two, but one
I’m reading The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. The protagonists can project thoughts to each other, like a hive mind. One of the central ideas in the book is that David and Rosalind, lovers, are closer than ordinary couples who can’t think-together: they can share the same joy, think the same thought, experience the same moment. There is a passage in the book that describes that closeness of the mind being like the closeness of two people making love.
I started wondering whether one can separate conversational association from bodily association. Perhaps people who don’t relate that well when they talk can achieve a much higher degree of closeness in sex. I experienced something like that with Matte: she was sometimes so remote when we talked, but, when we made love, thoughts went away and we were just bodies coiling around each other in the dark.
So often, I tire of people. I have a happy evening with my friends or family, but, after a while, I absent myself to be alone and watch a film or write code or play my guitar or read. Sometimes it’s boredom, sometimes it’s wanting to bask in the glow of happiness not exhausted, sometimes it’s just being desperate to get back to a project.
There are a few configurations that often don’t pall: an evening full of laughter with my little sisters, brother, sister, Mum, step-Dad and their friends, or supper and a game of chess and political discussion with my Dad, or a fast night where my friends and I are a marauding gang making sport of all around us, or a night at a restaurant basking in Dusk’s attention.
Maybe just I find myself more interesting than most people.