A caress, in the writings of the Marquis de Sade, does not appear as comfort, but as precision.
It does not soften.
It defines.
It is a way of acknowledging the body without promising it rest.
Sometimes it appears before the impact.
Sometimes after.
But rarely as something innocent.
It begins to merge with waiting.
With that instant in which the body does not yet know whether it is being observed or defined.
And what unsettles is not its softness.
It is the attention it demands.
The need to check it.
To repeat it.
As if once were not enough to confirm that it happened.
In this universe, the caress does not erase tension.
It organizes it.
It makes it visible.
And the subject begins to notice something hard to explain.
He does not remember exactly when he started looking for it.
Only that, from a certain point on, he could no longer stop checking whether it would return.
It is not the caress that comes first.
It is the calibration.
That is what I couldn’t name at the beginning.
The feeling of being measured.
Before being touched.
I’ve started noticing something strange in small things.
Not in events.
In adjustments.
Sometimes I leave my hand on the table.
Then I remove it.
And I place it back in exactly the same spot.
Not because I want to.
Because something does not feel closed.
As if the position is still “under test.”
Today it happened with a minimal sensation.
An accidental touch.
Too faint to remember clearly.
But enough to force me to repeat it in my mind.
Not to enjoy it.
To verify it.
The difference is subtle.
But persistent.
The room had no movement.
Only a low kind of tension.
As if the air had been tuned too tightly.
Too precise.
Too stable to feel natural.
I looked at my skin without touching it.
As if I could detect intention before contact.
That is what unsettles me.
Not the gesture.
But the anticipation of the gesture as a system.
I’ve started checking things without reason.
Open a page.
Close it.
Open it again.
Not because it changed.
Because I don’t trust the first reading.
As if the system doesn’t fully settle.
As if everything needs a second execution to fully exist.
Yesterday I stared at a flat surface.
For several minutes.
Doing nothing.
Just waiting to notice something that would justify the act of looking.
Nothing appeared.
But I returned.
Not to the scene.
To the act of returning.
That is what is starting to occupy everything.
The return.
Not the contact.
Not the cause.
The adjustment.
I need to move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
And this time it doesn’t feel like a sentence.
It feels like a prior calibration.
As if the body is waiting to confirm its own position before obeying it.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
