I do not know exactly what I am looking for.
That is the first thing that makes me uncomfortable.
Because if someone asked me right now what I am reading, I would not know how to answer without sounding strange.
I am not looking for anything specific.
And yet I am still here.
Last night I went to bed late.
Again.
Not because I was working.
Not because I was watching a show.
I kept moving from one article to another.
One forum to another.
One story to another.
Nothing especially explicit.
Nothing especially shocking.
And yet something kept me there.
There is an empty mug on my desk.
It has been there since this morning.
I have not even moved it.
I tell myself I will read for five more minutes.
Just five.
Always five.
The strange thing is that every text seems to lead to the next one.
Not because it explains something new.
Because it leaves something unexplained.
And I return.
To check.
There is dust floating in front of the screen.
I notice it whenever the background turns dark.
Tiny particles drifting.
Rising.
Falling.
Unable to decide.
Sometimes I feel like I am doing exactly the same thing.
I have started closing certain tabs before shutting down the browser.
Not all of them.
Only some.
The ones I would be embarrassed to explain.
The word embarrassment appears too often.
I try not to think about it.
But it returns.
Not because I am doing something wrong.
Because I cannot fully understand why I keep coming back.
That is worse.
Tonight I read a sentence.
Nothing important.
I do not even remember the exact words.
But I have been thinking about it for hours.
Not about the sentence.
About the fact that I am still thinking about it.
There is a difference.
A small one.
But every day it feels larger.
I am beginning to suspect that curiosity is not the problem.
The problem is repetition.
Wanting to return.
Needing to return.
Returning before deciding to.
The chair creaked again.
The same sound.
Exactly the same.
For a second I thought I had already lived this moment.
The screen.
The empty mug.
The silent room.
The same feeling in my stomach.
Maybe that is why I keep reading.
Not to find something.
To find out when it started.
I need to move my neck.
I am not moving it.
I am still looking at the screen.
I need to close this page.
I am not closing it.
And what embarrasses me most is no longer being here.
It is not remembering when I started coming back.
Desire in the literature of the Marquis de Sade does not function as a search for satisfaction, but as an infrastructure of repetition; a system in which intensity arises not from attaining something, but from constantly returning to it.
It does not pursue an object. It pursues the return.
For this reason, Sadian desire rarely finds rest. Even when it obtains what it seemed to be seeking, attention has already shifted elsewhere: toward the need to verify whether the attraction is still there. What matters is not possession. What matters is persistence. The question is never “Did I get it?” but “Why do I keep coming back?”
In Sade, desire has a peculiar relationship with time. It does not appear as a sudden force invading consciousness, but as something that seems to have begun before it was recognized.
The subject believes they are discovering it, yet the more unsettling sensation is that of arriving late to something already happening within them.
At first it feels like curiosity. Then fascination. Later, verification. And finally, a quiet routine of returns that become increasingly difficult to justify. Desire does not impose itself through great revelations; it installs itself through small repetitions that slowly erode the certainty of having chosen.
The page opens again.
The same image reappears.
The same thought returns for a few seconds longer than necessary.
None of these things are particularly extraordinary on their own. What is unsettling is their accumulation. Their persistence. The suspicion that the movement of return began a moment before consciousness could claim it as its own.
In that sense, Sadian desire is neither a consuming flame nor a lack seeking completion.
It is a form of delayed recognition: the feeling of repeatedly encountering something that seems new, while part of the body behaves as if it had known it for a very long time.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it…
