Art by Lucy Tozer
Content warning: sexual references
They stand out in front of picture houses in the evening. They are underneath the streetlights, behind the dumpsters in the alleyways. One or two have been known to wait on the steps of parliament buildings, or on top of the copper-plated statues in the park. If you are looking for one, you may be able to find one. If you do not wish to come upon one, but someone, somewhere knows you need one, there it will be, appearing before you as you are walking home, as you are stepping off the train, coming up out of the underground terminal.
They wear long black cloaks into which their wings can be easily folded. You will never be lucky enough to catch one in flight, given how easily they can be mistaken for birds or low-flying planes. Their diet consists solely of apples and lemon squares. They drink, too. They drink plenty. They are all discernibly male, with hair coming down to their shoulders. They are beautiful, disarming, in a way that might appear to be vaguely threatening at first. It is not uncommon to find that, as one steps out of the shadows and raises a hand in greeting, your first impulse is to reach for your keys or clutch at your bag. But, contrary to popular belief, they are entirely innocuous. They only want to help, really. They understand exactly what you’re going through. They might’ve even been there to see it as it happened, watching over you, standing by.
Before they follow you home, they will, of course, ask for your consent. You will be free to withdraw this consent at any moment; they will not be offended. If you do feel so inclined to invite them to walk home with you, to sit next to you for the last two stops on the city bus, they will walk in tandem with you or sit beside you in silence while you read or tap away on your phone. It is easy for mythology and folklore to override the real, for the natural inclination toward fear to take precedence over the possibility of true goodwill. This is understandable, but it is also not always the case. You would do well to live a little, to take pleasure in what few joys life is willing to offer you. Desire is ubiquitous and egalitarian. Each of us state our individual case to it, and each of us is given a fair hearing. They understand this. This is what they are here for.
They will take their shoes off at the door without being asked. They will nod politely, genially. They will, in their low, husky tones, suggest that you slip into something more comfortable: not with regards to clothing but to space, and to time. They will ask you to moor yourself in a pleasant memory, to figuratively reach back towards the spectres of the past and pull them towards you. This will help to circumvent any of the prejudices, readily adopted or otherwise, to which you might be privy at the beginning of your engagement.
Very little can be said about the act itself. Each respective encounter is unique in its valence, in their matching of themselves to the rhythms and contours of your body. What has indeed been said to be universal about the act is that it is singular, novel, incomparable. It is marked by the fact that words are unable to fully account for it. Suffice to say that they are adept at engendering a centripetal spiral towards a new nexus of pleasure. Upon the point of climax, there in the hermetically sealed chamber of the bedroom, you will be overcome by the indelible sense that the world has been thrown off course, disassociated from its former self. What can also be said about the act is that it can only ever happen once. No report has ever been given of such an encounter more than once, in the same way that lightning very rarely ever strikes the same place twice and is gone before we fully perceive it even having been there at all.
Contrary to popular belief, the aftermath of such an encounter is never attendant upon any sense of guilt or remorse. Instead, the fact of the encounter eventually comes to be marked by a sense of joy and indissoluble pleasure. It becomes a secret that one keeps to themselves, a memory whose power is derived from the fact no trace of it is borne upon the body, that it remains only within the mind, who was privileged enough to interpret the sensations of the experience itself. What does Schopenhauer say—that man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills? This is true in many ways, but especially applicable here.
In the days afterwards, you may also experience a certain capacity to tune in to new proprioceptive frequencies. For example, those who have been forced into the proximity of someone on the train have noted their ability to experience the grievances in the lives of this stranger, as if suddenly riding on a wave of foreign, unlocatable discontent. If not the train, then in the office building, or between people in cars travelling on opposite sides of two-way streets. There will be a sense of the bonds between you and your loved ones having been renewed, rejuvenated, the well of mutual empathy and compassion restored. Because, of course, Incubi are powerful. Incubi are overpowering. They are above us, below us, before us. There is not a shadow they do not dance in. There is not a door under which they cannot slip, not a window out of which they cannot climb, back into the night as the world resumes. Its spinning, slowly growing dizzy from the sheer, implacable excitement of it all.