Are You A Sleazebag?

you spot someone out in the street of
the park and by chance see them again
later they look amazing
you hope they might smile at you and
without you even quite realizing one
side of your mind
races ahead with extreme scenarios that
have absolutely no place in a sensible
respectable life it can be worrying are
you even worse
are you increasingly becoming something
of a sleazebag the possibility is
appalling
in an era deeply alive to the dangers of
unreciprocated desire and yet the very
fact we have this worry is a good sign
to be concerned that one’s desires might
horrify another person is a signal for
basic moral sense exploitative people
don’t ever agonize they might be such a
thing an erotic fantasy isn’t a prelude
to forcing one’s unsolicited attention
on another person it’s a mature
admission that nothing is ever going to
happen erotic thoughts belong to a
larger family of daydreams that is
wishes that one’s life were richer in
possibilities that it actually is the
inventor of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud
made an instructive observation about
babies and daydreams imagine a baby who
wakes up in the middle of the night it’s
dark and the mother isn’t there and it
starts crying it’s going to take a few
minutes before the mother can come along
and see what’s the matter in those few
minutes the baby is alone with its
distress to an adult it might not seem
such a long time but to an infant the
delay could be devastating in a healthy
scenario the baby pulls off a remarkable
feat its able to imagine the mother
being there even when she isn’t the baby
fantasizes that it’s not alone that
things are better than they are and that
can be enough to hold things together
for a while fantasy comes to the rescue
when
aren’t any better options about
daydreaming is a safety net that stops
us going crazy from a sense of missing
out rather than worrying only about the
risks of daydreams we should be
concerned about what happens when people
can’t have them it’s the inability to
fantasize that may lead people to act
out rather than dream their wishes
fantasy is a critical safety valve
it’s a frank admission of the goodness
and appeal of so much one hasn’t got and
perhaps we can get more ambitious about
daydreams
we call them sleazy to draw attention to
their unwanted erotic component but the
act of wondering about someone else can
potentially extend far beyond the body
to broader daydreams about personality
character and ultimately a love of a
whole being when we fear we are
sleazebags as we must if we’re decent
people we should honor our daydreams for
what they really are
melancholy slightly pitiful highly normal and yet clever ways of coping