🐚 Pleasure isn’t the point.

🎧 Listen to me read it — just the way I meant it.

💬 Prefer to read? Here’s the original text.

View from KittyAnn’s Window

The drink Mercedes chooses is spicy and smoky, with mezcal and jalapeno bitters, served in an old fashioned glass with Tajin on the rim. I know this because she makes a great show out of articulating her experience of tasting it. Then she offers – no, requires – that I taste it, too. 

I take the tiniest sip, and Mercedes looks at me questioningly, eyebrows raised.

“It’s not pleasurable,” I say.

She laughs loudly. “Pleasure isn’t the point,” she says. “You don’t drink a cocktail because it’s delicious. You drink it because it’s interesting.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I appreciate the sentiment,” I say. 

“I’m honestly surprised, KittyAnn,” she says. “As a self-ordained ‘constant student of your own experience,’ I thought you’d be more intrigued by the sensual.”

“I don’t consider displeasurable tastes to be sensual,” I say. It’s a trope, but I’m lost for a better way to respond.

Mercedes shrugs. “Suit yourself,” she says. 

Through the rest of the meal I observe Mercedes, the way she expertly balances the delicate consumption of her food with conversation – sometimes thoughtful, others dryly hilarious. She’s perfected this, the way she shares a meal with you, like a performance she has been rehearsing for life. She’s the masterpiece, clearly, but is it in her own right? Does she make her life her art – is all of this an expression of self? – or is it just manufactured costuming in pursuit of winning? 

Whatever it is, she’s extremely talented at it. I literally cannot look away. Over this dinner, or when I’m working, or when I lay down next to my husband in bed at night. 

“The way people eat is an indicator of their social class, you know,” Mercedes continues, interrupting my daydream. “Is it about quantity, quality, or presentation? When resources are scarce, quantity wins. But when they’re in excess, we’re free to focus on the experience of consumption rather than the necessity of it.”

I’m thoughtful for a moment and push some pistachios around with my fork. She’s made me think again. She’s so good at that. “Interesting perspective,” I say.

Mercedes takes a bite of her pickled cherry salad, which she has assured me repeatedly is “titillatingly complex.” She’s balancing the lettuce leaves on top of the fork, sans stabbing. 

“Well, I’m not sure that I belong anywhere anymore, let alone any specific social class,” she says. “But I can say with confidence that I enjoy eating solely for the experience of it. I live my life that way, too. Just to see how it turns out.”

***

Like I’ve said before, Mercedes scares me — but she’s got a point. 

What are you choosing simply because it’s comfortable? Or, maybe more pointedly: what are you avoiding because it’s not?

Comfort is cool, but human brains are wired for novelty. Call it the lizard brain, call it curiosity – there’s a part of us designed to crave puzzles, to figure things out, then file that understanding away for later. This desire isn’t optional. It’s a baked-in mechanism for survival.

In college I took a class on animal behavior. Half of it was about what happens when animals are understimulated in captivity: pacing, gnawing their own legs, anything to feel something. People aren’t so different. We’ve domesticated ourselves, and instead of chewing off our legs we scroll, shop, or pick fights with Internet strangers just to feel fucking anything.

KittyAnn is learning that always choosing the chicken soup and fuzzy blanket hasn’t created the soft haven she hoped for. It’s created a cage. And now her other parts — the hungry ones — are getting louder.

But Mercedes never settles for comfort. That’s her weapon and her weakness – and it’s pushing on KittyAnn to wake up.

It’s pushing on me, too.

With all my wild heart,

Sadie xo

P.S. If something I said resonated — and you’re craving a space to unpack your own story — get in touch with me. I’d be honored to hold that space for you.