Arousal Turned Back Into Power
“Turned arousal back into power — something he could understand, something that did not require another name.” This is the admission the whole book has been leading to. He liked the trembling; he liked knowing that the fear was caused by him. He told himself he kept coming back for superiority — “convenient words. Safe words.” But power “was not supposed to answer with a heavy heat low in his belly,” and every time he noticed that response, Jacob “squeezed harder. Shoved more brutally. Added another insult. Turned arousal back into power — something he could understand, something that did not require another name.”
This is how repression works in a person whose desire is forbidden to him: the feeling does not disappear — it is converted into the only permitted currency. In his world a man may hit a man and may not want him; so every impulse of wanting is converted into a blow (see “Cold Water”, “Alive Only Near Him”). This explains three years but excuses not a single day: the mechanism does not cancel responsibility, it only shows where the repair lies. Until Jacob can call desire desire, it will keep looking for a way out through his hands. “Jacob could not accept that truth even now” — and yet the word has already surfaced, and it will not go back.
