We're Losing the Art of the Hickey

By Rin Sangar

Ask me why, and I could point to a million suspects - the rise of purity culture, the warping of anything remotely physical into a pornographic skin flick, a sickening fascination with looking as clean as possible - but the big issue is we’re at risk of an essential component dying out. Sure, you have your reasons to avoid a love bite. There’s work in the morning, anyone can see your neck, the constant threat of your mother is looming around the corner. But god, there’s so much you’re missing out on.

Something about the problem with a practiced strategy, or the polished, wax-stripped, buffed out image of sex, is that it is so far from the real thing. Making love, whatever you want to call it, is not meant to be a rehearsed act. It shouldn’t be cinematic, or coordinated, or posed. You are not on your front to hide the rolls over your stomach. You are on your front because the arch of your back provokes something so beyond wild in your partner that they shred their trousers trying to take them off. Sex is supposed to be primal, animalistic, sweaty. It should be the worst sounds you’ve ever made with the best face you have ever looked at. If you don’t feel a little disgusted, you are not doing it right.

There are two ways, in this world, to get close to god, if you ask me - vomiting, and sex so raw it leaves you marked and gasping. You need to take your lover’s skin between your teeth and tear into it. You want to make a home inside the cavity of their chest, bury yourself in their veins, wrap your arms around their organs. And so, you fuck them, as if you want to blur the boundaries between their flesh and yours, surrendering yourself to them completely.

A hickey is such a status symbol, and it is infuriating that it sits unacknowledged. It is the echo of a moment of pure passion, a mark of claiming someone as yours, entirely. That half-bruise, love struck purple, likes humming against the artery in their throat, or nestling against the crook of their neck. The art of letting somebody do that to you, the quiet gasp, the hope of them drawing blood. It is a calm that knows no equal. A complete surrender of control, giving yourself up to a higher power.

It is imperative that you understand this kind of sex exists, and I am having it. Yes, it leaves me gasping for air and thanking every god in the heavens. Yes, I am bruised and scarred and begging for more. Yes, every single time I want it deeper and meaner and more real.

There is nothing like spending eight hours being overly polite to horrible strangers that makes you want to go home and do terrible things to the person you love most. When you live in this world - one that wants you to be a smoother, shinier version of yourself, that begs you to paste yourself into a minimalistic hellspace, that demands perfection and does not give a thought to the price - it is important to claim back the things that make us human. Here, do not mention dolphins to me. The few pleasures that are still free, and do not place a boulder on your soul. Take them, and take, and ride it like you stole it, and take it until there is nothing more to take.