Musings: Desire and the "Other"

I saw him at the gym this morning, and I couldn't keep my eyes off his naked ass. He was standing at the sink, with his back toward me. I was standing in front of my locker. He was White, but he was was dark, with the kind of naturally tan skin -- is this what is meant by olive complexion?? -- that extended across his buttocks. The buttocks themselves were not large, but they were shapely and toned, the skin around their edges darker as though outlined with an artist's charcoal.

I'm accustomed to being somewhat critical of my desire for darker men. I believe that it is impossible to fully separate this desire from my upbringing and experiences within a society and dominant culture that constructs women and men of color as hypersexual and subhuman and a mainstream White gay male culture that fetishizes racial difference.

While I still believe that it is important to maintain this critique, this morning I found my thoughts traveling in new directions. Perhaps the desire for the "other" is neither "good" nor "bad" in and of itself. Perhaps it simply is. Perhaps it is a natural (as much as I believe anything is "natural") curiosity about difference, a pull toward the unfamiliar.

Perhaps the problem comes when we do not couple that curiosity with an interest in individuals' humanity. (I'm not talking about one-night stands vs. relationships. I do not believe you need to sleep with someone more than once to treat them like a human being). When we separate the ass from the body, from the individual, and transform it into a fetish object. When we allow our fear of difference to transform our curiosity into a will toward domination. This is colonial psychology -- a fear of engulfment by the "native" commingled with delusions of grandeur and superiority.

Perhaps actually owning, valuing and following our desire to its least corrupt conclusion could offer an alternative to racist fetishization, one that does not divorce mind from body in a classic "Western" dichotomy, labeling the "other" as the body and the body as filth. Could such a thing be possible, in this time and in this place?

Or am I a utopic delusional?