What's Wrong With a Little Lust in Your Life?

Lust is the starlet of sin. It's not as important or complex as pride or greed, but it sure is more superficially fascinating.

Lust is appealing, basic, and uncomplicated—until it gets adulterated by tricky things such as emotions and perspective.

Or so I've heard. It's inadvisable to appear too well acquainted with lust. It wouldn't look good if I spoke about lust from a really informed perspective, now would it? If I showed pictures and brought out charts and used an overhead projector? (I can sense that one or two of you wouldn't actually mind this.)

No, I can speak about gluttony, greed, pride, and envy without really causing a raised eyebrow, but if I start talking about lust, then where will I be? Thrown among floozies and loose women and dancing girls. In other words, I'd be pretty much where I already am...

So here goes.

Lust can be great. Absolutely fabulous. Terrific. It can get you moving with the thumping persistence of the Energizer Bunny. It can wake you out of a physical slumber and suddenly remind you of the wonders of the flesh—the sheer joy of having fingertips and eyelashes and a body.

Aroused, we can feel as if every single piece of us is being put into play (and we can play with every single piece).

It's an excess, an outpouring, an overflow, and it usually doesn't overtake you when you're under a deadline, under the weather, or underfed. You can feel lustful watching a healthy young creature saunter across a golden beach, but lustful is not something you feel after waiting 40 minutes in the rain for a bus that's late, crowded, and damp.

As a tangent or at least a musical interlude, it's worth noting that this not only accounts for lust's bad rep but also explains the need for endless country songs saying, in effect, "I wasn't responsible for what my arms/mouth/etc. did to that honey at the honky-tonk, because they weren't part of me, baby." Country songs are nearly unbeatable when it comes to talking about lust.

Consider such classics as "If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body (Would You Hold It Against Me?)" and "Shut Up and Kiss Me." Of course, rock hasn't done badly, either. Patti Smith belting out Bruce Springsteen's line, "Love is an angel disguised by lust," in Because the Night is even clearer in its declaration than the more obvious "Love the One You're With."

Lust can be just abrasive enough to polish a dull surface into a shine. But a little lust, like a little drunkenness, goes a long way and should not be encouraged as a habit.

And for anybody feeling a little too easy about their lack of fleshly appetites, it's worth remembering that the bad habits of lust don't necessarily orbit around (non-celestial) bodies. I've known men to lust after cars (which is why centerfolds in Road & Track are lit very much like centerfolds in Playboy). I've known women to lust after jewelry (it's a diamond, you'll remember, that's a girl's best friend, etc.). I've even known kids to lust after video games without using the "L" word, but who are nevertheless consumed by a focused, unwavering, and passionate desire few other words dare encompass.

Telling, isn't it, that lust can be applied to things as well as to people? This is the unnerving part of lust: At its scariest, it reduces everything to a mere object, one to be acquired, then discarded when it's used up, or when it becomes boringly easy to get all the moves right. Contempt can follow so closely that it sometimes treads on lust's red high heels.

But it doesn't have to; those heels can be kicked up in a dance or thrown off at the end of a long day. Lust can be as much a victory as a vice, as much part of comfortable love as of sizzling intimacy, if we learn how to do it right.

And, luckily for all of us, that takes lots and lots of practice.