I kinda wanna fuck Excellence.
Hello. It (at the time I write this) is a Tuesday in September. I want to welcome you to The Garden Space, a newsletter and podcast where me and all my internet friends explore the planting and blooming of human connection. I invite you to be easy. I invite you to move slowly with me. It is well into the afternoon and I am still in my robe. I am having a cup of carrot cake tea (yes, you heard me right it is exactly as magical as it sounds) and I am drawing this kettle out I am taking blissful, indulgent, measured, easy sips I am licking my glossy lips along the way. I am reading you an essay I wrote, entitled “…I kinda wanna fuck Excellence” and I know what I said. I know what I just said. I ask you to pause.
Lmao. So.
I am submitting to you all, my Internet Friends, my first “okay… so hear me out” essay. Yes I know the title sounds click-baity! Yes, I know the majority of you all clicked on this and went “truly, what on God’s green earth could this episode consist of.” I also recognize in talking openly about sex or sexual desire, even sexual desire for my own self, I ruffle some feathers. It’s always uncomfortable, at least in the onset. I promise you I am not pimping out your knee-jerk reactions just for engagement. I want to make clear the reasons that I share the following ideas with you all. Two big things:
One: love, of any kind, is not theoretical.
In this online space we are set out to explore a whole lot of love theory. Many peoples across millennia have been thinking of, talking about, tasting, touching, theorizing on love in its many forms. I am no different. I am, like you, a philosopher, trying to ascertain the how and the why of the way my insides turn themselves out in the name of loving. Alexander Pope in 1711 very famously said, “To err is human; to forgive divine.” I would like to figure out where love measures on that scale. What measure of love is human? How much of love is divine?
Theory is designed to be a guiding light, a North Star wrapped in words, of sorts. Even if we might momentarily float above ourselves to look at our positions in this world with a bird’s eye view, theory is not supposed to leave your body behind forever. Sometimes I feel like we can get so turned around in what is theoretical, what is supposed to be, that we forget that the business of loving is literal. It is human. It is in our day to day. Love lives in our bodies and our actions and our peoples. As much as we theorize, there is nothing theoretical about love.
Two: love, of many kinds, is explicit.
I again blame the West for this— this clinical, puritanical, cut and dry image we have of love. There are many different kinds of love, which we will begin to explore in depth in later episodes. I had been wanting a podcast for a while, but I settled on The Garden Space because of a TikTok that I made that went viral about my different bars of love that determine a person’s role in my life (those bars are platonic, romantic, and sexual). Folks love a graph. We love a cute and succinct sixty second idea. We love the feeling of learning, of understanding, the allure of productivity and I am not knocking that. I love all that too! And if that’s the video that brought you here (or if any of my videos brought you here), then I love that too. Welcome.
However. Bar graphs are clinical. Me talking about my intense desire to be bent over by the concept of Excellence? Visceral.
And most times, at least for me, the feeling of love is visceral. This is something I feel. Sometimes those feelings are sexual— even when there is not a literal object to covet. I am not attempting to make you squirm. I am trying to embody the feelings of love I feel and be honest in doing so. And, honest to goodness, when I think about Excellence now, these days, I physically get goosebumps. I would like to explore that phenomenon with you, as I learn in real time.
Sex love in the Western world gets a bad rap. We treat it like it doesn’t exist. Sure, there’s romantic love, which we are obsessive over. There’s plantonic love, which is easy for us to grasp. There is communal love, or empathy, or love for humanity. It is easier for us to understand the love for people that we don’t know than the love we can feel internally or externally in sex. I almost feel like we treat sex like there is no love to be found there if it isn’t coupled with something else.
That’s an entirely different podcast essay, it is. And we will get there. But today, I would like to discuss the feelings before I discuss the theory, since this is literal, and for me, this business of loving is visceral. So yeah. I kinda wanna fuck Excellence.
I ask you again: hear me out. I feel like by the end of things you will understand where I am with all this.
I kinda wanna fuck Excellence.
Two rather obvious follow-up questions:
(1) who or what is Excellence? And further,
(2) how exactly does one have sexual intent towards a metaphysical idea?
Let’s begin.
I’ve been chewing on this topic like toughened Double Bubble. I have had a contentious, strained relationship with Excellence my whole life. By dictionary definitions, or maybe by common understandings:
Excellence is the state, quality, or condition of excelling. A state of superiority.
Herein lies my first big gripe: superior to what? Excelling over what bar, by whose metric? It’s hard not to taste capitalism forming the word in my mouth. Even in the beginning, baked into the definition, is the reality of comparison. Comparison grates on my spirit. My word. I will be honest with you at the risk of sounding conceited; I did not have many peers growing up. K-12 education was spent around white kids that only ever performed as well as I did, which was always pretty… deeply unimpressive to me since I had half the resources and I knew that. I was regularly the standard of my craft (which has always, always been writing). My pen moves and the world does with it. Writing feels like breathing. I have always been excellent in that regard.
So then comparison was always isolatory at best. It’s lonely at the top, or whatever. But also, kids are vicious— especially white kids that feel like they deserve an A more than you. At worst, the constant game of comparison (which happened to me regardless of whether I participated or not) was punishing. Incredibly punishing. I always think of Excellence in terms of the high jump (an apparatus that I was quite good at in the brief season of life I ran track). I happily competed in high jump until I learned the bar could paralyze you. I cannot imagine a better visualization for the way that Excellence shows up in my life. It’s really a poet’s wet dream. I set my own standards of Excellence, meaning I erect my own bar of “good enough” and fracture myself trying to clear it. The shame of landing on the bar is intense too— you run for it, you leap for it, you turn yourself in the air and feel the small of your back connect with your own disqualification. And then you spend the whole fall wondering if you’ll land and lose your ability to walk. Excellence always felt to me like a losing game— either I pass with flying colors and I have no friends, and see the bar raised immediately after with no time to celebrate your victory. Or I fail to clear the bar. I meet my own standards with metal to bone and I crack.
Brutal. Brutal and unsustainable.
By the time I got to college I’d really married myself to the idea of “just good enough.” Do as much as necessary to get what you want. You don’t have to be Excellent, you only have to be Enough.
Which was, for all its intents, a wonderful idea. Enough meant well and does well, sincerely. For the period of time where I was navigating imposter syndrome, or dealing with the discomfort of class mobility, or simply questioning my own worth, Enough was a valuable lesson. Enough was a relief. It was healing. Where Excellence had to be earned, Enough was freely given. The task of being grand, being great, being excellent was completely unattainable for where I was: seventeen, at college, floating, untethered, still fractured. Still learning to walk again where before I could sprint. It was a lot gentler, a lot sweeter. Enough feels round and soft in my mouth, easier thing to hold onto; swallowing on something filling and soft, like fresh bread.
How to be Enough was a simple study of self and is an entirely different feeling than the pursuit of Excellence. Enough was the place I learned to be friends with myself again. It’s deserving of an essay on its own. That narrative arch was clear and beautiful. I began to like my own company. I could create without fear of critique. Ugh, and it was stunning. I really thought I had solved my problems. And then! And then. I got… bored.
I began to look around. I still had… very few peers, honestly. Nothing was interesting enough to hold my attention. So I looked up, like I used to do. Like I hadn’t done in years. Excellence was still swinging above my head, just out of my reach, taunting me. Infuriating. Still , as always, a losing game. It sincerely felt like a cruel joke from the universe. I did not have the focus, or the skill, or the brain chemical balance, or the work ethic, or the something. Something. The pursuit of Excellence always felt punishing and inauthentic.
I settled into my skin more, waded through the journey, ate my Enough bread to keep me going, arrived very bitterly at the end of that predetermined storyline and, instead of investigating my next step, still held fast to the lower, easier bread of Enough. Even when it began to be.. boring. Even when the bread started to mold.
Enter: effective mediocrity. A slow decay of tempering myself.
I began to rot.
In the literal world, my work was rotting. I was writing, but never really in public. Not in competitions, not for publications, not for anything that would propel my life forward. It was enough to just work on my craft, for a while. I went into a quiet, dark place where no one could judge me and let myself loose and it was (and is) lovely. The secret places I keep for myself and my creation are still gorgeous.
But my pen is powerful. My words are weighted. I had such incredible opportunities given to me I let slip and crack on the ground because I could not let myself into the light. That would have meant running again, running and leaping under the bright blue sun and sky, jumping for the bar of Excellence— the one I had not cleared in years. I have not written publicly all this time (years of my life), despite my parents, my teachers, my professors, my comment section begging me to because I understood there was a before and an after I expose my mind like this. It is vulnerable. It feels exactly like being naked in a room where everyone else is clothed and gawking at you (ask me how I know). But the terror— it doesn’t make me want myself any less. I love high jump. I miss high jump. When you are good, when you are great— excellent— it feels like you’re flying. Do you know what it is to fly, even if for a moment? It is a defining life experience. There is a before and an after you find and do something that makes you fly. And I want to. Fly, I mean. But failing costs me a lot. And it’s not just failure— it’s public failure, which is daunting.
…I suppose.
Though. If I am really honest. Being watched in public does raises my heart rate, but not necessarily in a bad way. If anything, as I witness other people seeing me and wanting me open, raw, unconcealed desire, unwrapped jealousy as they realize they do not compare, the business of coveting just soaked in money and opportunity and sweet things I am slick with want for myself. I only want myself up there more.
Impressing other people was never the problem. I can actually usually accomplish that with just my Enough. So many people are so impressed by some damn bread. For myself, I am not.
This is Excellence: to impress myself. me having enough conditioning, enough nourishment, enough skill stamina speed and strength to clear the bar I have set for myself. It is a hard feat. I had not done so in years. Not because I was suddenly worse. Because as I learned and grew, I understood more about what was possible with art. And because I was in life circumstances that made me too tired to run and train like I should.
But that did not stop me from the work of wanting. I want to impress myself. That is Excellence. I am my own peer, I am my own standard. I can only look up at this bar I have made to clear.
Can I tell you a secret (that might be obvious by now)?
I love the high jump.
This is the way I want explicit, sticky, rippling intimacy with Excellence. Soaring through the air like that is an out of body experience. It’s something I’ve tasted but not yet embodied, despite the want. Despite the years of deep and endless want that have all coiled in my gut and cemented into ashy resentment. Resentment covered in bile, acidified into hatred. I hated my Good Enough bar because I could never clear it. What an easy narrative. I know what I am about to say sounds very workaholic, hustle harder, get-it-girl culture of me, but… I don’t actually think my bar was the issue.
First of all, I had no business trying for Excellence when I wasn’t even convinced I was Enough. Of course I hurt myself. Excellence is a space for work and, for much of the last season of my life, I needed to be in the healing space of learning how to be self satisfactory. I do not turn to the high jump apparatus to find self-satisfaction. I run for it to impress myself. For that, I need to be well enough to do the work.
Secondly, my hitting the bar does not mean I need to lower the standards I have set for myself. It means that I need to train harder. I am, among many people, an expert in myself. I am certain of my own capacities. I can trust myself to give myself the flowers I deserve when I earn them, and it’s not actually a bad thing for to earn them. Yes, I have a high bar. Why wouldn’t I? I am thoroughly convinced of my own genius. Yes, I am hard to impress. Of course I am. I’m that bitch. What do I look like being easily impressed? I know the difference between good and great work as it passes through my hands, including my own. Especially my own. And I know the difference between great and Excellent work.
When I think about who I want to be, when I envision myself taking up the space I know I am designed to, when I see myself, my body, the slight of my hand, the curve of my neck positioned to receive all the good things I am stewing I am beside myself with lust. I, in this life, in real life (metaphors aside), am never more turned on than looking at my own naked body, so it makes sense I am also overcome with desire envisioning my future self’s successes. I have deep self attraction and that actually one of my favorite things about myself. Seeing the harvests of Ismatu tomorrow openly makes me horny. That’s what it is.
I have all this sexual tension with the literal concept of Excellence and I simply don’t know how else to explain it. I can see myself in the future, darker and riper and sweeter, an overgrown berry, bending the whole plant just begging to be in somebody’s mouth. What else is that? When I look to the self I wish to become, the body I want to live in, the work that passes through my hands with ease I pant. I feel goosebumps. I harden. I open. I still. My tongue runs across the ridges of my teeth I flex my toes I close my eyes before I even realize it. It’s me lightyears away, ten years away, two moments away, tomorrow, today. I see myself sailing over my bar again and again, with ease. I am flying. I roll in the sky, limbs outstretched, palms relaxed. I hook myself on the bar and spin. My breasts are free and falling off me. I know exactly what that feels like. I can see myself on the other side of the stage, now in the audience, watching me dance, seeing me glide, bearing witness to flight. Body dark and ripe and free. What else is that but sex? It’s unmistakably sex, the way I float. I am in a space in my life where Excellence no longer feels punishing— perfection does, and I conflated the two for a long time. Perfection is punishing by design because of its true impossibility. Excellence understands my only metric of comparison is me. I am my own standard and so Excellence is, by definition, attainable. She tastes sweet and tart. Bright. He makes me pucker my plump lips. I can see myself up there flying and embodying Excellence and he is ethereal. Dripping. Slick. What else is that? I can see the self I am going to bring down to earth and I am overcome with open, naked desire. The same sizzling energy of a live wire. My fingerprints are electric I am collected and eclectic twirling against a bright blue sky over a track field soaring// just soaring. Sailing over the bar into the sun. When I clear my bar like this I am Excellence personified. Every breath is warm and beating— what else is that but sex? This way that I love him, that I love the future self that hang glides above me like a heavy rain breeze— how else can I name that want but call it lust? Yes, I want me. Yes, I want it like that. I want to sail until I am smooth. I want to ripen until I fall. I want to soak in sun and gain sticky, lip-smacking weight until I bend the whole plant to show my deep and gleaming body. I look at myself and drool. I want a taste. What is that skill like? That precision? That level of faith in myself? I am going to taste or die trying. I did not know I could find work worth risking the paralysis but if I am honest I feel paralyzed on the ground, afraid of flying. And Enough is a wonderful, life making place to be but it’s only… just enough. Enough is like manna. It is nourishing. It falls from the sky, an open gift from the divine that I do nothing to earn but ask. I am fed and it is sufficient, and I will keep going. But that was in the desert. That was in a season of wandering and questioning, of healing. I have returned to myself and I want the body made of milk and honey. I am salivating for it. what else is that but sex, when sex loving makes me fly, when pole work makes me fly, I see myself up there flying. What else? What else can I call that? I want to fuck Excellence and so of course I was mad as all sin down here, wanting and wanting something that hung just above my head, perpetually out of reach. I felt hot embarrassment for even looking Excellence’s way. By no means did I feel good enough for that much richness when even leavened bread felt too much in my belly. And that’s real— how often do we see resentment take the place of sexual envy? How long did I hate what was sexually liberated because I still had all this binding? Of course I hated Excellence. Of course I labeled her the enemy. It was the only way I could live with myself wanting something I did not feel like I deserved that badly. I could not even bring myself to try pursuit. But now. But now. I am fed. I am rested. I know how it feels to fly like that, to ripen like that, to hang out nude like that in the middle of sky as the sun sets, not in a hurry, sweet as the day is long. Slick with sex. I have tasted what it is to be skilled enough to trust that whatever my body and mind combine to do with themselves, it will be beautiful. I know how it feels to get out of my own way. I know how my body feels through the sweltering pleasure of a job well done. Yes I want to fuck excellence and I make no apologies. You would too, if you saw me up there.
And when there is this much pleasure. Imagine the shivers I will feel when I land. Full and safe. And get to raise the bar.
—ismatu gwendolyn
5| I kinda wanna f*ck Excellence.