Most of the time, I overthink everything. If there’s a problem, I think about it. I think about it, and think about it, and think about it from every angle, and think about it some more. Then I think about the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about it, before I go back to thinking about it again.

When I was a child, I used to get in trouble for it. “Stop thinking!” they’d say, and I’d look at them as if they’d told me to stop breathing. How do you stop thinking? I’d wonder, and then spend a good amount of time thinking about the practicalities of that until, exhausted by a tangle of hypotheticals, I finally fell asleep.

I can’t help overthinking any more than I can help my heart from beating. It just happens.

It is what it is.

There are times though when the thinking stops.

There are times when my brain – usually ticking away busily like a whirring machine – turns into a useless, sodden sponge. There are times when something comes over me and suddenly there is nothing but blissful silence.

And all I need for that to happen is heavy, heated lust.

Sometimes it comes easy. Sometimes it floods me, coming in like a tidal wave and rocking me on my heels. It doesn’t even need to be anything explicit. A kiss on my forehead. A finger running along my collarbone. A thigh against my thigh. A thumb rubbing the inside of my wrist in slow, circular strokes.

I don’t know why there are so many cultural stereotypes about men being the ones with sex on the brain. I don’t understand this idea that men are the only ones that always want sex, that men only ever have one thing on their mind, that men are “dogs”.

I’m a dog.

Woof.