Needless to say, the odor could not, at that time, have had any direct relationship with sexual sensations, but it did gradually and tenaciously arouse within me a sensuous craving for such things as the destiny of soldiers, the tragic nature of their calling, the distant countries they would see, the ways they would die. . . .
Again, as if sexuality precedes the death drive. Truly some divine stuff, religious even. Not sexual but not without content. What cometh first? Not biological, not cultural, as Alenka puts it