What is sexual desire?

"Sexual desire, when reciprocal, it is a conspiracy by two people. The scheme is to offer to the other a truce from the pain of the world. Not happiness, but a physical truce to the enormous debt of the body in regards to pain. The conspiracy entails creating together a space, a locus of exemption, and the exemption is, by temporary necessity, the one from the irreducible wound that the flesh has inherited. This locus is within the other's body. The conspiracy consists in losing oneself within it, where both will become unfindable. Desire is an exchange of hidings.

John Berger, My beautiful.

Indra and Shachi on Airavata. Wikipedia.