The Price of Eros (visualized)

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The last story was called The Price of Eros

This story is by one of our founder. She’d say hello, but she’s a ghost. Her words…

A Straight Story

The surfaces are all flat and cold. They bleed into one another like quicksilver. The mirrors in the corners pinball back my thoughts. I’m disoriented by the shimmering patterns. I’m supposed to be making sense of the surroundings. Meanwhile, my brain has merged with the liquid metal.

Seven years, I’ve never asked Dr. Morrow why his office is a silver pool of reflection. It doesn’t seem conducive for expansive feeling, for sharing, for vulnerability. It seems prone to accident – a place you could drown. I’ve had this thought before, this question. Does it matter? Dr. Morrow is speaking to me and I’m having trouble following.

“You continue to get ahead of your story.”

“How do you mean?” I feign surprise, but the question still triggers a response. I know how he means it, yet I need it explained again. Possibly, I don’t actually know what he means. I fidget in my chair. I understand the words perfectly, but they make no sense. I’m just a monkey.

“You know how I mean.” Dr. Morrow doesn’t fidget. On the contrary, he seems to be enjoying himself. “You are at a point in time, a position on your path. You are here. Anything past this point is ahead of your actual story. It’s fantasy! And you like to pretend that your fantasies are true to life.”

“So now I’m delusional?”

“Of course you’re delusional, Franco. Haven’t you been listening?”

Dr. Morrow smiled. The edges returned to the room. The round table sat heavy between us. The silver surfaces acquired depth and form. The past, Franco, doesn’t exist. The future is yet to unfold. I’ve been here in this very moment, yet this is the first time it’s occurred.

“The rest is conjecture.”

“Yes, Franco. It’s all conjecture.”

“But it feels so good I can taste it.”

“That’s delusion; this is real.” Dr. Morrow spread his arms over the table like a magician. “You do realize why the future is so attractive, yes?”

I nodded as the patterns began to shimmer.

“Because of your gifted powers of imagination.”

“Doc, I can make these fantasies become real.”

“Sometimes, maybe. But they’re not your strength. Stop obsessing on them. You can’t get ahead of your story!”

“Why not?” I spread my arms wide. “Where’s the harm?”

“The harm is the fantasy. You live inside the making of your own dream.”

“So?”

“So? Nobody else resides in your dream. Everyone lives in reality. And you? Your dreams so easily become nightmares. Nightmares that will potentially become terminal. Nevertheless, you’ll experience severe trauma when you finally wake up.” Dr. Morrow’s face was warm and cheerful. An array of sunlight briefly curved through the room. My hands gripped the chair. “I think—” “You know nothing of what you think, Franco. And, at times, you know shockingly little of why you even think this way.”

Then I wanted to leave. Seven years, and he’d trapped me again. Almost by design. A confused rat in a maze.

“Well, I know she cares about me. You know, she’s crazy about me. She’s just gotta be.” I tapped the table with each point. “And, she’d tell me if I asked her. If I put it to her.”

“Sounds like a nice dream. And it might happen just as you say. But not because you’ve made it so. Not even because she utters the words you’re so desperate to hear. Reality veers from your path. Life happens independently. You need to bring things into hyperspace – and you can! And then what? Speed is dangerous. Here you’ve written this song, and then it doesn’t play how you wrote it. So what then?”

“I’d deal with it.”

“So you think.”

A few moments of silence unfurled across the table. The tension was mine. Dr. Morrow eased his large frame against the curved silver. He appeared larger than life, larger than he should’ve been. He’d done this many times before. I assumed to seem imposing. Like before, he seemed particularly mischievous.

“And what would you have happen?”

I delivered in monotone, “I’d like her to tell me how she truly feels.”

“You left out the second part.”

“No, I did not.” But I knew that I must have.

“You also want to give her the script to read from. You want to tell her how she feels about you. Your words, her lips. That’s pure fantasy. That’s what you want and you’ll never get. It has nothing to do with you. That’s the nature of fantasy.”

“I just want to end this now.” I felt hot tears welling. Then the first tear spilled down my cheek, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand any of it.

“You want to finish the story… without her.

“Your story has all the components of reality. Your relationship with this girl is very real. But only what’s on the page. You can’t get ahead of this story. You could get hurt.” Dr. Morrow was serious. “And it’s my job to keep you from getting hurt.” The tears now came unabated but they no longer stung. “You need to let time pass, situations to develop. To let other characters speak for themselves. You can’t force an ending. The story always ends where it wants.”

I want to hear her say she loves me. Matter-of-factly. To speak the truth. I shifted in my chair. “I understand,” I said. His words penetrated my skull and ricocheted through the hollow spaces.

“Alright. That’s all for today.”

At lunch she ordered filet of salmon as I knew she would. We ate outside although it was overcast. Wisps of clouds reflected off the square table. Her words failed to reach my mind. It would be so easy. So easy to lead her off the page. She told a story from her class that day. I stared up at the patterns of white and grey.

“Why are you so distracted?”

“I was just thinking,” I said. “How a story needs to tell itself.”

This is a contributor…

Bio: Lloyd Siegel is a writer. He is a human first, but then a writer. He has no desire to be anything or anyone else. He has spent the last several years stripping off the rest of the layers.

Sophie’s breasts were like peaches… large peaches. Rather, more like twin fertile crescents, pink moons. And her ass… her ass was like two marshmallows, round and yielding. Her body captivated Henry with irrefutable force. She drew him in close, providing hard evidence. Yet, her softer features aroused his tender feelings: limpid green eyes, satiny, full lips, and a mane of beach-tousled blonde hair.

Even quicker than usual, he’d decided he was in love. Maybe it was during their third straight day together, Sophie gallivanting naked through his apartment, climbing up his body while he watched basketball on the couch. Not that he remembered many details, but naturally the sex was inspired. Sophie was a dream, breathtaking, and Henry had enough energy for them both. Wide hips gave her ass its bewitching shape; she would safely bear children. Henry didn’t have any kids, but he’d been ready since he was sixteen.

What could we say of the erotic sex life of modern man? Very little, Henry recently concluded. He’d spent time building his argument. Firstly, it was incorrect to assume that the erotic resided solely in the body. Eroticism was the elusive pairing of lust with love, physical desire attached to supple heartstrings. Lust alone only leads to vacuous sex. These were Henry’s ideas. That we know so little of men’s erotic adventures mainly because they don’t exist. Men nowadays simply choose not to fall in love.

As Henry’s years passed him by, he decided that love was a disease, and that to chase its magical elixir was a foolish errand. Surely, women were capable of being loved, but men’s capability was a waste of the expense. The truth Henry arrived at was that women were inherently unlovable. Love was an undesirable chemical reaction. Erotic love, merely a fever dream.

Henry didn’t think of the opposite sex as other until his thirties. Females were simply a natural extension of his being. In his teens, he locked lips with dozens of girls. This during a period of sexual immaturity. Yet, these kisses remain among the most erotic moments of his life. Henry was infatuated and mesmerized by young girls with beautiful faces, who didn’t yet possess the makings of a single alluring curve.

In graduate school there was a young woman who fell in love with him. Henry liked her, and he desired her body – a body willing to be manhandled by him whenever he was inclined. The young woman’s body suctioned onto him like an octopus, capable of administering inescapable gratification; she poured perpetual pleasure over his being. Equally, he injected his entire spirit into her. Yet, he knew his act was once removed. At that point in his life, this had become a common moral dilemma.

Afterwards, in bed, he could feel her settle inside an erotic heaven. Erotic tremors are often felt strongest after bodies disconnect. Henry knew from this – and other evidence – that their relationship was unequal. Still, Henry didn’t cut off relations. Possibly, he thought it would cause her great pain, like experiencing a severed tentacle. However, when it came time to cut ties, he found that he couldn’t. Her tentacles truly fed on his body. Also, he had pretty blue eyes and a piercing intelligence. That certainly factored, too.

Every man’s sex life will likely have a signature turning point, a stamp imprinted on his erotic biography. For Henry, it occurred just as woman began presenting themselves as strictly other. In many ways, they had ceased sending out invitations.

His moment arrived in the form of a gorgeous black woman, whose prodigious curves were simultaneously excessive and desirable. Henry picked her up on the street, and from there it was a whirlwind back to his apartment. They browsed a bookstore, then he bought her champagne and caviar. They drank a second bottle before riding a cab straight to bed. Once there, he discovered she’d acquired some strange habits. Henry later realized this was an obvious clue he ignored.

She allowed him to work her into what seemed a genuine tizzy, at which time they proceeded to consummate the evening. She never appeared quite comfortable, even once dismounting from the bed onto her knees, looking up at him like a dog waiting to be fed. Henry was just pleased she didn’t bark.

Yet, a second date was scheduled. The peculiar girl proceeded to play with the plans. Her behavior no less odd than in the bedroom. She cancelled, shuffled, teased, promised. Henry lost interest — but after he became annoyed. So when she finally called for their ‘date’, he didn’t answer the phone. She didn’t appear to appreciate this maneuver; he sensed this from the subsequent twenty-four calls. Henry could’ve seen her majestic curves once more, but he didn’t.

The incident hit him with immediate force. A revelation, he believed. There could be lust without love. But he couldn’t have sex with contempt in his heart. Lust was needed to produce the erotic dream. Yet, hate, as precursor, could destroy his body’s desire. Henry could sense the doors to his erotic endeavors closing one at a time.

“Sophie, do you know what your name means?”

“Of course. It means truth.”

Sophie wanted Henry for a purpose, for the look of the surface. She never loved him. Maybe, he had never loved her either, just the look of her surface. Love is a manmade delusion. Still, Henry believes one thing to be true: Sophie’s love was a manufactured illusion. His love was real, the product of a fire dream. At least, his love created disease.

Henry won’t pretend to depth. He still peruses the shapes and the curves. Unfortunately, he still desires the site of the source.

If a woman is her being, then love occurs in the depths. Henry now rarely dives below the surface. Women, he believes, are unlovable. If man desires to live a full, erotic life, he will have to live it completely alone. Sophie was her name, but the truth was a lie.

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