I still haven't finished Madame Bovary - it sends me to sleep – but there was one very memorable line in it last night: "You should never touch your idol, because the gilt will come off on your fingers." I have certainly found that with some of my favourite authors - there were some like Lawrence, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy whose works had such a dramatic effect on my life - helping to form me into the creature I am today - that I wanted to know as much as I could about the people who had created these wondrous works. I started reading biographies and found that the men behind these works were deeply flawed (this probably led to their literary genius mind you), but what was so disturbing to me was that I discovered that, as men, I wouldn't have wanted to know them. Lawrence was a positive little Fascist, Dostoyevsky a hopeless drunk and gambler, and Tolstoy seemed to lose the plot towards the end of his life and abandon his wife and family. That's the problem with being a romantic - reality can bring you crashing to the ground.
I devoured everything Lawrence had written by the time I was 20 or so and was just blown away with it. There was one book "The Rainbow" that I think was just the perfect novel. One of the female character's names was 'Gudrun' and if I had a daughter it's likely the poor thing would have ended up with that name. My sons tell me they're really glad they were born males! Everyone thinks of Lawrence for Lady Chatterley's Lover - but this was just a lightweight piece really, lacking the intense passion of his other works. There's a poem by Lawrence called 'The Fig' that I will read out to you one day. It's very sensual and daring for its time (Wanda is interrupting me here, wanting to tell you that the fig is likened to a particular part of a woman's body and describes how this fruit is best eaten...Sorry!!!) I think you'll like it. In The Rainbow he describes a kiss that goes on for a page. I read that to my literature class of all girls once and they were all ears. I asked them if they had ever been kissed like that before and they all just slowly shook their heads. That was bad of me. I probably ruined any hope of normal relationships for them...they will be spending their lives looking for someone who could kiss them like that... I'm hoping I may have found that person...we'll see. But to get back to my original point, I've stopped reading biographies of authors now. I'd rather hang on to my romantic illusions about them.
To finish in a style reminiscent of Lawrence, both Wanda are I are dying to experience the fecundity of you in every possible profound way...
Your Chariette
Dear Chariot
In answer to your question will Wanda be accompanying me when we do meet up it will definitely be both of us, and you will have your hands (and other parts) fully engaged, but I'm sure you can cope with it.
When we do meet up you'll know it's me coming down the street because I'll be lugging a big bag full of books so that I can read you all the passages I have promised you to date ....
I loved this email from you. Especially you homing in on the 'gilt' part. I find your confidence reassuring.
And 'fecund' was Lawrence's favourite word. He used it 12 times on one page once, trying to grapple with describing the intensity of sexual feelings and relationships .... I'll read you that page too!
At least the sun is out today. And you sent me this lovely lovely email. It's nice to see people lying on the lawns outside the State Library soaking up the sun. I wish I were lying in your arms soaking you up just now. (Wanda's thinking of more energetic things than that...)
And I am just waiting...
Chariette
Dear Chariot
I had an indulgent evening last night watching The Forsyte Saga and sipping wine. My son left the lounge room in disgust saying "How can you watch such crap?!!" Oh the insults and slurs I have to put up with! There was one particular scene where a young woman learns her father is going to die and her despair at the prospect just made me break down. There are interesting father/daughter relationships all through it - even the most loathsome character in the novel evokes sympathy because of his love for and devotion to his daughter. But what I also like about these period pieces is the costuming. I loved the way women dressed then - so feminine and elegant. They embodied womanliness for me. I would have fitted into that era perfectly (mind you I would have been a suffragette as well).
I wish you were here so that I could touch you. My hands tingle at the thought of you (Wanda's positively itch). I would like to run my tongue gently across your lips and explore the corners of your mouth. (Wanda would of course like to explore your entire tongue with hers - deeply and at length.)
I think I will just die of embarrassment at all the things I’ve said to you when we do finally meet up.
When we are finally together, I’ll have to have a couple of glasses of champagne to coax Wanda out so I won’t be too shy (one will probably be plenty… in fact, I don’t think you’ll be safe from her in the lift!) Did you ever see Last Tango in Paris? There was a wonderful lift scene in that – one of those European openwork wire lifts in an apartment building - I found that to be one of the most erotic cinematic moments I have experienced.
That brings me to another request of you, - a building with a lift…
I would like to know if you have any requests of me…
Chariette
Dear Chariot
I’m writing this at home a while after your phone call tonight. Can’t get you out of my mind. It’s always so lovely to hear from you. I think you’re just so divine.
I am so hungry for you....not just sexually.....that’s a given.....but I would really like to come to know you as a person. I think it’s just wonderful that there is a strong physical attraction between us and I’m really really enjoying exploring that with you, and flirting with you, and playing with you and I’ll really enjoy the physical consummation of all of this too. But I’m hoping it will result in a kind of intimate friendship between us, where we’ll just enjoy each other, both physically and mentally and maybe even emotionally, and if and when we do move on, we’ll be able to look back and think I’m really glad my life crossed paths with that person. I’m glad already for the contact we’ve had til now and it has already enriched my life and I have much to be grateful to you for already. My whole being is captured in a smile at the very thought of you.
I’m dying to see you in your naked splendour just now and dying to stroke you all over and cover you with kisses and come to know all the ins and outs of you and for you to come to know mine. The very prospect of touching you intimately is so exciting to me. I want to have fun sexually with you and fun mentally with you too and I want you to just be able to have fun with me too.
God help me at work tomorrow... I’m hoping Wanda will sleep all day.
Chariette
Dear Chariot
Thank you for the lovely surprise text message the other night. I think you’re so wonderful. I enjoyed the phone call very much too.
I think you're such a beautiful man and I hope I don't overwhelm you at times with my passionate outbursts about you. It's just that I’m an extremely passionate woman and experience such depths of passion you wouldn’t believe. It’s just the way I am and I hope you’ll be able to just take it on board and enjoy it.
I have led a very repressed existence for many years in every imaginable way, and this year, for the first time in an eternity, I have experienced a sense of freedom, like a blind man having sight returned to him. I really need to wallow in that for a while... My all consuming desire for you is related to this wallowing. But at the same time your having dropped into my lap the way you have, and at the time you have, has been just so wonderful and is such a thrilling experience that I want to squeeze every drop of delight out of it that I can and experience all that I possibly can from it. I’m so eager for life and experience I can’t tell you. And this makes me so full of passion for you that it overwhelms me too at times. And I want to share this with you. I want you to feel the passion too just for the sheer pleasure and depth of experience of it, not for anything else. I want to give you back the utterly lovely joyful feelings
you have engendered in me. That’s all.
So I’ll continue to bombard you with poems that I love, out of a strong desire to share this with you and bring you some pleasure. And I’ll continue to talk to you in very passionate ways because this is how I feel about you right now in this moment, and you should just feel amazed and happy that you’ve brought this about in another person and just lie back and soak it up. I know that sexual passion is very strong in you (what a wonderful surprise that was to discover in you!) (I’m sure you will be a very sexy beast) and that’s something I really look forward to actively experiencing. It’s very strong in me too (I think we’ll be just great together... the delicious anticipation of sexually experiencing you is almost as good as the event....mind you I’ll probably retract that statement once I’ve been with you..I’m beginning to suspect it will be more delicious than even I can imagine... ), but just as it's the sexual passion that stirs you, in me, it is the passion of my soul. I just can’t help that side of me and it’s really important to me to feel this stirred. And it is positively awhirl with you. It’s a wonderful experience and I haven’t felt so alive since I can’t remember when.... I so want to please you! I just adore you – enjoy it while you can!
" Come, let us go, while we are in our prime
And take the harmless folly of the time.
Our life is short; and our days run
As fast away as does the sun.
So come, My Chariot, come...let's go a-Maying."
Chariette
PS. Wanda says hello...no, actually she wants to be able to say to you "Well hello there big boy!" (Sorry...I was trying to keep her under wraps throughout this but she's very determined. She has definite designs on you....)
Dear Chariot
Your phone calls this week have been sublime. I feel at times I reach a stage when I think I couldn't possibly long for/lust/desire you more than I do and then you call....
I love talking to you and you talking to me. Despite the quavering voice (this is just a sign of high emotion and extreme sexual tension) I'm starting to feel you'll be the kind of person I will be able to really talk to. I love to talk to you sexually and love it when you get explicit with me too. You just send me - just the merest thought of you gets me aroused and sets me throbbing for you.
I'm dying to run my tongue along the groove of your groin where your belly meets your thigh, following a trail of Baileys along there until I reach and can embrace that part of you that will complete me....
Chariette
Dear Chariot
It's bitterly, bitterly cold here today. Wish I was under the blankets with you, totally indulging ourselves in a tactile exchange of body warmth, sensual exploration and passionate, dedicated, lusty activity.
Chariette
Dear Chariot
Your late call was a lovely surprise and your text message yesterday was something else! It’s so funny to think of you in your respectable business suit sitting in the Golden Wings Lounge, sending such lascivious text messages. Even lovelier to think of you thinking of these things early in the morning…..I’m not alone in this regard it seems… (Does this text message mean that you fancy me then?…)
Yes, I know, I’m becoming very demanding… But the thought of your lips on me and of your hands on my breasts is so sublime. I want to get my hands (and other parts of me) all over you too. I want to explore all of you…. all of you!!
Chariette
Dear Chariot
I must confess I eagerly await revelation of your legs and find myself often drifting in contemplation of that part of you. One of the (many) things I would like to do to you involves the insides of your thighs. Chariette, who is all sensuality and touch, would delight in ever so gently drawing the tips of her fingers along the inside of your thighs, starting at your knees and slowly and lightly and gently stroking up the length of the inside of your thighs until she can gently brush against, then continue up, the length of you (can't think of a delicate way of referring to THAT PART of you so I'll just say 'you' and hopefully you'll know what I mean..). The thought of you pulsing in response to her touch is VERY exciting. Wanda would like to do much the same thing, only using her tongue instead of fingers, and drawing her tongue right up the inside of your thighs then taking you into her mouth. Wanda wants you to know how she would like to take all possible parts of you into her mouth 'in seriatum' as the lawyers say. She thinks you're a veritable edible feast. Chariette thinks you're the most handsome man on earth and wants you to know that you stir her to the very core. You do the same for Wanda, but her core is in a different place...
Thank you for your calls this week. You make me so happy. I need to apologise to you though for admonishing you for not being able to get down here yet. I am going to stop doing this (it's just that I'm so eager for you!) I want you to know how grateful and happy I am for the contact you have so generously given me already and I do not take that in any way for granted. And the prolonged anticipation of you will make the realisation of it all the more pleasurable
I feel really safe with you. You make me feel as though I'm swimming up from the depths of a dark ocean and I can see the light and air and life just above me coming into reach at last. I feel as though I am finally safe to emerge from this darkness and it's such a wonderful feeling - and you've given me that. Before you came into my life I felt like T. S. Eliot's Prufrock 'pinned and wriggling on the wall' (a dark bleak poem, but very resonant of the reality of my existence then).
Enjoy Hong Kong and Singapore next week. I'll be thinking of you. There's not a spare thought I have that is not filled with you. I'll keep writing even though you may not be able to respond.
Feeling just full of adoration for you dear Chariot.
Chariette
Dear Chariot
The sun is shining today..what joy! What joy! It's also light in the mornings now and for the first time in an age I'm not wearing a coat. Spring is such a lovely time. It brings such hope and promise. (You are my spring, my hope, my promise...)
I'm experiencing a frenzy of feeling this morning. There's a beautiful poem by Andrew Marvell (he wrote around Shakespeare's time and was another genius of words) called 'Thoughts in a Garden' and I'm feeling just like this now:
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light...
And not a sexual hint in it...just the pure pleasure of aliveness... but it also makes me think how I'd love to be with you feeling like this just now...you're my fruit too...(my very fecund fruit). What pleasure it will be to be with you and feel your luscious clusters (sorry!....that was Wanda!) (You'll probably also enjoy feeling mine!...I've got to stop this, it's spoiling the beauty of the poem!..can't help myself...want you so much...)
I hope things are going well for you wherever you are! I wish all good things for you....
Feeling passionately happy today despite the longingness for you....but that contributes to the passion nonetheless.
Chariette
Dear Chariot
Thank you for your lovely email! Thrilling to hear from you from overseas. I was resigned to silence for quite some time yet.
I'm sorry to hear you're not well. Get the vitamins and lots of water into you and try to get some sleep. (I confess a vested interest here as your body is my major i
nterest in terms of art nowadays...)
A Long Distance Love Affair Page 3