The Syntax of Seduction

by Carlos Malenkov

  "Dr. Martinette, with your indulgence, I would like to demonstrate that my research is indeed bearing fruit. Kindly permit me to read you a brief selection of poetry from the Sassanid dynasty."

  He shouldn't have been surprised to find out that Petunia Martinette was a virgin. At her age, too. My, my. But that hadn't seemed to diminish her passion any. She had left deep gouges on his back and bite marks on his neck.

  How would she feel about him now? He desperately needed her good will and patronage. His livelihood depended on it. How could he bind her to him securely and irrevocably?

  "Petunia, my pet, let me love you in a very special way . . . " (Pause to chant a few quatrains of poetry) "This will bring you to a peak of rapture attained by only a select few. It must remain a dark secret between just the two of us. Now get on your hands and knees and lower your head."

  Doing her in the back passage caused her momentary discomfort when he entered, but the chant relaxed her back into a receptive trance state. She was moaning with pleasure by the time he disengaged himself from her rear aperture.

  "The pleasures of sodomitic love, my love. Now we are forever entwined."

  Her eyes were distant and dreamy as she smiled at him and sighed. She was his, his alone . . . and he need never again worry about his next paycheck.

  Four dozen women later, Josiah had refined and elaborated the details of the seduction system. Certain combinations of sounds chanted in a particular cadence induced a hypnotic state in "receptive" women. It needn't be ancient Persian poetry. It didn't even have to be any kind of poetry at all. It was the tone and the rhythm that did it, that neutralized the brain's higher thinking centers.

  It worked on lonely women, vulnerable women, women with unfulfilled needs for affection, for touching, for simple sensual release. Such women were abundant -- all too abundant as it turned out. Josiah had long since had his fill of flesh and lust and sloppy, wet couplings. Now he just wanted to be left alone to pursue his studies of his beloved linguistics.

  He wasn't left alone. Women constantly approached him, bothered him, hounded him. The only explanation he could come up with was that he had unconsciously assimilated the "magic" seduction cadence into his speech and manner. Or maybe it was his new-found reputation as a demon lover. The only remedy he could think of was to seclude himself, to avoid human contact.

  It was the cleaning lady who did him in. She was a 40-year-old divorcee with three half-grown children and an annoying habit of snapping her chewing gum while she talked. She had a quick and lively intelligence, to be sure, but her tastes were rather low-class.

  She was dusting the bookshelves in Josiah's study one afternoon when she happened to jolt against his tape recorder. It clicked on and began playing back his transcribed notes.

  Seduction? Hypnotizing people into sleeping with you? Suddenly, Maybelline Bumpus, afficionado of soap operas and avid devourer of romance novels, became intensely interested. She rewound the tape and began mouthing sequences of peculiar nonsense syllables over and over.

  Josiah Finn awoke in the arms of a woman who looked oddly familiar. Last night was a blur. All he remembered was coming home and finding the cleaning lady still there. Had she broken one of his Rosetta Stone replicas yet again? (Clumsy woman!) Had he forgotten to pay her for the week? (Too many things to remember!) No, but she had cocked her head sideways and smiled at him with a strange glint in her eye. She was missing a couple of front teeth and this gave her a vaguely predatory appearance. She had said something. What? Nothing he could recall.

  She was awake now and smiling at him. It was the same gap-toothed smile. It was, in fact, the cleaning lady who was sharing his bed. His bed! Had they made love? (He was sticky down below.) They had made love! She was saying something. No, chanting. The seduction chant! He felt himself disappearing into a black hole as his consciousness began to fade. A savage, mindless lust was taking possession of him. He had to have this woman! He had to lose himself in her! He had to . . .

  Mrs. Maybelline Bumpus Finn is fiercely protective of her husband. She respects his need to devote himself to his studies and research, free from the distractions of dealing with people. She screens his visitors very carefully. Women have an especially hard time getting an appointment with the professor. Attractive women have no chance at all.

  Mrs. Finn is an eminently practical person. She understands her husband's need for an occasional tryst with the department head. It's a matter of job security. But she knows he'll always come home to her. After all, she speaks his language.

  * * *

  TIGHT JEANS

  "These jeans make my ass look big!"

  The voice came from somewhere behind me. I was standing in the aisle next to Women's Wear. The lady posing in front of the full-length mirror at the entrance to the dressing rooms seemed to be talking to herself. Other than me, there was no one in her immediate vicinity. And yes, the jeans were a bit tight. In fact, she was literally bursting out of them. Bottom-heavy, she was, and her ass would look big under any circumstances, tight jeans or no. It didn't just look big, it was big -- ripe and lush and pear-shaped. That ass, that enormous beautiful ass, was the fulfillment of every erotic fantasy I had ever had.

  She was looking back over her shoulder. She was looking straight at me. She had caught me staring! My guts turned to jelly and I started to turn away. Where was the nearest exit? But . . . was that a hint of a smile on her face? A mysterious smile. Yes. Making fun of me? Or . . .

  She was beckoning toward me. Me? I pointed at my chest and she nodded vigorously. Well, why the hell not? I slowly made my way toward her.

  "You. Yes, you. I saw you looking at me. What's the matter, guy? Never seen a plump bottom before?"

  "Well . . . none quite as nicely shaped as yours."

  She began laughing, then slapped me on the back. It damn near knocked me over. She was several inches taller than I was, and had to outweigh me by easily a hundred pounds. Just that big ass of hers alone must weigh nearly as much as I did. But I felt no pain. In fact, I was gawking in open admiration at her bouncing breasts as she laughed. Her blouse was just a bit tight, too.

  "So, what do you think? Should I buy the damn jeans?"

  "Oh yes, definitely. They fit you like a . . . I mean, they show off your figure to perfection."

  "You admire a classically voluptuous woman, do you? That being the case, I'm pleased to meet you. I'm Fiona."

  She paid for the jeans, and we agreed to continue our discussion in a more congenial setting. For example, over dinner.

  "Best meal I've had in ages." Well, not actually the best, but at least as good as I'd gotten in the fast food joints where I'd been eating all too often lately.

  "I enjoy cooking for friends." She was humming under her breath as she cleared the table. "Would you like some dessert?"

  I'd like that luscious pear-shaped ass for dessert. Now, how to phrase that delicately?

  "Why thank you, Fiona. Do you have anything sweet?"

  "Chocolate fudge and . . ."

  "And?"

  "And, well . . ." She blushed. "I know this is only our first date, but . . . "

  "But?"

  "But I just can't wait. I'm sorry, but I seem to have fallen in lust with you. Why don't we have each other for dessert?"

  "You just had to pick the most expensive item on the menu, didn't you?"

  That big ass of hers looked even better in the flesh. Bare-ass naked flesh. It felt good, too. I couldn't keep my hands off it. Those round, juicy globes were a work of art.

  She had what was once called an hourglass figure -- full breasts tapering down to a shockingly slim waist, then flaring out to wide, generously upholstered hips framing that glorious ass. Looking at her rear view in the flickering illumination of the bedside lamp, I could almost picture her as a mythical centaur, with a humanoid torso growing out of a massive equine rump. Those wonderfully sculpted haunches! Now she was down on hands and knees, and those magnificent globes, like twin moons
, completely dominated the heavens. Later, hours later, as we lay in each other's arms, she told me she measured a full 56 inches at the hip, that is to say, around the ass.

  That ass. I couldn't keep my hands off it. I savored the soft, cushy feel as I fondled it. The warm, fleshy resilience of her buttocks as I entered her from behind (which turned out to be her favorite position). The freshly powdered scent of wanton femininity tickling my nose when I rubbed my cheek against her plush bottom. I wanted it, all of it. I wanted to plumb its depths. I had a sudden raging desire to fuck that ass.

  In those early morning hours, as we lay entwined, I whispered into her ear the details my fascination with that magical, wondrous ass. I hinted at my dark hunger to explore its hidden richness, to insert myself into its mysterious interior. Her body spasmed in my arms. For a moment I thought I had offended her, that she was shaken by disgust and outrage. But she was only laughing softly. She kissed me moistly on the lips, then made a mock farting sound.

  "My hot, passionate lover. I've opened my most private self, my private parts, my very cunt to you. Do you think I'd deny you my ass? As it happens, having it up the ass is one of my . . . my secret masturbation fantasies. It's just that I've never found a man I've wanted to realize it with. Until now."

  There just happened to be a tube of "XE-41 Industrial Strength Recreational Lubricant" in the top drawer of her dresser. Just behind several stacks of panties. Very curious. Could be she had already rehearsed her little fantasy, possibly with the active participation of a silicone sex toy or two . . .

  She knew the moves all right. Her heavenly gate, the entrance to her ass, dimpled inward, then relaxed and dilated as I gently entered into her innermost mystery. She was hot and buttery-slick inside and I glided past her sphincter ring with no resistance. She groaned, then reached behind and pulled me farther into her. I began a slow pumping rhythm of long, deep strokes, and shortly afterwards felt the contractions rippling out from her depths that meant she was having her third orgasm of the night. She cried out softly and called my name.

  My name? What name? What was my name? Who was I? I couldn't seem to remember. My identity, my past existence prior to seeing her at the store . . . had flickered out, faded . . . didn't exist. In fact, I didn't exist . . . except as a figment of imagination, Fiona's imagination. As consciousness dimmed, the last thing I heard was:

  "Yes, yes! My most successful creation -- a highly detailed demon lover, a phantom conjured out of a dream. You! You are a creation of my imagination. You don't actually exist in the flesh . . . yet.

  "Somewhere, somewhere out there, perhaps among the readers of this very story, there is someone who can fill your role, someone who can love me as I'm truly meant to be loved. Someone who believes that there is a big-assed Fiona out there waiting for him . . . somewhere. Someone whose belief is strong and unwavering and who will not despair and lose faith if at first he doesn't find his Fiona in Women's Wear. Someone who will continue searching -- searching until that day when he hears a voice ask whether the jeans make her ass look fat . . . "

  The bedroom light comes on. There! On the far side of the bed. Is that a faint indentation, as if perhaps a man had slept there? Possibly. Over there, by the clothes closet, in front of the full-length mirror, a woman is struggling to pull a pair of too-tight jeans over her ripe posterior. She is crying softly and calling out a name.

  Whose name? Yours.

  AGGIE

  Like a huge pile of steaming dog turds, DIA looms over the bleak prairie. Its institutional appearance is reminiscent of Cold War era Soviet architecture, and I try to avoid this particularly dismal airport like the plague. But my favorite aunt was gravely ill, and I had to see her before she died. I've always had a talent for making unpleasant things go away. In the fifth grade it was an especially nasty bully who had singled me out for his attentions. In desperation, I wished, wished as hard as I could, that he would just disappear out of my life. The following day he didn't show up at school. The police searched for months, but he was never found.

  Aunt Agatha was the only one who ever understood me. My parents were well-meaning, but distant, and I can't recall my mother ever drying my tears or giving me a hug. But Agatha was always there for me, and she let me lay my head on her ample maternal bosom and cry myself out whenever the pain of existence was too much to bear. In Basic Training, the drill sergeant seemed to have a hardon for me. I was always the one on punishment detail, the one he cussed out and mocked for being a "pussy," the one he used as a scapegoat for anything that wasn't quite shipshape at inspection. Oh, how I wished he would disappear, just go away and never be seen again. Then one morning we had a new drill sergeant, and no one would answer questions about what had happened to the old one.

  Landing in the so-called Queen City of the West at five in the morning doesn't necessarily leave one in the best of moods. Lord, how I hate that place! It was bad enough having to grow up in that jumped up cow town, but seeing it transformed into a trendy, pseudo-cosmopolitan hi-tech mecca makes me want to puke.

  The car rental counter was already besieged, even at that hour. I had to wait in line for forty minutes in spite of having made a reservation. It was a relief to finally be able to drive out of the place in a late-model Dodge Freon. For a time, Aggie was the love of my life. We had met at a mutual friend's New Year's party. I noticed the striking redhead with dangerous curves the moment I walked in, but thought, no, I'd never stand a chance with a looker like that. But, she walked right up to me, and as I stood there stammering and staring down at my feet, she put on a silly grin. Then she asked if the pain ever got too much for me to bear.

  "The pain?"

  "The pain of existence. Of living day in and day out in a cruel, indifferent universe."

  "Yes, we bear our scars inside, and sometimes our anguish expresses itself in an unintended grimace, or an accidental teardrop."

  I don't know what moved me to spout that hokum. But it worked.

  "Ah, a kindred soul," she said.

  And so it began.

  She had tubes coming out of her arms and torso. They didn't expect her to survive the night.

  "Auntie Agatha," I said.

  Her eyes opened.

  I leaned forward as she tried to say something.

  "Bennie." It was a barely audible whisper.

  "Don't try to talk, Auntie." I reached out to touch her.

  "No," she said. "No." She clutched my hand and sighed.

  "My child," she said, "my lost treasure."

  "Auntie -- "

  "No. Listen. This needs to be said. Before I die . . . must be told."

  Told what?

  "Not . . . not your aunt."

  "Auntie -- "

  "I'm not your aunt!"

  Not my aunt?

  "Listen to me. Remember . . . remember the night we found each other. That night at . . . at the party. That night . . . the pain . . . the pain of existence."

  The pain of existence. She wouldn't let me alone. Bad enough that she'd call me four or five times a day at my workplace. But, she also had this annoying habit of dropping in unannounced at my apartment and more or less demanding sex right then and there. And even when you're not in a particularly lusty mood, it's hard to turn down a needy woman when she's rubbing her nipples against you and grabbing your crotch. It was very inconvenient.

  I'd never known a woman as hot to trot as Aggie. She was obsessed with sex. On the nights she slept over, I'd all too often awaken early to find her tightly clutching my morning erection and -- full bladder or not -- be compelled to stick it right into her. In public, she'd pull me over into a semi-concealed spot -- into the bushes or an unoccupied restroom -- and just bend over and flip up her skirt. It was embarrassing. It was exasperating. It was a mad, exciting whirl. And I didn't know how much more of it I could handle.

  Maybe she had gotten careless about taking her Pill. Or possibly it was a deliberate ploy to bind me to her. In any case, it happened. She somehow got pregnan
t.

  I stumbled out of that hospital room and barely managed to make it to the parking lot before I puked my guts out. The rest of that day was a blur. I just couldn't face Aunt Agatha, or myself, any more.

  That evening I got a phone call. Agatha had died earlier in the day. Just minutes after I had left her. I'd had my fill of Aggie. More than my fill. Sure, the sex was fine, better than fine even. But, I just couldn't deal with a pregnant woman. A pregnant woman carrying my child. Who absolutely insisted on bearing that child. And who threatened me with dire consequences if I didn't assume my share of the responsibility. If I didn't marry her.

  I wished she'd go away, just disappear out of my life. I wished hard. Real hard. And, one morning she didn't call me at work. She didn't show up at my apartment that night. Or the next. A week later, when I finally got around to making inquiries about her, no one could tell me anything. She had just plain disappeared.