The Syntax of Seduction

by Carlos Malenkov

  I somehow managed to attend the funeral. Afterward, my mother pulled me aside.

  "Ben," she said, "Agatha wanted you to have this to remember her by." And she thrust what looked like a leather-bound diary into my hands.

  I couldn't bear to look at it. I had a sudden premonition that I'd find my own damnation in its pages. But, curiosity finally forced me to open the book. May 27, 1969

  I'm finally beginning to get over the shock. I still have no idea how it happened, but here I am, thirty years in the past.

  Time travel? Well, maybe, but I couldn't begin to say how. All I know is that I was just lifting the phone to call Him when . . . when there was this blinding flash . . . and I lost consciousness. When I came to, everything had changed.

  I was lying in a ditch by the roadside, naked and bruised. My first thought was: my baby!

  I must have been staggering around and screaming incoherently. A highway patrolman had me draped in a blanket and was trying to calm me down. Between my sobs, I couldn't make out what he was saying.

  The baby was all right. Four months along and all indications normal, they said at the hospital. But, they wouldn't release me just yet, and I could hardly blame them. No ID or money and babbling a story that didn't make sense. Finally, we settled on trauma-induced amnesia. Memory loss.

  Memory loss! I remembered every moment of my life! And every lovely and painful moment with Ben, damn him. I loved him, but he pushed me away. Somehow, I couldn't help feeling he'd had something to do with this bizarre thing that had happened to me. Cut off from friends, family, everything familiar. Pushed back into the 60s! The era of the hippies and Viet Nam, for gosh sake. Before I was even born. What would I do?

  So, that was what happened to people I wished away. They were safely "buried" in the past. The dead past.

  July 15, 1969

  Bastille Day. Hooray.

  The Murrays have told me I can stay with them until I have a place of my own. They're a young married couple still in their 20s. So optimistic. All their life before them, and the whole world for them to conquer. Not realizing all the tragedy and sorrow in store for them, and the rest of humankind, in the coming decades.

  The pregnancy is starting to show.

  August 23, 1969

  This is my baby. Mine! The only thing I have left that's truly mine. I wouldn't abort it even if it were legal. And, if memory serves me, it won't be legal until 1973.

  Uh, oh.

  November 2, 1969

  He's such a beautiful baby boy. Luminous green eyes, just like Ben. And, that's just what I named him. Ben.

  Thanksgiving Day, 1969

  I didn't really have much choice. With what little money I was making as a maid and doing people's wash, I couldn't possibly support a child. And, with no established identity I didn't have a hope of getting on Welfare. It was either giving Ben up to an agency, or --

  The Murrays will adopt him. It's a fortunate choice. They're a fine upstanding couple, and they'll let me drop in and visit Ben whenever I'd like. In fact, they'll let me pretend I'm his loving aunt. Instead of his loving mother.

  This is getting just too damned weird.

  May 21, 1971

  The second anniversary of my "arrival." Had cake and ice cream to celebrate.

  I'm still not earning much, but at least I no longer have to make beds and scrub floors. I found a decent secretarial job, finally, and I'm making payments on a used car. Darn it, why did all my up-to-date technical skills turn out to be so useless here? I used to be quite a hotshot Website designer and Java programmer, but that doesn't translate to doing anything with the big-iron mainframe computers that businesses rely on in this time and place. (Can you believe keypunch machines and noisy teletype terminals?) Not to mention that I don't have anything in the way of credentials that anyone would recognize.

  Well, I'm managing to put aside a little each month after expenses. Some of it will go for Ben's college education, of course, but I have some ideas, too. I seem to recall that investments in companies like Intel, and later, Apple and Microsoft, will pay off. Meanwhile, I run the office coffeepot, and type and take dictation.

  August 21, 1975

  Ben is a sweet kid. Sharp as a tack and eager to please. But, it's uncanny how much he's starting to resemble his namesake. Even his little-boy voice has the many of the same inflections. Could it be that -- ?

  No! Mustn't think such thoughts.

  I think I know where all this is headed. Got to put that diary aside and think a while. Got to get a hold of myself and . . .

  May 2, 1983

  There's no doubt in my mind now. None.

  Ben has the same pattern of moles behind his left shoulder that . . .

  What can this all mean? My lover leaves me pregnant and discards me, then I get entangled in the coils of time . . . only to bear the child that will become . . .

  Mustn't let on that I know or alter my treatment of him. It's not his fault, or anyway, it won't be for quite a few more years. And, I do love him. And his father, too. Still. In spite of everything.

  There was a letter in the mail. It was from the law firm handling Agatha's estate. I had inherited some money. Forty million dollars.

  January 23, 1994

  Memory has served me very well, it seems. My investment portfolio has made me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.

  My needs are few, and I certainly don't much care about living in luxury. It's nice to know, though, that I need never again worry about working or about retirement income. And I have something to leave behind for my child . . . and lover.

  Forty million dollars! I was set for the rest of my life. Expensive cars. Travel. Women. The best of everything.

  So why did I feel this damn guilt? This burning shame? I had done nothing wrong! Nothing, damn it! Just wished inconvenient people out of my life. Just wished . . .

  For the first time in my life, I wished, wished hard, that I myself could just disappear. I --

  * * *

  SLOT B

  "Yep, that's all there is to sex," he mused. "Just insert tab A into slot B."

  Bailey's one of my oldest friends. Sometimes, though, after a few drinks he gets a tad cynical. Especially on the tenth day of the month, when the alimony check to his ex-wife comes due.

  Now me, I've managed to avoid marriage. At 40, I'm the neighborhood's confirmed bachelor, and the local eligible gals have long since given up on me. I hardly even go out on dates any more. Everyone suspects there's something wrong with me. Maybe there is.

  You see, I've found a substitute for women. For real-life women, that is. I dream.

  As a horny and frustrated adolescent I had begun fantasizing about what it might be like to make it with some of those unattainable cheerleaders, the cute ones with the high, musical voices and long hair down to the waist who were much too good for me. Fantasizing was better than nothing, and soon it was much better than nothing. What had begun as ordinary kiddy daydreams turned into a powerful obsession. The girls, then women in my fantasies became increasingly realistic.

  Over the years, I've had quite a number of fantasy lovers. Marianne, with the big breasts and round, bouncy ass. Many's the time I bounced off it as I plowed into her from behind. Ginette, the intellectual, who liked to talk about English literature and Renaissance architecture, but was a red-hot maniac in bed. She would climb atop me and ride for hours, conjugating irregular Latin verbs and pumping me in the same rhythm. Theresa, the madonna, who swore she would have become a nun if only she hadn't been overcome with lust for me. Hotly passionate Marissa, the Spanish grandee's daughter whose jealous family would surely murder me in gruesome fashion if they discovered our clandestine liaison. Helga, the professor of Human Sexual Studies at a prestigious German institute, who taught me all she knew . . . and then some.

  Melissa, the latest in my series of dream girlfriends, was my finest creation. True to life in every respect, from the dimples in her cheeks when she smiled to the dimples in her bare bu
ttocks when she bent over and presented herself to me. She even had a personality, and this was starting to cause problems. Big problems.

  She was getting to be uncomfortably real. I'd have to sweet-talk her and do the kiss-kiss bit before we could get down to brass tacks. Then she began telling me to "knock before entering," meaning to go down on her prior to inserting. Sure, that's supposed to be arousing to a woman, but what the hell does a dream phantom want with arousal? Then she wanted to try anal sex. Now that's not really my cup of tea, not even in a fantasy. It turned out to be more pleasurable than I expected, and it's become a regular part of our repertoire now, but where the bloody hell did that particular idea come from? My subconscious? The dark corners of the psyche?

  Lately, she's been whispering in my ear, usually after a particularly steamy interlude, that dream sex no longer satisfies her. She wants the real thing. She absolutely insists she has a real-life existence. She wants to meet me in Real Life. Last night she even gave me her phone number. This whole affair is getting way too bizarre for me.

  "Well, lover, why didn't you call me? Does the thought of sex with a real, in-the-flesh woman scare my little baby? Get this, big guy, I'm not putting out for you in dreams any more until you get the balls to pick up that phone. Do it. Wake up right now and DO IT!"

  That's all I need, being nagged and browbeaten by a dream lover. Now I know what married life must feel like. Poor Bailey. He must have caught flak like this from his ex.

  All right, so I finally called her.

  "Hello? Is-is this . . . ?"

  "Yesss, Charlie, Melissa here. I'm ab-so-lutely thrilled that your teaspoon-size helping of courage didn't evaporate when you woke up. Now, haul ass down to my place. I'm hot for your bod, lover boy."

  Talk about a letdown. She wasn't half as glamorous in the flesh as in my fantasies and dreams. She doesn't care for sex nearly as much in real life ("It's so damn messy!"). She comes to bed with big spiky curlers in her hair and cold cream on her face. She's bad tempered. When you catch her in the wrong mood, she gets nasty and shrill. She has bad breath. She farts a lot.

  After one particularly unsatisfying bout of lovemaking, I happened to see an envelope on her night table. A check was sticking out of it. An alimony check. An alimony check signed by none other than my neighbor Bailey. Holy Moley, what the hell did I get myself into?

  Don't ask why, but somehow I ended up marrying her. Maybe I just got tired of waking up in an empty bed. Maybe I got tired of wearing the same old dirty socks a week at a time. Maybe I just needed someone to nag me in a semi-loving way.

  I still see Bailey once in a while when I drive through the old neighborhood. He looks at me and smiles sadly.

  I can't even escape into fantasy sex any more. She keeps her hand clamped down firmly on my private parts as I fall asleep next to her. It's worse than a chastity belt. Dreaming just ain't what it used to be.

  * * *

  FRIGID

  All right, so I'm a serviceman. What I service is women. Yeah, my business card reads "Sex Therapist," but I'm really nothing but a repair technician. What I fix is malfunctions in the female sexual response. I make women whole.

  Ariella was an interesting case. A solid block of ice, that's what she was. A sensitive soul, but numb from the waist down. She had heard of how wonderful orgasms can be, but had never actually experienced it.

  It wasn't as if she hated sex. She enjoyed the feeling of closeness, the warmth of cuddling up next to an affectionate male body. She was just afraid of giving up control, of letting go, even at the very height of passion. So, that glorious moment of release was denied her.

  She called me on a Sunday afternoon.

  "Is this Mr. Johnson?"

  "Speaking."

  Johnson isn't my real moniker, of course. I use it as a professional name because of the obvious phallic reference. You know, like in "getting your johnson up." I had tried "Mr. Goodwench" for a while, but that got me more laughs than professional respect.

  "You come highly recommended, Mr. Johnson. I have this problem, and I hope you can . . ."

  "Ma'am, are you aware that weekends are time-and-a half? And house calls run an extra fifty on top of that."

  "Money's no object. I need help and I need it now. How soon can you get here?"

  I went through the hurry-up drill. A quick shit and a shower and a shave. Squeaky clean both inside and out. I gargled with a proprietary brand of mouthwash for non-offensive breath. Then into traveling clothes -- silk shirt with ruffles, and skin-tight velour pants with quick-release buckles. Grabbed my toolkit on the way out. A scant hour later I was pulling into her driveway.

  She was a tall brunette. Wide shoulders and small breasts tapering to a slim waist, but generously endowed in the hips and butt. A pear-shaped body configuration usually indicates a greater than normal estrogen level and an above-average sex drive. The problem was likely a psychological block.

  "The meter is running, ma'am, so let's not bother with the social niceties. Trust me -- I'm fully medically certified, so there's no need for shyness or modesty. Remove your clothes, please. All of them."

  A quick but thorough physical exam confirmed my first impressions. (Yes, I'm fully qualified as a nurse-practitioner. It's a requirement of the trade.) Nothing wrong that needed medical attention, except maybe . . . Well, on to the next step.

  "Lay on the bed, please. On your back. That's right. Now raise the knees slightly and spread your legs. Thank you."

  Visual inspection showed labia well-formed and normal in virtually every respect. I gently probed with an index finger. No problems discernible inside. Now, the first test. Her vagina remained unlubricated even after clitoral manipulation. Aha!

  "Are you able to masturbate to orgasm, ma'am?"

  She blushed, then stammered, "Sometimes, well, maybe one time out of ten. But it's not really what you could call an orgasm. It's just so hard to . . ."

  "To what, ma'am?"

  "To let myself go. I guess, to give myself permission to . . ."

  "That's a common enough problem and I've treated quite a number of women for it. First we'll try -- "

  A vibrator brought her to the brink of orgasm, but nothing I could do would push her over the top. She squealed when I tongued her clit, then held me tight and sobbed. "I just can't do it. There's something wrong with me!"

  I had some doubts about whether this particular client could be restored to normal function. During preliminary testing, my portable EEG unit had given some highly anomalous readings. All the same, I pasted on my best professional smile and summoned up my most convincing bedside manner.

  "No, ma'am. We haven't yet begun to fight. Over on your stomach, please."

  I had rather suspected it would come to this. A few women require something a bit more fundamental to remove psychological blocks. And there's nothing more fundamental than the fundament.

  "Have you ever attempted anal sex, ma'am?"

  "Well, yes, but -- "

  "But?"

  "I kind of enjoyed the sensations, but it's . . . I don't know . . . it's dirty and perverted somehow."

  "This is strictly a medical procedure, ma'am. I'm a fully board-certified technician, and you can rest assured that any therapeutic methods I employ are approved and appropriate."

  Don't for a moment think that I was going to ass-fuck her for my own pleasure. In fact, the rigorous self-control we're trained in focuses on clinical detachment and denying one's self pleasure. I can hold an erection for a full hour, even during vigorous intercourse, but my capacity to enjoy it is greatly diminished. The client's therapy always takes the top priority.

  I applied a specially formulated preparation of lubricating electrolyte gel to my erect penis, then gently rubbed some around and into the client's anal sphincter.

  "Ooh! That feels cold!"

  "Lubrication, ma'am. I'm going to gently insert a finger into your anus, both to check the muscle tone and to condition the interior. This is a preliminary to .
. . what is vulgarly known as ass-fucking. However, this is a strictly clinical procedure, you understand."

  "Well, if you must. It won't hurt, will it?"

  "No, ma'am."

  Hurt? Causing a client pain could cost me my professional license. Not to mention exposing the agency to a lawsuit. But with the techniques we employ, there's scant probability of that.