Fragments of Fidelity (story)
By Luke Labern
As requested.
* * *
The question was… what exactly was she? Which of the various words in this sphere came closest to describing it? Alluring? Tempting? Enchanting? These words are too simplistic. Her petite form somehow transcended stereotyping. Not too thin, no: somehow she was diminutive and still had curves which appeal to that centre of lust in a man, the same lines which draw a man from intelligence to brutishness, from sensible to the sensual, from moral to immoral.
But at this time he was flirting with the amoral. With no God to secure it for him, he couldn’t see any way of declaring right from wrong. Of course, he remembered what it was like to know instinctively what was wrong: he still did. But something was overriding it. There was a lingering pain, a philosophical dissatisfaction: a sense of anger was coursing through him.
Double thrills slithered from his fingertips to his cortex as he traced that shape: like the onset of a heavy narcotic a cloud thickened, descended and then lifted as his musings on morality – of how he had been wronged – gave way and precipitated carnal pleasure. Was that a slight quiver? Was it her, or him? Both? Slowly tracing those curves, he balanced that fine line that most men cannot: thinking whilst acting.
This was never to be a blunt, gratuitous affair: there would be nothing simple, nothing unintelligent, nothing bland: this was complex; it was a game, but the rules were being written at every second. Only to be broken seconds later. There was nothing that couldn’t happen – apart from the situation itself. The two were not meant to be together. If anyone discovered that this had happened, the repercussions would be severe, damning and in no way pleasurable.
Such facts make the temptation all the more intense. No one would ever know. Still tracing; time was beginning to blur. Hot, delicate breath found its way to his neck. She bit her lip. Such an act was unspeakable – impossible to translate. It said so many things. It defined the situation and encapsulated the moment. The image still lingers in his mind’s eye.
‘Would you like to?’ it suggested. ‘You can.’
His eyes flashed, lit up: he studied her. Methodically, slowly. His glance said, ‘Come closer.’
She did.
Looking was far more thrilling. She laid across him, laying her head on a pillow to his side and draping herself across him: there were no conjugal ties between them, but it somehow made it all the sweeter. He wanted this to carry on forever – her look, the quick smile on her lips, suggested the same – but it was the brevity of the event that made it so enthralling. This might not ever happen again; this was life at its finest. No guarantees, no guidance, no repeats.
In between the glances of this half-intellectual, half-sensual game between them, the intensity of the situation was punctuated with thoughts. Why was he in this situation in the first place? Why was she? There had been a severe wrong-doing some months ago: without it he wouldn’t have been in there. He had already half-committed to something quite terrible, by his own moral code. But it was only made possible by his own moral edifice being shattered in so thorough a way that he really believed in amorality. He lived it; he breathed it; he touched it: he had it – her – lying on his lap.
There was no need to say a word, no need for any motions of the hand, no need to try: this was as natural a thing as they had ever experienced. The game of pairing two of the opposite sex is a statistical one which has some interesting questions attached to it, but these were quite literally out of the question: such a symbiosis and meshing of moods, minds and bodies could hardly be imagined.
Never had he been in a situation where to speak would have been to break the mood: this was pure, unabated, thick sexual tension. It was only a matter of time.
But there was pre-defined time to the association: they moved to a different room, one more comfortable, with a larger, cushioned plane with which to rest themselves. There had been quite abstruse moments of temptation earlier – it took all of his will-power to resist and to pull away, and absolutely no effort on her behalf to induce them: she simply had to be. And yet it was not a matter of objectification: the fact that their personalities worked so easily in tandem had been long established – and yet they barely spoke. They only spoke trivialities, as if to distract themselves from the air laden with pheromone and suggestion.
Here they were, then: she was faced away from him, on one side, and he on the other. What exactly was she? She was exquisite, physically: he had never quite seen such a blend of the petite and the irresistible. He did not like to resort to bland, debased terms – but he was certainly thinking debauched thoughts: there was no escaping it. It was made all the more tempting by the fact that she thought the same of him, or something like it: the reason didn’t matter, but the facts were undeniable. Such attraction is a rare thing: neither was new to such feelings, but the sheer ease and intensity was novel to both of them.
What was she? She was a temple of mental strength, too: there was something hard not to adore in the things she had undergone, and yet never mentioned, save a few adornments that weighed heavily with emotional significance. Only a few people knew this about her, but he was one of the few: and he was sure that no one alive felt as strongly as he did about her: only he knew how to decipher certain things written in her personality. No one else could, no one else will: and he knew that, with so many layers of unspeakable emotions, there was only one way with which to express these things.
But, as he simultaneously mused on this weighty thought and admired her beauty – her delicate, graceful and tempting shape -- from behind, somehow, somehow, his amorality dissolved in the moment. The very reason he could appreciate her like no one else could was the very reason he couldn’t do what felt so natural. She was not his: he was someone else’s. And even though this fact was the very reason he dreamed of amorality (partly to justify the wrong done to him, partly so that he could do what he wished so thoroughly to do then), he remained true to his character.
It is true: one cannot escape one’s character. One may appear to change temporarily, but one will always, always, return to themselves given enough time.
It did not happen, that day, though he suffered as if it did. They were unable to speak for a long period of time afterwards: the very time they could have discussed those vivid moments and deciphered them was stolen from them. This, no doubt, etched the memory even deeper into both of them.
But this event was significant in other ways: he would have to suffer for his putting himself in this position. Even though he steeled himself in the end and found within him a firmer moral resolve than he even knew he had, he was spurned by many: by that person who had wronged him so thoroughly, who had cut him so deeply: by those closest to him; he toiled in vain ‘do the right thing’, but it took many months of brutal self-doubt to realise that the right thing to do would have been to stick firmly to his moral intuition in the first place: that way, things would have been different. He could have spend as long as he wanted with she who tempted him so tantalisingly, and all without the pang of remorse he was forced to endure for long afterwards.
But the memory is not a bitter one: for her, who knows how poignant it remains? Perhaps it lies dormant within her, lying under the sediment of other, less important meetings. For him, it is still a vital moment: he learnt the nature of true temptation and of his own resolve. He strayed on both sides of morality that day and is all the wiser for it. Certainly, a long time has passed since then: but its importance cannot be overlooked. Though it may be covered in many layers of dust, a bright gem still shines as intensely as before – as brightly as his eyes did – when the right light is shone upon it.
Whether she will remain a temptation in memory, or in waiting, is a further question that lingers long in his mind. But he knows one thing for certain, that perhaps she, too, now knows: that he sees something in her that no one can or ever will do, and that he risked everything just for a chance to tell her.
* * *
The question was… what exactly was she? Which of the various words in this sphere came closest to describing it? Alluring? Tempting? Enchanting? These words are too simplistic. Her petite form somehow transcended stereotyping. Not too thin, no: somehow she was diminutive and still had curves which appeal to that centre of lust in a man, the same lines which draw a man from intelligence to brutishness, from sensible to the sensual, from moral to immoral.
But at this time he was flirting with the amoral. With no God to secure it for him, he couldn’t see any way of declaring right from wrong. Of course, he remembered what it was like to know instinctively what was wrong: he still did. But something was overriding it. There was a lingering pain, a philosophical dissatisfaction: a sense of anger was coursing through him.
Double thrills slithered from his fingertips to his cortex as he traced that shape: like the onset of a heavy narcotic a cloud thickened, descended and then lifted as his musings on morality – of how he had been wronged – gave way and precipitated carnal pleasure. Was that a slight quiver? Was it her, or him? Both? Slowly tracing those curves, he balanced that fine line that most men cannot: thinking whilst acting.
This was never to be a blunt, gratuitous affair: there would be nothing simple, nothing unintelligent, nothing bland: this was complex; it was a game, but the rules were being written at every second. Only to be broken seconds later. There was nothing that couldn’t happen – apart from the situation itself. The two were not meant to be together. If anyone discovered that this had happened, the repercussions would be severe, damning and in no way pleasurable.
Such facts make the temptation all the more intense. No one would ever know. Still tracing; time was beginning to blur. Hot, delicate breath found its way to his neck. She bit her lip. Such an act was unspeakable – impossible to translate. It said so many things. It defined the situation and encapsulated the moment. The image still lingers in his mind’s eye.
‘Would you like to?’ it suggested. ‘You can.’
His eyes flashed, lit up: he studied her. Methodically, slowly. His glance said, ‘Come closer.’
She did.
Looking was far more thrilling. She laid across him, laying her head on a pillow to his side and draping herself across him: there were no conjugal ties between them, but it somehow made it all the sweeter. He wanted this to carry on forever – her look, the quick smile on her lips, suggested the same – but it was the brevity of the event that made it so enthralling. This might not ever happen again; this was life at its finest. No guarantees, no guidance, no repeats.
In between the glances of this half-intellectual, half-sensual game between them, the intensity of the situation was punctuated with thoughts. Why was he in this situation in the first place? Why was she? There had been a severe wrong-doing some months ago: without it he wouldn’t have been in there. He had already half-committed to something quite terrible, by his own moral code. But it was only made possible by his own moral edifice being shattered in so thorough a way that he really believed in amorality. He lived it; he breathed it; he touched it: he had it – her – lying on his lap.
There was no need to say a word, no need for any motions of the hand, no need to try: this was as natural a thing as they had ever experienced. The game of pairing two of the opposite sex is a statistical one which has some interesting questions attached to it, but these were quite literally out of the question: such a symbiosis and meshing of moods, minds and bodies could hardly be imagined.
Never had he been in a situation where to speak would have been to break the mood: this was pure, unabated, thick sexual tension. It was only a matter of time.
But there was pre-defined time to the association: they moved to a different room, one more comfortable, with a larger, cushioned plane with which to rest themselves. There had been quite abstruse moments of temptation earlier – it took all of his will-power to resist and to pull away, and absolutely no effort on her behalf to induce them: she simply had to be. And yet it was not a matter of objectification: the fact that their personalities worked so easily in tandem had been long established – and yet they barely spoke. They only spoke trivialities, as if to distract themselves from the air laden with pheromone and suggestion.
Here they were, then: she was faced away from him, on one side, and he on the other. What exactly was she? She was exquisite, physically: he had never quite seen such a blend of the petite and the irresistible. He did not like to resort to bland, debased terms – but he was certainly thinking debauched thoughts: there was no escaping it. It was made all the more tempting by the fact that she thought the same of him, or something like it: the reason didn’t matter, but the facts were undeniable. Such attraction is a rare thing: neither was new to such feelings, but the sheer ease and intensity was novel to both of them.
What was she? She was a temple of mental strength, too: there was something hard not to adore in the things she had undergone, and yet never mentioned, save a few adornments that weighed heavily with emotional significance. Only a few people knew this about her, but he was one of the few: and he was sure that no one alive felt as strongly as he did about her: only he knew how to decipher certain things written in her personality. No one else could, no one else will: and he knew that, with so many layers of unspeakable emotions, there was only one way with which to express these things.
But, as he simultaneously mused on this weighty thought and admired her beauty – her delicate, graceful and tempting shape -- from behind, somehow, somehow, his amorality dissolved in the moment. The very reason he could appreciate her like no one else could was the very reason he couldn’t do what felt so natural. She was not his: he was someone else’s. And even though this fact was the very reason he dreamed of amorality (partly to justify the wrong done to him, partly so that he could do what he wished so thoroughly to do then), he remained true to his character.
It is true: one cannot escape one’s character. One may appear to change temporarily, but one will always, always, return to themselves given enough time.
It did not happen, that day, though he suffered as if it did. They were unable to speak for a long period of time afterwards: the very time they could have discussed those vivid moments and deciphered them was stolen from them. This, no doubt, etched the memory even deeper into both of them.
But this event was significant in other ways: he would have to suffer for his putting himself in this position. Even though he steeled himself in the end and found within him a firmer moral resolve than he even knew he had, he was spurned by many: by that person who had wronged him so thoroughly, who had cut him so deeply: by those closest to him; he toiled in vain ‘do the right thing’, but it took many months of brutal self-doubt to realise that the right thing to do would have been to stick firmly to his moral intuition in the first place: that way, things would have been different. He could have spend as long as he wanted with she who tempted him so tantalisingly, and all without the pang of remorse he was forced to endure for long afterwards.
But the memory is not a bitter one: for her, who knows how poignant it remains? Perhaps it lies dormant within her, lying under the sediment of other, less important meetings. For him, it is still a vital moment: he learnt the nature of true temptation and of his own resolve. He strayed on both sides of morality that day and is all the wiser for it. Certainly, a long time has passed since then: but its importance cannot be overlooked. Though it may be covered in many layers of dust, a bright gem still shines as intensely as before – as brightly as his eyes did – when the right light is shone upon it.
Whether she will remain a temptation in memory, or in waiting, is a further question that lingers long in his mind. But he knows one thing for certain, that perhaps she, too, now knows: that he sees something in her that no one can or ever will do, and that he risked everything just for a chance to tell her.
A Short Story,
Published 31 January 2012
Published 31 January 2012