Mysterious Love.

He gazed in a baffled way at a couple tenderly kissing and stroking each other and supposed that this is what is known as love. Even as a child, he had never felt an attraction for anyone to want to do this, not even to his mother. For his mother, he felt a need for protection at times, but not a fondling or a desire to cuddle. 'Possibly,' he thought, 'It was as well. If he was to contribute to the continual replenishment of the species, he suspected it would be a rather austere and calculated union.

However, he could do it.' He knew he would be able to fulfil the requirement, but an inclination to follow this path failed to excite him. He guessed he was devoid of the necessary glands, or they were working in a sub-par way.

Humankind, however, had little need for his contribution; but it puzzled him as an intellectual exercise. So he was shocked to find himself stirring in the ‘nether-regions’ after sighting a weeping female clutching her skirt in a somewhat failed endeavour to keep her own ‘nether-regions’ suitably protected from any lecherous gaze. He pondered with wonder at his reaction to a sight which was hardly unique even in his own repertoire of experience. But he could not grant himself the ‘weakness’ of being influenced by mere emotions to this particular sight. However, the logic of the situation could not be rationally denied. His first reaction was to suppress the symptoms of the betrayal of his body, but so illogical was this that he uncomfortably laughed at himself. Surely he was not being tainted with some sort of religiosity and blaming a distressed woman for the stimulation leading to his tumescence? Then he flushed with embarrassment at his own momentary refusal to take responsibility for his own participation, even though, without his conscious consent. He felt undone, and adamantly refused to linger in this vicinity in which there was a possibility of his being rendered totally out of control of his errant emotions, and member. “Out of sight, out of mind,” he cowardly said to himself.

David Spandlar was thirty-five years old and was raised in a fundamentalist evangelical family which unaccountably, and fortunately, ‘didn’t take.’ It was as if he had been inoculated against this ‘freedom sucking’ virus. Being an only child, his parents spent much time on their knees begging their idea of a creator to remedy this matter forthwith, but apparently, he was ‘out-to-lunch.’

David had never felt any need to initiate or participate in coitus at any time. He felt more akin with a Philip Stanhope maxim re sex. “Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.”  Such wisdom, but then he blots his ‘copy-book’ with the following: “Women are only children of a larger growth. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.” 

Differing from Stanhope’s sentiment, David would prefer women to rule the world. “It may not be as adventurous, but it would be a damn sight safer.” 

However, he had a conundrum now. Should he ignore what had happened to him and keep on with his relatively comfortable innocuous life and attribute the disturbance in his pattern of existence to just an oddity? He knew he was being cowardly. Currently, his contention that fears and loss should be embraced until rendered null was being aggravating, and a provocation to his philosophy. “Damn it,” he thought, “I’ve got to explore it, or it will fester and disturb my future ‘tranquillity.’”

  “Who was this woman? Is it just this woman, or is this the start of some amalgam of substances in my body seeking to undermine my reason? There I go again, blaming some endocrine or exudation for my thoughts.” He laughed derisively at himself and sneeringly said he’d be attributing his parent’s prayers to his dis-ease next.

 “Now,” he said aloud to himself, “Concentrate, make sense of it. If this is a manifestation of love, embrace it.” This he did. He spent many hours willingly experiencing that which had been stirred up inside of him. Frustratingly, he found the emotion rather pleasant, but obviously out of control, because it was still with him. Analytically, he wanted to return to his normal status, but emotionally he felt he would be bereft if he didn’t at least explore this phenomenon within himself. 

He knew he was responsible, even though it appeared to not be under his control. He would see if he was ‘disturbed’ again if he put himself in the presence of women, or was it just this one particular woman? The equilibrium of his life had been disturbed and he was jittery that he would be able to trust himself to put it back into a balance that would enable him to pursue his ‘normal’ activities.

To prove to himself he was not approaching this subject in a cowardly way, he chose to go the ‘whole hog,’ he went to a ‘Stripper Club.’ There he saw totally unclad women simulating a type of sexual encounter with a brass pole, each with a smile seemingly pasted upon their face. They apparently were of a shape that was considered the most desirable by men or they wouldn’t be gyrating around these poles portraying lasciviousness. He was unmoved. Not a stir in this formerly uncontrollable member. 

He felt relief. He had explored a part of the engagement with sexuality and felt a freedom from what might have been. He finished his beer and exited without regret. 

This left the strange stirring which he had allowed the other woman to initiate. He couldn’t even say that she was more beautiful than the women he had just witnessed, but there must have been something unique about her. Once again, he caught himself looking outside of himself for answers when he knew that all answers came from within. Feeling confident that he was on a path toward quelling this irritation in his life, he strode boldly to where he first witnessed the woman and her tussle with her skirt. Irrationally, he felt peeved that she wasn’t still in the vicinity where she could be dismissed ‘out of hand’ and be disposed of as the unwelcome intrusion into his life. 

However, it transpired that although he did not catch any sight of her, she caught sight of him from an upstairs window that looked out upon the park.  She wondered why he stood there looking so accusatively with hands on his hips. She smiled as she thought he resembled an exaggerated cartoon character. 

David resolved to spend the rest of the day, if need be, waiting for this woman to emerge from wherever, and free him from his self-imposed bondage.

Felicity, for that was the name of the woman who was unconscious of causing such consternation and affecting a stranger’s lower extremity, had two sisters. Not only two sisters, but sisters making up to be identical triplets. The sisters loved each other, and didn’t engage in sibling rivalry, and lived in the same block of luxury apartments. They had partners that they had wedded on the same day, and honey-mooned in the same beach hotel in the South of France. 

The women had chosen wisely in their men, for they became the best of friends and ran a successful I.T. business together. Even after five years of marriage, if the women chose, the husbands still couldn’t tell one wife from the other. Although the women had a great sense of humour, no ‘hanky-panky’ was ever disclosed. However, their situation had changed with the passing of one of the husbands. Young and fit, he had nevertheless succumbed to a clot in an artery to the heart and couldn’t be resuscitated. The sudden remembrance of her husband Tony’s death was what David had seen on that day. This combination of the grief and Felicity’s attempt to control an unruly skirt, David had deduced had awakened in him some atavistic vulnerability in his psyche. He vowed to return every day in order to confront his ‘demons’ if need be. If she failed to appear, he would immerse himself in womanhood, wherever it congregated.

It was the following day when David beheld not one ‘bane of his life,’ but three. Three! Although in different dresses, they were identical in looks. They witnessed him open-mouthed and rigid. Of course, they were used to this kind of reaction from people who saw them, but thought this man’s attitude was extreme. Not even a smile. David in his turn had been struck dumb. Normally he was very voluble and articulate on many matters, but here, nothing could unglue his tongue. To add to his ‘misery,’ he had a raging erection and testicles that felt as painful as if he’d been kicked in them. “Aaaawwwk” was the only thing that issued from him.

The three women chortled to each other at David’s seeming horror. All David’s philosophical analyses had come apart and he blamed the women for his personal devastation; he couldn’t help himself. So distraught was he that he broke down in tears and fell to the ground.   Even in his distressed condition, David was aware of the ludicrous tantrums which wouldn’t be entertained in the most unruly child. Yet, he was in the middle of something he could not control and the explorer in him was also interested.  

At the age of eighteen, David had invented a robotic device that could be attached to sewing machines that didn’t require seamstresses any more. He was praised by the Corporations and condemned by the ‘slave’ labourers for the elimination of their 50 cents an hour, jobs. 

David had more money than he knew what to do with it and it was left lying fallow in banks with taxes dutifully paid in full. Although he lived a comfortable life, he had to admit to himself it was rather sterile. However, now he was wishing for the sterility to return.

The triplets watched David’s antics from a distance, not wanting to get involved with a possible ‘mad-man’ but their natural tendency to care and cherish eventually came to the fore. They went to David in his now more calm condition and asked if they could help. This caused further paroxysms which alarmed the three women.

“We’ll get help for you.” This statement strongly hit home with David and suddenly the total anguish of what he had been experiencing fell away; calmness descended upon him. “How can this be,” he said silently. “Was it all an aberration?” 

“Please, please, don’t do that. I wish I could explain it, but at this moment I cannot. I ask you to believe me, although you have no evidence to base it upon, I assure you this behaviour is quite uncharacteristic of me. Normally, I am very self-contained, but something inexplicable has happened to me and you may think I am fabricating, but it does concern yourself, or I should say, yourselves.’

The women were not of a suspicious nature and took David’s statement at face-value as he was exhibiting a much more sensible disposition. Almost in unison, their heads cocked sideways in query. David saw this and said at present he was too embarrassed to say. Of course, this intrigued the women, and especially because he looked eminently sensible and respectable now. They told him they were going for coffee before returning to their respective homes, which practically adjoined, and invited him to join them. David, by now in a state of unnatural calmness, accepted and seated with them in a cafe ordered up coffee and pastries.

After settling into a cubicle the women wanted to know about his strange performance, and to some degree, David’s calmness left him and he started to shift uncomfortably.

“I find this most embarrassing. I generally am a model of propriety and sensibility. I was living a life of independent ease, and I confess that the edifice of rationality that I thought I had successfully erected, has started to come crashing down.” You may not believe this, but one of you gracious ladies is responsible. Of course, I do not know which one of you, but shall we say that I’ve had to re-align my life temporarily.”

The mystery was too much for the women to stay silent.

“You cannot leave it like this,” one of them said. “Spill the beans.”

It had been many years since David had blushed. Indeed, he did not think he had ever been involved enough in life for him to care to blush; but now he did with a vengeance. He broke out into a sweat.

“See,” he said, “This is unnatural. Embarrassment is an alien concept for me, usually. Now, look at me. I admire your restraint in not distancing yourselves from me.”

“We suspect you are a bit of a tease, David. What do they say in the movies, ‘We won’t laugh,’ and of course, they do? You’ll have to take your chances with us, we find humour in many things, you wouldn’t believe.”

“Well, ladies, test your sense of humour with this.’

David took a sip from his coffee and ordered fresh ones all round.

“I had made my fortune with a robotic device which is used in the garment industry and being of a somewhat indolent nature, ambled along in life in a reasonably unexciting and comfortable manner when I met one of you. Or more correctly saw one of you. Now, I’d prided myself on my paucity of feeling for my fellow man or woman, seeing them as merely necessary accoutrements to civilized life. Certainly not to get involved with them, and then I saw you, or you, or you. Which one of you I couldn’t say.”

Felicity gave a little, “Oh. I remember you from a few days ago, you were in the park. I thought you behaved a little strangely then.” She turned to her sisters and said she burst into tears thinking of Tony’s death and trying to battle a wind that threatened to undress her. Turning back to David she asked if this is what disturbed him?

“Yes, and no. For some reason, I was overcome with what I can only say as a ridiculous love for you. It wasn’t rational. I’ve never loved anyone. In fact, I’d rather labelled it as an aberration, the coming together of hormones or chemicals which somehow keep our species on a survival path. Certainly, I didn’t expect to be subject to this wanton desire myself. It was totally alien to me. It has mucked up my organized bland existence.”

“The three women shrieked with laughter. “So I got a rise out of you, did I?”

“You may well laugh, but I’m not used to this. For god’s sake, I am a virgin and was proud of it. Not for me the squalid gropings of highly sexed males seeking to get some sort of gratification. Now, look at me, an abject apology to chastity. Of course, I’m indifferent to the idea of chastity, it requires caring, and that was switched off in me. As I said, or implied, I’m ruined, or I think I am. Do you know, I actually went to a strip club to see if my condition could escalate into a frenzy of the pursuit of females, but there was not a trace of stirring. For some reason, it is only you, Felicity, but how would I know, you are so alike. I think it was the combined collection of you that pushed me over the edge.”

“It’s more likely,” said one of the women “That you have entered into the more common practices of the human race; welcome.”

Further laughter ensued, much to David’s chagrin, but he still joined in the laughter.

There was no putting the genie back in the bottle for David, in fact, he didn’t want to. Instead of resisting the feeling of what he thought to be love, he embraced it and it stayed. He was initiated into sex by Felicity in an expert way and found he enjoyed it. Over the next few years, he sought to have his fill of it. The natural accumulation of infants brought about without any effort, a further enhancing of this strange sensation, called love.