The Varieties of Erotic Experience Read online



  The Varieties of Erotic Experience

  By Paul Reidinger

  Copyright 2013 by Paul Reidinger

  (First published by GemmaMedia, February 2013)

  I have watched through a window a World that is fallen,

  The mating and malice of men and beasts,

  The corporate greed of quiet vegetation,

  And the homesick little obstinate sobs

  Of things thrown into being.

  I would gladly forget; let us go quickly.

  --W.H. Auden, from “The Age of Anxiety”

  I.

  June felt bad about dying on Sam's mother. This seemed to be the very height of being a bad hostess -- invite the mother of your son’s friend to stay in your home, then drop dead -- and it certainly wasn't part of the understanding that had brought the other woman west so that the two of them could meet at last. The meeting was supposed to be about their sons, Philip and Sam, whose togetherness somehow remained incomplete while the mothers remained unacquainted.

  And they finally did meet. They met because June, under sentence of death from the doctors, knew it was now or never and because Caricia turned out to feel much the same way. The bridge had never been burned, just never built.

  They got on with each other. They ate breakfast together every morning and shared the newspaper over coffee as January became February and springtime peeked through the overcast. They walked, they napped -- or, June napped as Caricia quietly tidied up, saw to the laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and drew up a grocery list. They spoke of their sons and husbands. Each admitted being relieved about having a son who preferred other sons, and each was somewhat surprised to hear the other say so.

  They went to church. This was mainly Caricia’s idea. She led the way and held June’s hand. June’s other hand clutched a cane. They didn't go to a specific church but to a variety of them. In June’s long previous life as a healthy person, she had been only vaguely aware of churches as buildings she was speeding past on her way to or from important earthly business. Now, in a slow and slowing life, she saw how many there were just a few blocks away from her house.

  The pagan city revealed itself as a city of churches, and there were people inside those churches, more than a few. But few of those people were people like her: upper-middle class, educated, and pale. Her kind had long ago abandoned the churches and everything they stood for as medieval and superstitious and somehow embarrassing. Faith was beneath enlightened people, even as cultural theater or a pleasant way to pass the time.

  It was not with the greatest of ease that she stepped into these houses of God, even though Caricia stood beside her like a bodyguard and translator and the congregants were kind and were glad to see her. They had never seen her before, but they embraced her in all her strangeness. She smiled back, but she was thinking, Why is your God so angry with me, why is He killing me, why has He planted His terrible flower garden inside my skull?

  And here she was, in a house of that very God in Whom she did not believe, hoping for a miracle of redemption and salvation she did not believe was possible. It was all a waste of time, but what else was there to do with time but waste it?

  As these services flowed around her, foaming tides of music and poetry and ritual with sunlight slanting down through stained-glass windows, she tried to prepare herself for her meeting with her nonexistent Maker. She did not picture Him as Santa Claus’s foul-tempered older brother. She didn’t picture him as a grumpy old man with a white beard sitting on a throne in the clouds, heavily armed with thunderbolts. Instead she saw him as a trim, debonair fellow in a well-tailored blue suit, fortyish, with dark hair. This God looked a lot like a Hollywood movie producer or -- it occurred to her -- like her son.

  He would be sitting at a big disk clear of any clutter and He would show her in, as if He were interviewing her for a job. She would sit, trying not to scratch her ear. Ear-scratching was unseemly. Ear-scratching was for dogs. Did dogs scratch their ears in heaven? Dogs went to heaven, surely. Did people? Was that where she was going? Was all this unpleasantness just His way of testing her?

  Maybe she could open up with some light chit-chat. She could comment on the desk. Was it mahogany or English oak, like that one the presidents had used for so long in the Oval Office? She could note how well His suit fit. She might even ask Him how He felt about the gyrations of the old republic. It had been His country, after all. He had shed His grace on it and so on and so forth. Everybody knew the words to that anthem.

  Whatever He thought of or planned for her, He should be polite to her. He should set a good example. He might have no intention at all of letting her into Heaven, but He should at least give her the impression that He would judge her life fairly. She had her blemishes, yes. She had her failures and flaws. She had told a lie or two and (mostly) regretted it. She had sometimes taken advantage of people or situations. But she had also carried burdens, discharged obligations, and done her duty.

  She had buried a husband and raised a son. She had put her son through college. She might die very soon, but her son would survive. He would go on. He was an adult; she had given him that, at least. At the very least, she hadn't been so inept and damaging a parent as to thwart his achieving adulthood on his own.

  She would give herself a C+ overall, if she were sitting behind the big desk, handing out life's report cards like a teacher on the last day of school under a blazing June sun. She could have done better, but she could have done far worse. Wasn't He all about mercy and love and forgiveness, anyway? That's what she kept hearing every Sunday now. The God of those services was a bit of a soft touch who was ready and even eager to empathize. He forgave and overlooked, although overlooking must be very difficult for someone who could see everything and who knew everything. She felt she wouldn’t be very good at all that, if their positions were reversed and she were sitting behind the big desk. She would be judgmental and a nitpicker. That was the way she was, and she knew herself well enough to know it.

  "Please have a seat," she could hear Him saying. His voice was deep and gentle, rich with a hint of grit, like dark honey mixed with graham-cracker crumbs. He sounded like FM radio. She wondered if He’d been a smoker at some point. Almost everyone she knew had been. Later in life, almost everyone she knew had gotten cancer, even those who’d quit smoking years before. "I'll be right with you."

  She did as she was told, slipping as gracefully as possible into one of the rather plain chairs in front of the desk. He looked preoccupied, with a furrowed brow, as if He weren't getting enough rest. Was He pondering clemency for some poor soul on the clock, like a governor in one of the death-penalty states, considering an eleventh-hour appeal?

  She waited patiently. Maybe St. Peter would bring in some coffee and doughnuts. Did He like glazed or jimmies? Peter had seemed a little frayed out there at the gates, like an employee who had stalled on the career ladder and was beginning to be resentful. He could have passed for Hea harried concièrge at a busy hotel in a city hosting a trade conference. It was possible to stay in a job too long.

  But maybe there was a lull and Peter had been buzzed for some refreshments. There was no telephone on the big desk, but maybe it had one of those hidden switches of the sort bank tellers flipped to summon help during armed robberies. There didn't even seem to be any walls around the office, though the setting felt quite intimate, just the two of them.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting," He said.

  "That's all right," she said. What else could she say? No rush, I've got eons of time -- really! She was not aware of having come through a door, and therefore she had no sense of an e
scape route -- not that escaping seemed like a particularly good idea anyway. Where could she possibly escape to, and how could He possibly not know about it? She would be surrounded by angels in dark blue suits and mirrored sunglasses, thrown to the floor and cuffed, just like on Burn Notice.

  Luckily, she was quite comfortable in the uncomfortable chair. She didn't have to pee, and her head no longer ached. If He needed a century or two to straighten out some mess -- well, that was fine. She would sit patiently. And if she were indeed bound for Hell, then ... well, no need to be hasty.

  "One of those days," He said, peering up from a manila folder. He looked like someone who was at the edge of needing reading glasses and was torn between realism and vanity. Maybe a pair or two of the cheap ones from Walgreens were stashed in one of the desk drawers.

  "I'm fine," she said.

  "It's been a little nuts around here lately," He said, sounding almost apologetic.

  "I know the feeling," she said, trying to kindle some sympathy with her interlocutor. She didn’t want to come across as complaining or entitled. It occurred to her that the manila folder He was going through was her folder; also, that the sight of the folder