After she left, I had plenty of time to think about what I'd said to her, and wonder about it. My little speech hadn't been planned or thought out but had just come out of me, telling her what she'd feel over the next few days and what she'd do. It had been rude and incredibly arrogant and not like me at all.
And yet, at the time it hadn't seemed that way to me. At the time it had seemed to come from some hidden and unsuspected part of me, less a prediction than some sort of secret knowledge, or not even that: more like a force, a compulsion, as if I knew what would happen, as if I could actually make it happen just by telling her.
It was like I'd sensed that in this part of her life at least, I could control her. It was if I felt her calling for my control and wanting it. I'd felt in her a softness and confusion, a fear and uncertainty that she was working very hard to conceal, and I'd felt like I could somehow reach right in and take a grip on her, almost as if I could feel my fingers fitting into specific slots. It was a weird and uncanny feeling and intensely sexual, unlike anything I'd ever felt before. It was that feeling that had given me the certainty that my words would hit home and resonate, and then come to haunt her no matter what she did.
All I'd said was that she'd become obsessed with thinking about the things we'd done, the acts of love and control that had so deeply affected her. That was hardly a bold prediction. I knew how she'd reacted to our lovemaking. I'd seen her initial eagerness and curiosity turn into alarm and fear as she'd felt herself sliding out of control, and I knew that would leave an impression. I had no doubt that she'd be running those moments over and over in her mind for a long time to come.
But then I'd told her she'd be compelled to masturbate—something I was pretty certain Arianna didn't regularly do, or at least certainly wouldn't admit—and that she'd be unable to climax. And that had been a very bold and presumptuous prediction.
Or had it been a command?
I'd aroused something inside this demure and self-possessed young professional. I'd pried up the lid and awoken the sleeping beast, of that I had no doubt. Nor did I have much doubt that there was a part of her that very much wanted this beast to wake up, and longed for the feel of its fangs and claws and fiery breath. There was a force in Arianna, and I was aware of it even if she wasn't, savage and sexual and intensely alive. And it was this force I was counting on.
Meanwhile, I was possessed by a strange calm and confidence, and an odd and almost annoying sense of certainty that I was in control of her and this relationship. I'm not used to being that certain about anything, especially women, and that's what I found annoying.
I live at the outer fringe of society and pretty much always have. Round peg, square hole; hopeless romantic, non-conformist, grouch, skeptic, social renegade, what have you. My relationships with women have always been kind of iffy and fragile. Things would start out okay, but there'd always come a time when they'd start expecting more from me. More
what
is hard to say: money, ambition, normalcy, predictability? Less spaciness and involvement with the weird subjects that fascinated me? I admit it: I think too much. I dream, I wonder, I read weird books and have strange friends. In the seven years since my divorce, I hadn't had a relationship last for more than six months.
So this feeling of certainty and confidence I had about Arianna was something new and unexpected. I felt I held her like a baseball in a glove, like a jail holds a prisoner, like rails hold a train. I didn't have to think with her or strategize. I didn't have to work. I didn't have to plan my words or second guess or worry about losing her. The relationship was just that honest, and it was a wonderfully liberating feeling, She'd come to me as a gift, and as a gift I'd received her.
Seen this way, this would be a test for her. If the things I'd said had no effect, then she wasn't the woman I'd thought she was and it's likely I'd likely never see her again. But if they did have an effect, then I'd be hearing from her before too long. So there was no use worrying about it.
But tell that to my heart. The image of Arianna haunted me, as I'd thought it would. Her body, her face, the depth in her eyes; her lips slack in rapture as I touched her, and the way her body yielded and melted and flowed against me as her excitement mounted. Her face in orgasm as she lost all control and surrendered to me, becoming temporarily no more that an instrument of my pleasure, mindless, ecstatic, a vessel to receive my love.
I did some divination regarding the situation. I did a couple of tarot spreads. I don't want to give the impression that I believe in the cards' powers to predict the future, but the tarot comprise a collection of very potent symbols, and the cards' strength is in letting you see things in different contexts, or from different angles. They can help you understand your own feelings and reveal hidden meanings.
Context. It's all about context. It's context that separates rape from passionate love; context that gives a simple touch its power to thrill; context that turns a one-night affair into a lifelong involvement. Context is meaning, and its meaning we're all seeking, the sludgy ambergris of truth.
Arianna's cards changed with every spread, but in all were symbols of the feminine, in all its various manifestations: emotion, receptivity, fertility, change, darkness. I was just doing simple three-card peaks: the first card being her, the second the situation, the third the outcome.
The spread I remember best came up like this: (1)
The Moon
; (2)
Eight of Cups
—Indolence; (3)
the Blasted Tower
, or
Tower Hit By Lightning
.
The Moon signifies confusion, change, and mutability, the mixing of reason and emotion. The Moon has always been a very feminine images. In this spread it represented Arianna and how she was feeling and perceiving: her state of mind.
The Eight of Cups represents Indolence, the weary languor that often follows sensual excess. It's the trap that follows pleasure, a cushion-strewn sofa that beckons you to rest and give up because there is no more, when actually the journey has just begun. This card represented Arianna's present situation.
The future was in the third card: the Blasted Tower, showing a medieval castle torn asunder by a strike of lightning, two hapless soldiers plummeting to their doom: major change, the destruction of the old, the violent ending of the status quo; crisis, catastrophe, the birth of the new.
I don't think I have to describe what this reading told me, or the kind of context it provided me with
Of even more use in understanding our relationship was the alchemical interpretation. Everyone knows alchemy as a joke, the silly attempt to turn lead into gold, practiced by scientifically illiterate fools and con-men back in the middle ages. Not many understand the hidden meaning of alchemy, which was to turn man's base and earthy nature into spiritual gold. Alchemy was a spiritual art, an attempt to achieve the
magnum opus
of converting the gross and impure matter of everyday life into something clean, heavenly, and sacred, and by so doing likewise convert our tarnished and polluted souls into into the pure radiance of spirit.
Tarot is temporary. The cards describe a system in flux but temporary. But alchemy is a pattern for life. And seen in this secret and spiritual light, the alchemical principle of
solve et coagulum
, dissolve and coagulate, takes on a new, deeper meaning. The substance to be changed must be completely dissolved so the impurities can be removed, and then solidified into a purer, more perfect state. This dissolution was to be accomplished by heat8ng the matter with the most foul and base of sunstancesthought to be aided by deliberately adding contaminants and gross impurities, and so the alchemists would heat their substances with urine, dung, and even feces.
And likewise, those carrying out the Magnum Opus of purifying themselves, would often drench themselves in sin and debauchery in order to dissolve themselves in it and emerge as pure and spiritual, uncontaminated.
I could see myself doing that to Arianna, forcing her down and debasing her till she dissolved in her own depravity, and then lifting her from the slag like an ingot of pure gold. I could see her as my receiving flask, a vessel placed to receive the purified vapors of my lust. I could see these desires coagulating and solidifying to create a new core to her being, firm and hard and clear like a diamond. I dreamed about her.
The call came not on Tuesday, but on Thursday. Her voice was soft but intense, as if kept under rigid control.
"I want to see you," she said.
"Oh?" I took the call in the kitchen standing near the sin k. "And what brought
that
