One moment she had been in her relatively modern living room in France, and in a nostalgia-laden whimsy and semi-naked, trying on a pair of charcoal thigh-high stockings just for herself alone, much too young an item for her now, and then suddenly in the very next moment she was standing straight and very upright inside the close confines of a narrow and darkened laneway of some seemingly-medieval provincial township.
The laneway, appearing to rise very slightly upwards in little small twists and turns but not so sufficiently angled that any single complete blind corner was ever actually made, was something from out of the past though there were electric lights here and there along the way in it. Far off at the end of it, there appeared to be water, and wan lights. Underfoot there were cold, smooth cobblestones; underfoot beneath the thin layer of the nylon of her stockings...
She was still wearing what she had been wearing back in her living room. Which meant she was still semi-naked too. She had on her heavy-duty supported black satin bra, a silver-gray satin blouse -- unbuttoned -- and a pale blue N. Peal Burlington Arcade-bought two-ply cashmere scarf loosely around her neck with the ends flung back over her soft and fleshy curved shoulders. No panties, no skirt, nothing at all down there...
But she was too let's say, mature a woman now, well into her sixties in fact, and at the minimum, the heavy undergrowth of her genital hair down there betrayed with its many long thick strong and resilient, stubborn strands of silvery-gray individual hairs, her true years - she was realistically not any more the unequivocal sex symbol that once might have excited any theatrical audience even when she was fully clothed.
And which was, after all, what every traditional sex symbol does - whether clothed or unclothed - that is, present a surface vision that incites some kind of harmonic flame, some kind of erotic emotion and flame from out of a phantasm, an erotic image, and perhaps merely, just an idea...
The reality of the real person behind the image, was not always perfect like a picture, got old, was subject to all kinds of physical problems, illness, tiredness, material problems of life, even allergies to cosmetics!
Of course, the sex fantasy image or its stylistic erotic derivative idea as a principle never can die. It might get old temporarily but it never can die. A specific version of it may go out of favour for a while; but if it ever was solid as an erotic fantasy in the first place it will eventually always resurface again, or be re-invented, updated, renewed - morph into some completely new incarnation even in an almost alien new generation, but yet somehow still be sexually recognizable to the new vogue.
Generally, she was practical when it came to nakedness or sexuality. Over-exposure made you cold. Or too brutally visible. But now, neither the utter strangeness of the event, nor the night air, caused her to consider either the questions of warmth or modesty; it was the soft and lilting voices of Benedictines singing Gregorian Chant that caused her to unwrap the scarf from around her neck and re-wrap it around her waist to form a blue miniskirt effect. In fact the air itself was rather thick and somewhat warm, it apparently being a summer's evening here, wherever 'here' was...
A shadowy black robed figure slipped into the narrow lane from out of some passage or doorway about twenty feet further on ahead of her, hesitated for a second, and then began to walk briskly towards her.
In a few seconds she made out the figure of a tall monk, head close-shaven and with the hood of his cloak not brought up to cover his head or face.
As he came nearer she held up a hand and he stopped and looked up at her. "Excuse me," she asked, her slightly tenor-pitched voice, cultured and slightly nasally, possibly because of her prominent cheekbones. "Are you able to tell me the name of this place?" She pointed her index fingers down to indicate what she meant.
Her inquiry brought no verbal reply but a finger to the lips by the monk, and then a gesture that implied she was to follow him. He began walking briskly once again, inclining his head and face to her so that he captured her eyes with his. And she found herself agreeing to go along with wherever he was intending for them both to go. Because surely, she thought to herself, there was really afterall logically little or no other choice in the immediate moment, especially since the monk appeared to be confident of being able to lead her somewhere. Although where? She decided she would at least see... He did not feel threatening to her, she vaguely reflected to herself.
The sheer utter physical papability to her hands and feet and of all of her senses, of the entire setting and situation, never gave her a moment's cause to consider that any of it might have been a dream of some very lucid kind. She knew she could not possibly have simply suddenly fallen asleep just when she was adjusting her stockings and thinking about those old days -- or the heydays, as they were, really. She had just a second ago been thinking of the way she would have pulled on such provocative items 'back in the day...' Thinking of what she would have done now as an experienced adult, with such erotically provocative outfits and apparel -- if she were young once more!
And all of a sudden she was here. In a radically different place. Transported. Lost, in a sense.
The self-assured, confident sound of the chanting Benedictines was nothing to her if not comforting, she decided quietly to herself, under all of the circumstances. The singing voices seemed to be closer now, and the monk a little ahead of her stopped, and found a small door, which he opened with both of his hands. Standing on the threshold he signalled for her to enter with him, and she did not feel the need to decline. He had such a nice face, she thought.
She entered into a dark wood, floor-to-ceiling panelled room, almost completely empty except for two long red velvet-covered benches, one each on either side of the room, with their backs hard up against the walls. And even though she was still able to make out the chanting voices now coming softly through the thick walls, there was a certain quality of silence in this room. And of stillness, too. The slowly playing flames of two large white candles that burned away on their stands in two fairly distantly opposing corners were the only active counterpoints to rather profound stillness.
The young monk -- for she saw that he was indeed a rather young-looking monk -- sat on one of the red velvet seats. Taking his lead, she sat down herself in the other seat that was facing him.
The candle flames diminished and went out.
The muffled sound of the chanting monks faded away completely.
There was a faint odor of frankincense and myrrh in the air.
A pretty voice, a young woman's pretty voice, discarnate and out of the darkness sounded out a clear and distinct warning -- 'go back.' And the echo of the words repeated like something technological. And then a discarnate different voice, a man's voice... 'Perhaps you didn't realize...' She imagined there had been one of those angelic feminine faces -- the one with those fluttering snow white wings -- making an 'Oh!' with its mouth, and briefly suspended in the middle of midnight blue-black and empty space inside the room. But it was only an imagined thing.
The room absolutely burst into warm loud sound, and she realized she was listening to Groove Armada's pop hit 'Lightsonic,' with its strange discarnate voices beginning.
Shivers of fright and yet also delight flowed through her entire body.
Glints and glows of bluish, indigo, purple and mauve luminescence flashed out from the sleeves and folds of the monk's robe.
He rose from where he had been sitting and came towards her, kneeling down close in front of her. And then he spoke:
"What you are about to experience now you must never tell anyone. Not anyone living on this earth."
Leaving her with no time to think about anything, he took both of her hands in his and raised them up to her face so that she could see the wrinkles of her skin on the backs of her hands -- see them, and then suddenly next watch them, the wrinkles of age, as they rapidly smoothed out and disappeared entirely. She knew utterly that something strange and exciting was going on; she felt all the aches and weaknesses of age and suspect joints go and be replaced with a kind of vigorous strength, something almost akin to the idea of what it might have been like being transformed into one of those Marvel superheroes. She felt strong and young. Her breathing was clear and deep and powerful.
The man in front of her let go of her hands and dropped his hands into folds in his robe. And from where he produced a deeply crimson coloured leather bound bible which he placed onto the bare thighs of her naked lap.
"So," he quoted. "some who are first, shall be last..."
What on earth was going on, she thought to herself.
"The meaning of this," he tapped on the book's cover. "Is that at last some will arrive at a juncture where a better and more complete grasp of the subtlety and the complex richness of life is fully enabled to them, to their minds, and where the fragile and thin line between mature versus childish meanings, is appreciated."
Was this some kind of avant-garde, exotic, erotic, sex scene or game she had accidentally wandered into...? Maybe something some rich people do for excitement when they are bored or have lots of time on their hands... Rich people with nothing else to do... So have sex and do weird things...
But that couldn't be! She had been in her living room far far away only minutes ago. And now was suddenly here. In this strange scene or game.
The music was very powerful.
She addressed the monk: "Why me?"
He lifted up his face and looked directly into her eyes with a look that energized her in ways she had never felt before at all in the whole of her life.
"The true responsibility of intelligent carnality is very great, for the human being." Once again his palms fell to the surface of the small leather volume. "'For many there are who are called...'
"To have respect, and yet to discern also that which is genuinely false instead of what is only labeled, misdirected, misunderstood, or misrepresented, or slandered; these are the qualities that may lead a few to the narrow doorway, and through which even fewer can pass."
