Chapter 1: I Meet the Goddess
“Venus, goddess of love?” I stared at the picture of the small figurine in the book I had borrowed from the library.
“Nothing like the Venus de Milo I’ve seen in another book,” I thought. She was beautiful even if she didn’t have arms. This one had ballooning breasts, huge thighs and buttocks. Her hair covered her face like a woolly cap.
I read the caption that told me that “Without fertile women, no primitive band of hunter gatherers could hope to survive.”
Reading from the main text I learned that she was over twenty thousand years old. She was the mother goddess, the protector of all things good, the bearer of children, keeper of the home, guardian of the hunt and ancestor of the human race. Her image has been found from France to Siberia.
I gazed at the picture again and couldn’t resist a cynical smile. My cynicism was not directed at Venus, but at myself.
I was lying on the bed naked as I looked at the picture and I glanced down at my own body. Large breasts that when I stood hung down like huge light globes, but now, as I lay on the bed, they spread across my chest like massive poached eggs. Heavy thighs and buttocks, the thighs surmounted by a wedge of pubic hair that concealed a vaginal opening that according another book I had read was farther forward than most women’s.
“Nice and easy for penetration,” I thought, “but what man would ever be bothered?”
One feature I did not share with Venus was the hair. It was the one thing about me I felt some pride in, my luxuriant head of chestnut coloured hair that I tended so carefully.
“I could have been the model for that figurine,” I muttered aloud. “My God, if that was the sort of female those primitive guys worshipped, they must have been a whole lot different from the guys now.”
I sighed; men now wanted their women to be like the so-called ideal females presented to them by the media. I came nowhere near that ideal. Even before I had seen the Venus picture I had felt myself to be made for breeding children, but no guy had ever wanted to fertilise me. At twenty four I had never been penetrated by a man, so even if the dildo I used occasionally for masturbating had deprived me early of my maiden head, I was still a virgin where the hand, or rather the penis, of man was concerned.
I put a bookmark into the page with the picture and prepared to go to sleep.
I was about to turn off the bed light when it hit me; I’d seen that figurine somewhere before, but where? I opened the book again and stared at Venus. It was no good; I couldn’t recall where I had seen her. “I’ll sleep on it,” I decided.
I switched off the light and circling my clitoris with my finger I gave myself some relief from frustrated sexual hunger. I let my finger slide inside my opening, feeling the soft silky warmth and the freely flowing juices of my lubricant.
“My God,” I thought, “surely there is some man somewhere who would want to enjoy that.”
As I languorously pleasured myself I thought of the all the men and women who longed for sexual gratification, who, like me, would offer their all, but for varied reasons could find no partner to enjoy them.
Increasing the intensity of my self-gratification I strove to fantasise a male partner but could barely give clear form to my vision.
When I had passed through my gasping, panting orgasm I slipped into sleep to dream no dream.
As soon as I woke in the morning I knew where I had seen Venus. It was in a funny little bookshop in a lane that branched off from the High Street. It seemed to specialise in occult subjects. In the window were a few dusty books and a copy of the figurine.
Every working day at lunch time I took a brief walk round the nearby shops, so I decided that today I would go and have a look at Venus. I showered, dressed and hastened off to catch the bus to work, but instead of my normal mood of mild depression that went with going to the office, especially on Monday morning, today I felt slightly elated. I would see Venus at lunch time!
I worked in the accounts department of a medium sized firm. Working along with me were four other women and two aspiring young guys. In addition there was Mr. Sparks the chief accountant.
As far as sparks were concerned, they stopped with his name. He was quite a good looking man, tall with a good physique, around forty. He moved as if he carried some great burden and had a nasty sarcastic manner that he enjoyed using to reduce members of the female staff to tears. He had a private office that we called “The Rat Hole.”
If accountancy is thought of as a dull occupation then pity me because I seemed to have the dullest corner of it. All day long I dealt with receipts and invoices as they piled up on and left my desk; the other girls, married or not, did get a bit of light relief because there was always a bit of flirting going on with them and the two young blokes when it was thought Sparks was out of the way.
They were a good looking pair those two blokes and I thought them very horny. I suspected they had enjoyed all of the other girls, even the two who were married, but they never bothered to proposition me. Like all the other men I had known, they might at best be polite to me, and at worst ignore me.
I slogged my way through the dreary morning with the thought of seeing Venus in the widow as sort of light at the end of the tunnel.
After four hours that had dragged by more like forty, lunch time arrived. I hastily ate a couple of sandwiches I had brought to work, and then made for the side lane and the bookshop.
I looked in the window, and there she was. Dumpy and enigmatic she seemed to stare at me through that curtain of hair that covered her face. Everything about her seemed to focus just one aspect of femaleness. With only minimal arms and legs indicated in the carving, it was the organs of reproduction that the long ago sculptor had emphasised.
“Surely she was the original Earth Mother,” I thought. “The fecund breeder of the race; the great womb from which we had all sprung; if only guys went for women like her now I’d never have my legs closed.”
I had come to the shop with no intention of buying, only looking, but as I peered at Venus through the glass and she stared back at me, I decided there was no harm in entering the shop and asking about her.
I pushed open the shop door and an old fashioned bell clanged. I had to go down a couple of steps to reach the floor and this gave the place a slightly subterranean feel. The light was dim so I stood still for a moment, letting my eyes adjust.
No one seemed to be around so I looked the place over. Two walls were lined with book shelves; a third was taken up by the street window and the entrance door. The fourth consisted of a counter and behind this a door covered with a bead curtain.
I had smelt a pungent aroma as I entered the shop and looking up towards the ceiling, I saw suspended from it bunches of herbs.
The bead curtains rattled and I turned to see a small elderly man entering. He had a lopsided smile and looked at me over the top of half-moon glasses.
“Can I help you, madam?” he asked in a piping voice.
I am the sort of person who gets a bit embarrassed going into a shop to ask about an item with no intention of buying. I felt self-conscious now.
“I…er…I was…er…wondering about the carving in your window…the er…”
“Goddess of Love,” he said, finishing my sentence for me.
