"If we knew one another's secrets, what comforts we would find."
I've never, in my entire life, done anything to deliberately hurt someone. I'm a typical "nice guy." On those rare occasions when something I've said or done caused distress, I've felt deep remorse and done my best to make amends.
Given that, you can imagine how sick I felt at my reaction when Angela, my girlfriend of two years, told me we were breaking up. We'd given one another our virginity just six months before. She was a terribly cute little five-foot-two brunette, who tended to put on weight just looking at sweets, but who fervently worked it off with sporadic, episodic bursts of aerobics. I'd actually considered asking her to marry me, and now she was calling the whole thing off. On the outside, I was my normal passive, sensitive self. On the inside, I was feeling a burning rage unlike anything I'd ever felt before in my entire nineteen years.
"Gino, it's not that I don't still love you, it's just that Richard makes me feel, well, so excited, so alive. I don't know how to describe it –"
"- It's okay. I understand, Angela." I hazarded a weak smile, amazed it wasn't the snarl of some nightmare beast. "I really don't want to hear all the gory details. Richard's everything I'm not. Rich and glamorous, with clothes and a new car. He can take you on vacations. He –"
"- Oh, Gino, it's so much more than that! It's not just the material things! You know I'm not that shallow."
But, in a sudden burst of insight, I realized that she was
exactly
that shallow. Never had a girl been more image-conscious, more peer conscious, more approval seeking. Granted, I'd always found her little vanities entertaining – even cute and endearing. Now, I realized it for the character flaw it truly was.
And then came the line, delivered with batted lashes: "We can still be friends, can't we?"
"Sure, Angela. Sure we can," I somehow muttered through the blooming black rage.
I thought it might pass. I prayed it would pass. I tried to ignore it, but the sickness grew within me.
We still saw one another once in a while, and talked on the phone weekly, at least. Learning the details of exactly how and when she'd hooked up with Richard, the new love of her life, was raw torture, and fuel for the beast within. How he'd wooed her and seduced her and his prowess as a lover, and how she'd hidden her growing infatuation and infidelity for three months before breaking up with me, and what a prince I was for still caring for her and how I was her dearest friend ever.
About the dinners at the finest restaurants and the dresses he bought her and their weekend skiing, and, in giggled whispers, of the naughty things they did in bed.
The key that opened the lock that freed my monster was her fear of putting on weight. She'd gained seven pounds, and was terrified that her dear Richard wouldn't find her attractive.
"Please," she whined across the table one afternoon at the library, "it's the only way I can lose the weight. You know that, Gino. I've tried everything."
What I knew was that Angela had no will-power. She wasn't able to commit to a diet or willing to exercise regularly on her own. After taking a psych class together, we'd dabbled with hypnosis as a way to motivate her to do what she was otherwise too lazy to accomplish. It'd worked.
My beast nudged the cage door open and surveyed the vastness of his new domain. "Sure," I told her, closing my book. "Why not. And we can toss in a couple of other cues to help you concentrate better."
She squeezed my hand. "You're the best. Can we do it right now?"
I didn't give in without a fight. I didn't do anything hideous to her right away. I helped her control her appetite and improve her study habits. About the only concessions I made to the whispers from the darkness were to encourage her to trust me even more and to make her more truthful with me.
Those suggestions became a two-edged sword. While I was assured of her never totally leaving me – in fact, of needing me to be a major focus in her life – I also was burdened with more than I bargained for. Most of this education came while she was under, during the weekly tune-up sessions I saw to it she desperately needed. For instance, Richard thought I was a wimp, she informed me, and my dear Angela never defended me. Because, in her secret heart of hearts, she admitted that, in a way, she agreed.
The monster cackled, molted, and grew. When she awoke, following that session, her feelings about me were slightly different. By the time she left my apartment, there was a moistness in her loins inspired by being near me that'd never existed before, even back in the good old days.
In another session, she'd revealed that Richard, during the months that he'd fucked her before he made her break up with me, had reveled in sending her back to me with his sperm fresh inside her. And how they'd laughed when she shared how I'd unwittingly eaten it out of her while performing oral sex.
Suddenly (though it didn't seem that way to her) Angela began having daily fantasies of the XXX kind, and feeling horridly ashamed of herself. Most were moderately innocent – like imagining herself not wearing panties or a bra all day in classes. Or feeling an urgent, frequent need to masturbate in front of her bedroom mirror in imaginative positions. A few weren't quite so vanilla – like the dream featuring herself as the center of a fraternity gang-bang, or the one in which she was savagely raped by invisible strangers. Simultaneously, her sex-drive mysteriously increased. Her multiple orgasms were full-fledged screamers. Richard was sorely pressed to keep up with her. Though he wasn't complaining. Yet.
*
She fidgeted on the sofa. "I . . . I have to tell you something."
"Anything. You know that."
"I, uh, oh shit – I can't say it!" I grinned inwardly at the curse word dripping so easily from her formerly puritanical lips. She hadn't been going to church nearly as much, and the word Jesus had pretty much dropped from her vocabulary except as an expletive.
"Relax, Angel." A neat little trigger that caused her to do exactly that. (Wonderful irony, too, in that she hated that childhood nickname spoken by anyone but yours truly.) "Now out with it."
"Well, it's just that I'm turning into this nympho or something. I've been having all these, well, dirty thoughts, and they're turning me on something awful."
"So being turned on is a bad thing?"
"No! But I'm just so fucking horny all the time, Gino."
"Richard isn't taking care of you?"
She blushed even more brightly. "Yeah, he is. Twice a day, at least. But it's . . . he's . . ."
"Not enough?"
Her eyes were pleading as she nodded. "That's not normal, is it?"
