Unleashed Desires, Ageless Passions Ch. 05

A note from the author

I want to say a very big 'thank you' to you all. I have been overwhelmed by your response to this story, my first humble attempt in writing fiction. I must have had over fifty emails and comments posted here now. None of them have been negative and some have offered excellent suggestions that I will include in future chapters. I have made the acquaintance of other writers too. It's been a very positive experience.

When I first started writing this story, it was a work of pure fiction. There was no Rosie or John. Both were products of my own personality and imagination. As time went on, more and more autobiographical detail crept in and converged with this tale. As for John, the protagonist of my story, I do the same work as him and I am a qualified psychologist. Now I face similar difficulties to him too. I had hoped that psychology would equip me better for life's difficulties. It does, but emotional awareness brings with it the price of pain.

There is not that much stroking material here; that can be found elsewhere. There is some loving sex. There is also a depth of emotional and psychological complexity that may not appeal to everyone.

I need to slow up my rate of production now for a little while, but there are a good seven or more chapters left in me yet, and a few more stories too! I am going to take some time out in France and the United States soon, and then who knows I may even meet my "Rosie"! Maybe I'll just make my own dreams come true. The best dreams of all come from inside ourselves and not someone else, after all. That's one big lesson. Thank you all for your great support!

Jon Owens

*

I awoke in the warm entanglement of Rosie's body. It was bliss.

The blue numbers of her digital clock glowed 5:10 AM. There were fifty more minutes in which I could wallow in the warmth of our embrace.

Moments like this always tripped me up. I had succumbed to the seduction of romantic love and I knew it. Romantic love is not an enduring place, I thought. It is transient and illusory. Unless those involved have the desire, skills and commitment to take it on to some other place, it will soon fade and die. Sadness and disappointment will quickly fill the space it once occupied. Why did I have to think like this? Why could I not just enjoy the moment with all its affection and tenderness? Perhaps for me it was the triumph of experience over hope, to turn Samuel Johnson's quotation on its head.

My thoughts would not let up. I knew all about this romantic love trap, the psychologist in me was not going to let go, not this time, not after all my other relationship disasters. But then anxiety and negative thoughts took me nowhere either. I decided that time would be the best mediator of truth, that time itself would reveal whatever I needed to know. With all my will, I decided to banish negative thoughts from my mind there and then, to consign them to the dustbin of my past. There was no point in going back to the past or forward in hopeful anticipation. The past provides valuable knowledge but it is an unreliable guide to the present and living in the future is a folly, the fastest track to going off the rails.

I succeeded in driving the thought monsters out of my head and accepted the moment for what it was: One of beauty and warmth. I drifted back to sleep. Minutes later I jumped out of my skin as something like the siren of a fire engine went off in the bedroom. My reaction was to leap from the bed and run for my life until I realised that the noise came from Rosie's alarm clock. Rosie was sitting upright groping sleepily for the knob to turn off this klaxon.

"Blimey Rosie. What a noise!" I said. "Have you nothing more gentle to wake up to, like Classic FM or something?"

Rosie laughed.

"I must get myself a new alarm clock," Rosie agreed. "But I sleep very soundly and that never fails to wake me."

"Doesn't the shock of all that noise put you into a bad mood for the day?" I asked.

"No. I've got used to it now. But I do promise to buy a new clock next time I'm in town. I really promise now. I can't have you waking up alarmed and disgruntled," she said smiling.

I pulled on my clothes quickly. I needed to leave soon to let Rosie prepare for her early morning appointments.

Rosie gave me one of those wicked grins.

"You won't forget your dental appointment tonight, will you? Sophie will have great expectations, you know," she said smirking.

"How could I forget?" I said. "I'm very tempted to postpone it but there's some merit in having it all done and dusted, I guess."

"I don't think dusting will be in Sophie's mind, John," Rosie said. "Just remember to give the bitch something she won't forget. Show no mercy and make sure she can't sit down for a day or two."

I laughed.

"I think that's your fantasy, Rosie. She might just love it," I said.

"Like a good Boy Scout 'Do Your Best' but just try and make it not so good that she wants more," Rosie said.

"It maybe that I just have to be rude, snub her in some way afterwards," I said.

"Yes, it might come to that I would guess," said Rosie. "Do you have any lubricant at home, like KY Jelly? You never know but you may need it."

I laughed aloud. This was absurd. I felt extremely uncomfortable.

"I've never needed any myself. Are you suggesting that I bugger her? I think she's too small for that and anyway it could be messy," I said.

"No silly. I just think she may have an issue with dryness…well, one never knows how that surgery may have affected her," said Rosie. "I have a small supply if you need any," she said. You wouldn't believe the problems people bring to me. So I keep all manner of things. I have condoms, KY and even appointment cards for the local family planning clinic in my consulting room here."

"You're beginning to sound like a sex therapist, Rosie, like the 'Masters and Johnson' of Cambridge," I said. "It's getting late now so I'll take a tube and dash."

Rosie laughed then scuttled down the hall and came back with the small blue and white tube of lubricant. We kissed briefly as I made my way to the door.

"You be sure to give me a call tonight and let me know how you got on," she said.

"Of course I will and I imagine it will be left leg over," I replied grinning inanely.

Rosie stood waving as I made my way back down the lane. I glanced at my watch. It was six thirty five.

Somehow my small farmhouse always seemed so empty after a visit to Rosie's house, mainly because it was. Most of my things were still back in my marital home in San Francisco.

I decided to have breakfast: black coffee, fruit juice, a bowl of bran, a banana and a slice of toast. After I got back from the United States, I had to lose weight, a lot of weight. I had started to suffer from high blood pressure. My physician had been worried about the strain it might be placing on my heart and had prescribed a mixture of beta-blockers and diuretics as a protective measure. Great news for my heart perhaps, but impotence and loss of libido were the most common side effects of these drugs. I had a very bad dose of side effects. Jane had complained bitterly, and started to suspect my infidelity. I complained too to the physician who had prescribed Viagra that I had never once taken. I still had a supply of those small blue pills somewhere. I had thought that even though I did not need them now for clinical reasons anymore, that one day I might take one to see if it was performance-enhancing. But I lost weight, some forty pounds in all, and everything including my blood pressure returned to normal. Thank the gods for that, I thought. Now I stood at five eleven and weighed 175 pounds and felt a hundred times better than I did back then.

I went and fumbled through my chest of drawers. I found the box of blue pills. I pulled them out and read the directions. 'Take one as directed one hour before sexual intercourse,' they read. These may come in useful, I thought. There was Sophia this afternoon and after the torrid sex with Rosie last night I had no idea how I could get it up for someone whom I did not even like. A voice inside told me that I was missing something. I took the tube of KY Jelly and placed it on top of the chest of drawers next to the box of Viagra. The voice told me to listen to my heart but I pretended not to hear it.

I finished breakfast and thought about the day ahead. I had some work to do today, real fee-paying work. It wasn't my main line of trade, but the project was large enough to pay a whole month's bills. I liked to call it competitive research but industrial espionage was probably more honest. It involved my posing as a venture capitalist about to acquire a major share in a wireless telephone operator in a country within the former Soviet Union. My role-play was to approach major wireless technology suppliers to determine the costs of updating parts of the network of the business in which my private equity fund was about to invest. That was the story at least. What I was actually doing was gathering trade information for one of the major telecoms players in order to make recommendations as to how they might improve their competitiveness – on how they could win business from the opposition. I felt no moral compunctions about the work. All the companies that were operating in this sector were spying daily on each other. I cannot say I liked it, however. It felt like a zero sum game to me. I much preferred doing the innovative stuff of changing the game, the rules, or the business model to deliver something unique that people really valued. But the opportunities for value innovation were sadly few and far between. Most businesses engaged in the dogfights of bloody competition where they and their rivals fought over ever-shrinking profit pools. So that was my work for the day and it paid handsomely.

I worked through until two thirty bashing through about fifteen international phone calls and making pages and pages of detailed technical notes. At two thirty five, the phone rang.

"John McAllister," I answered formally.

"Hi, it's me and I need to talk to you," it was Jane and the tone of her introduction sounded ominous.

"You're up early this morning," I said deliberately keeping the conversation light.

It was six thirty five in the morning in California.

"Look, this is serious," Jane said. "I've spoken to the woman…that woman…the one you've had an affair with and I know all about it."

"You've done what?" I said. "You had better tell me about it. Let's start with her name, shall we. What's her name?"

"Don't give me that, you know darned well what her name is," she snarled.

"No, I don't, so you had better say," I replied feeling irked already by this conversation.

"It's that woman…the one in the story you are writing," she snapped.

"Really, there are a few women in that, which of them is real in your mind?" I asked.

I had been writing amateur erotic fiction. I had no idea whether or not it was any good but it kept me amused on some of the many lonely nights when I did not feel like going down the pub.

"Oh you…!" she exclaimed. "You know full well who it is. It's Jo. Her name is Jo. You told me you were writing a story about her. And now I know all about her for real. I've spoken to her, so I know!"

This was too funny for words, but funny in a sad pathetic way. I had planned to publish my story on an erotic fiction website if they would accept it. I thought it would be fun to find out if anyone else liked what I wrote. I was forever hopeful. One night I had been writing this stuff and I had sat thinking about a pen name to use on the site, a sort of nickname. I do not know why I found this so difficult so I decided to pick two initials and then make up a person's name around them. I had picked JO. That had possibilities I thought. I could be Jack Osborne or John O'Donnell, for instance. Jane had called and asked me what I had been doing so I told her that I had been writing fiction that night and was searching for a pen name. I told her about the idea of picking two initials and deciding on JO. It seems that she had misheard or ignored that part of the conversation, then reinterpreted it in her own special way.

"But I don't think I know anyone called Jo," I said. "There's my friend Peter whose wife is called Jo. Surely you don't mean her, do you…that I had an affair with her?"

"No, not that Jo," she said. "She's called Jo Symmonds. I got her name out of your computer address book. It's updated automatically here."

"And who is she, this woman Jo Symmonds?" I asked. It was a genuine question.

"You met her when you first moved back there, when you took that holiday rental while you looked for somewhere to live," she said. "Jo told me that she met you in the pub there, that you were one of the customers and that she often talked to you."

"Oh that Jo," I said. "You cannot be serious. She was a barmaid at the pub there. She was a very pleasant young woman as I remember, very interested in serious literature and the arts. Yes, I did meet her there and talk to her. She was about half my age. You cannot seriously be suggesting that I had a relationship with her. Is that really what you are saying?

"And I hate all this snooping; first it was my email accounts, now it's my address book and calling up women I know because you misheard something in a conversation we had. I really do hate this stuff Jane and I fail to see the point. What if that Jo Symmonds had been a client of mine? A client who gets a call from some American fruitcake asking if she had an affair with me? What then, eh?"

I knew I was getting angry.

"So what did she say we did together other than talk?" I asked. "Because talk is all we did."

"You know what you and she did together," she said. "You know what having an affair means, don't you?"

"Are you saying I was having sex with her because I can assure you that I wasn't," I said.

"She was reserved on the phone but I do know something was going on," Jane said. "She said that you wanted more than she did, that there was a misunderstanding, but then you sorted it all out, that you resolved the problem."

'Oh God!' I thought. 'Some women!' There was a night when I had had far too much to drink at that pub. I had pinched Jo's arse or groped her or something like that. I cannot remember exactly. It was just the behaviour of a man who had had far too much to drink. I got a mouthful from Jo, a real telling off, about my sexist behaviour. She had a good point so I apologised and we smoked the pipe of peace. She never spoke to me after that incident, no more than to say 'hello, how are you?' anyway.

"Look Jane, this is all in your mind," I said. "I did not have an affair with Jo and as I remember Jo had a very big burly boyfriend. She didn't appeal to me sexually and I would never have crossed swords with her boyfriend either. He would have made mincemeat out of me.

"I do think that you may need help though, like psychiatric help. This has become quite a problem. It's been going on for over a year now."

"Look, you're always saying I should take responsibility," she spat the words. "Why don't you admit what you've been doing? Let's see you taking responsibility as well for once."

"What exactly do you want from all this, Jane?" I asked.

"I want the truth," she said. "I just want to know the truth."

She was making me mad. There was a certain tortured ugliness to her behaviour. I wondered what was going on in Jane's mind. What provoked these insistent pathological jealousies that she would never let up. This one would go on the pile with all the others and they would get trotted out every two weeks or so. It felt so destructive. Was it self-destructive? Was I missing the point? Why did I have to fight this to defend my position? Was I crazy? Was her behaviour at some sub-conscious level about her wanting to leave, but not being able to go until she had totally destroyed what might have been there? Did she simply not want to leave the United States? Did she need to put in place some object of blame to make her exit?

My reaction had been one of total disbelief the first time round. I could not believe what I had heard. I had remained faithful to her throughout our marriage until last week. I had tried everything from reassurance, being more loving and demonstrative, to trying to find the truth that sat beneath the accusations. There was no truth in those. My attempts to hold out love and compassion had been rebuffed with rancid anger and constant allegations of infidelity. I could not do this anymore. I just could not go on with Jane. We must have communicated once, I thought. Now there was no communication between us at all. There was nothing left. Life is too short to dwell in such perpetual unhappiness.

"Okay, I didn't have an affair with Jo," I said. "But where are you trying to get to with this stuff? Like what if I say 'it's a fair cop, I've been shagging Jo for the past year'. Do you win then? What do you gain, a better reason to be apart from me? I'll tell you what then, you win! I'll go and lead my life now and you leave me alone. You ground me down with this stuff last year. You've ground away at this for a year. You wrecked our holiday then because of some fictitious crap about my affairs. I should go and have an affair. I should have gone a year ago. You win! Now go."

I didn't wait for any reply. I was seething. I had had enough. I wished I could have crashed down the receiver like you could on old technology telephones. Pressing a button was no such fun. Jane had succeeded in making me furious.

This had been going on for an entire year. I had met Rosie about a week ago. While not wanting to make excuses for myself, I did know that if the state of my marriage had not been so dire beforehand, my behaviour in the past week would have been different. I told myself that I felt no guilt about Rosie, none at all. Was that the truth? I did not know.

I sat quietly for a while then looked at my watch. It was four already and I was due to see Sophia at five. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a glass of water then went upstairs to the main bedroom. I popped a blue pill out of its foil wrapping and swallowed it. I was curious to discover how Viagra might affect me.

It was at exactly that moment that I stopped in my tracks. It was if a voice inside me was trying to tell me something.

"And what the hell do you think you are doing now?" said the voice.

I was not hearing voices in any true sense. To the extent that I heard nothing I did not feel the need to talk back to myself either. I thought about meeting Sophia and her intentions. The voice was not going to give up.

"Think about this then," the voice said. "Think how it would be if the roles were reversed, that it was your brother who was going to fuck Rosie at five today. How would you feel then? First how would you feel about your brother? Then how would you feel about Rosie? Would it build your trust with her?"

Someone had pressed the light switch! At last, I see it now. I would feel devastated. I would probably want to kill my brother, maybe give him something that might damage his sex life for a very long time, like tearing his balls off with my bare hands. And what about Rosie? I would feel shattered, desolated and very hurt. It would be a tragic breach of our trust.

"Well, even if that darned silly woman says she wants you to do something that will cause her pain, does that make it right to do it?" said the voice. "And is she really that stupid? Do you think she might be putting you to the test here, to find something out about you, about your trustworthiness? Well, are your brains hidden somewhere in your bollocks or are they where they should be?"