When a Woman’s in Love

Carli is a beautiful woman in her mid-40s. I could write a novel just about her charm and everything else that’s easily apparent. But Carli is beyond words. I guess that you could consider her an angel and the one that rocked my world. But the story is not about us. It’s much more about another woman whom Carli fell in love with but only for a short time. How can one fall in love for a short period? I guess that Carli wasn’t really in love with the woman but only infatuated, smitten by what she had to offer. I was surely more than enough. She mentioned it all the time. But I sensed that she needed something a bit different. Perhaps someone without a prick, no matter how loving was the dick and myself in this story. Some background first for some perspective!

Carli had only known two men in her life, marrying the second for lack of a better choice. She had a kid in her mid-20s who had left home a few years ago to get married and probably form a family of her own. A year ago, Carli fell in love with me because of some stories I had written and that she happened to read. It seems that my words struck a chord somewhere in her heart. The thing is that I also fell in love with her words in the form of English and French poetry that rather quickly also captured my heart and also my mind. Carli’s mind was intrinsically connected to her heart. Following long messages, many of them filled with love and lust, and then long sex-filled conversations throughout many a night, I packed my bags and moved overseas to be near her. Carli lived in Paris. Luckily, French was my first language and my work was home-based, and thus I found myself living not too far from the Eiffel Tower.

She left her husband of over 20 years and moved in with me. We were in love and happy. I, enamoured with almost every one of her words, worshipping each part she didn’t dress with useless clothes when we were inside our abode, and literally losing myself in all her heavenly attributes, was doomed. When she smiled, I could barely contain the joy in my heart, and when we made love, it rarely lasted less than a couple of hours, most of which involving yours truly going madly in sheer love with anything of hers that I touched, let alone appropriated as another Carli artistry. It’s hard to describe the love that I have for her. I wrote numerous poems about it and I’m still unsatisfied with the result since words don’t seem to convey her essence. Carli is a book that has already been written by the stars. She’s my sacred book and I pray for her words every day.

We met Marie one late afternoon at a café not far from our place. She smiled when she saw us but I later understood that she only smiled because of Carli. I would have too. Carli’s eyes exuded love and her mouth, whether closed or open, promised everything that could be construed as love. She seemed alone and seeing that Carli liked her, I invited her, after asking Carli, to sit with us if she wasn’t expecting anyone. She gladly agreed and within minutes they were chatting about everything under the Sun while I listened, captive by my Carli’s mouth. I only use “my” because that’s how Carli wanted it. I’m all yours, she often told me. I only belong to you. I always smiled when she said it because I knew it to be false. Carli didn’t belong to anyone but she loved me and that was all that I really wanted from her. To be loved. Is there any better feeling? Believe me, I’ve looked. Carli in love with me was the best result of any hope I might have had in this cockamamie world.

Carli wanted me to join them but I refused. I told Carli, and Marie, that such a love as they were going to experience should be experienced only by them, but that given human nature of which I was still a member, I would probably sulk inside knowing that you were loving someone else, albeit at least not a man because then, it would have been too much. Carli met Marie at her apartment and accomplished something I could never relate since I wasn’t there. But Carli told me the story and that, I can tell you about. I’m doing it verbatim, so these were her words as she told them to me.

“I want to tell you what happened between us. Do you agree to listen?”

I’d actually prefer not to know, I replied. I’ve learned in my life after many tribulations that the truth is not always the best thing for little things, and this thing is a little thing in the scheme of things. Do you love me as much now or less? I asked. To the reader: I could have said, as much now or more. Maybe I did. I don’t remember. It wasn’t clear in the transcript.

“I love you more,” Carli replied.

Of course, I cried. I’m a prick who cries. Maybe it’s why I love women so much. There are exceptions, but very few women and for old personal reasons. I hugged her and then she insisted on telling me her story because she wanted to have my opinion on something that occurred. I had to accept, though part of me knew I was going to regret it and that it could eventually ruin our relationship. To whomever thinking that strong loving relationships can withstand anything but death, I counter that any relationship can be destroyed by one betrayal. Just one is sufficient. Sometimes, even just the intent.

Even pure love is fragile, yet it’s often taken for granted. One can hear: It’s nothing, I wanted to have a new experience, I wanted to feel a new dick or another pussy, I wanted to be free. Good for you, I would reply. But I wanted to love her as much as I could, hoping that she would love me back as much as she could. I guess that I’m attached to the monogamous species, the one-love-is-enough-for-me kind. Even with just one love, I get to focus on at least four beautiful parts, and she has more breathtaking parts on hand and mouth. And speaking of the mouth, that talented orifice, that port of entry into the sublime, where her words come out from the heart. And the pussy, that sacred of sacred portals into another world of pleasure and potential procreation, her master part. And the anus, that multitasking powerhouse, that cute little spot, the part that could aspire to better greatness, an adequate spare for those lacking a pussy. And the breasts, a couple, not one, love times two, a pair of feminine heavens, confusing as where to begin until you realize that you can love them both at the same time. And her hands that can take you wherever you want to go or wherever she wants to take you. And her feet, those monuments that carry her to you, that can even give you sheer pleasure by rubbing against your prick but not before you appreciate all ten love-giving toes. And her back, that largest of skin surfaces where you can spread your love across inches of both certainty and uncertainty that there’s even more. And her stomach, that repose zone between hills of milk and source of life, that smooth covering of future love, that expanse of her femininity. And her neck, that bridge between her sexy brain and her enticing body, her mouth and everything else, her mind and her heart.

“When we kissed, she kissed me, it was sweet, soft, gentle, but I didn't feel any love, not the love that I feel when we kiss. It was a nice empty kiss. It ruined for me everything else, except that I still wanted to have sex with her,” Carli revealed.

My heart skipped in a bad way this time. Usually, it skips to the tune of her love. I was afraid to hear the rest.

“We undressed and she attempted to make love to me with her mouth, her hands, and a dildo she took out from a night-table drawer. I was enjoying her touch but it somehow felt wrong. She was trying to love me and I was thinking of you,” Carli continued.

The half-consolation scenario didn’t work for me. My heart skipped again in a wretched sort of beat. I felt it breaking as she talked. She was describing intimate love with someone else and I was supposed to be glad about her freedom. I was not. I was saddened. And she saw it in my eyes.

“I regretted it when we were done, understanding that it was only sex, not real love,” Carli still continued.

I could see the coffin of our love being built by some eager undertaker. Imagine if Marie had been a man, a prick. I think that I would have stormed out and never come back, knowing that my love was damaged beyond repair. But it was a woman, and thus I remained, hurting but still there, listening to her confession.

“I knew then that I would never want to do it again, that you are my only love,” Carli seemed to have concluded.

She saw the tears in my eyes and understood that it wasn’t alright. She had her experience and I had mine. Two experiences that could only collide. I looked at her, stood up, and told her that I needed to walk outside alone with my thoughts and the Moon. That bloody cold Moon that inspires love when it should only inspire death. The hot Sun is love. Even the other faraway stars are love, potential love. My thoughts were spiralling in my brain as I walked towards nowhere. I stopped at a bar and ordered a Perrier. I dislike alcohol and the false short-lived hope it tends to provide.

I was also thinking of Nietzsche as I walked. He who proclaimed that all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking. What would this mind of minds think about it? He who epitomizes the greatest mind apart from Shakespeare and Einstein, the mind who first understood the real implications of art and love. What would Nietzsche think of Carli’s aveu (admission)?

He would probably have dismissed it as frivolous, an unnecessary experience that at least could be deemed now as spent and thus adding to the knowledge about love. I disagreed with Nietzsche on that. Maybe he would have thought differently. I could never know since only his words subsisted. There may be a price to pay for each new experience. If it’s a positive experience for both, then the gain is beneficial. If it’s a positive experience for only one of the lovers, any gain for one can only be lessened by a loss for the other. I was in love with Carli and thus acquiesced to see it as her gain. I, however, was hurt deeply enough to have it appear on my face, albeit unconsciously.

Carli cried when she saw it. I tried to control it but I couldn’t. I may have finally understood that love wasn’t as heroic as extolled, even by Shakespeare. Apparently, there was only the sword and the maiden, no matter the preliminaries or the outcome. I had been a fool for believing in love. I was still a romantic, nonetheless. But it seems that a romantic dies alone with a good book like Operation Shylock or If This Is a Man, or watching Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet.