Captive

A. F. Cronin

March 2006

Please help! Please! A deranged, blonde, Internet hag is holding me captive and I don’t know what other horrors she has in store for me.... Forgive me that. Although true, that first sentence may be a bit much-- a little too hysterical. I’ll take a cleansing breath and will begin again. Since I’m locked in this box of a room and I can’t go anywhere anyway, I’m really in no big rush to tell my story. There is no use in embarrassing myself further by producing a "please-save-me-note" scattered with scratched out words and sentences just because I lack the patience to think before I scribble. I’m used to a word processor, you see, so it’s a bit anachronistic and extremely annoying to have to use a pencil to write this note, and, since it has no eraser, I need to write slowly so I won’t make mistakes and be unable to correct them properly. Perhaps this should be a life lesson for me.

Forget you read that previous paragraph. Please. It was a mistake--a false start. I want you to understand the dire nature of my situation clearly, so I’ll explain it to you. Simply. Rationally. Just the facts. I’ll start at the beginning.

It was supposed to be a pleasant get-to-know-you-eat-some-food-maybe-screw-a-little type of a date. I had met her on an Internet dating site. She was an older, thicker version of the svelte, well-toned athlete smiling broadly at me in the posted photograph. And she was neither as "earthy" nor as ebullient as her picture and autobiography suggested–"I love frolicking on freshly cut grass!" -- what a load. I must admit she had beautiful eyes; eyes of a psycho, I now understand, but beautiful none-the-less. And she’s not ugly by any means. She’s attractive, just not hot. And the picture she sent was of a hot young woman. Hot as in.... HOT!

I’m getting off subject a bit. I return.

I saw her profile on the dating website, e-mailed her –I sent the picture of me in my black sweat suit (I look very good)-- and waited for the reply. I admit I was a little pissed-off she didn’t respond right away, and after the second day I was fuming at what I had perceived of as her rejection of me. But by the fourth day I’d forgotten the whole thing and had moved on to other cyber-chicks. I had a great date set for Friday, by the way--a great date-- a hot and horny divorcee eager for sexual payback on her ex, but this blonde, falsely-photographed bitch-hag-from-hell locks me up and blows it for me. I couldn’t even call to cancel with the Divorcee! Damn it!

Anyway, on day five, I get bitch-hag’s response–sort of a teasey, flirty I’m-into-just-screwing-if-you’re-cool-enough-for-me response. You know the kind. So I e-mail her back, she calls me, we set a date and place for a dinner-meet and things were on their way.

It’s not as if I was in search of an immediate ego-stroking approbation or some quick and brainless hook-up fueled by some bizarre (and twisted) fantasy. I was more than open to whatever spontaneous reaction erupted between us. Or didn’t erupt. The primal attractive forces swarming through the warm, pulsing flesh that constitutes the physical bodies of two incarnate souls are capricious and uncontrollable, sparked by unknowable factors, mysterious in their workings.

I didn’t mean to write that last sentence. Really, I didn’t. The stress is getting to me and I’m not thinking clearly. I’m becoming delusional. Put the entire previous sentence out of you mind-- especially the incarnate souls part. Please. Erase it from your memory -- or better yet, erase it from the page if you have an eraser handy. Destroy all evidence of...of whatever that was. The point I was trying to make is that I would have been happy to have simply met the woman and see what happened between us -- just a date --dinner with an attractive female, intelligent conversation, tasty food, maybe an overpriced latte and some miniscule pastry portioned, ostensibly, for a dieting eight year old. But I don’t want to discuss pastries right now. I want to talk about this horrid situation.

And I don’t mean to suggest that the sex wasn’t good with her-- what little actual sex there was ... at first. It was adequate.... traditional, you know... climb on board... just the usual... until she brought out the ...device.

No. I don’t want to go there. Not yet. The thing is I was just telling her the truth as I saw it. I was being honest. I thought that’s what women wanted? They’re always whining, "just be honest with me, I respect honesty, I want the truth!" Lying little bitches! Ooops.

I can tell you that having no eraser is a challenging proposition. It’s like talking out loud when someone’s listening. It takes a little doing to take back something that just slipped past your lips--usually a lot of doing if I think about it. It is frustrating in the extreme, after expending the extraordinary effort required to mentally compose a sentence and then scrawl the words you’ve considered and arranged onto a piece of paper, to find, that for lack of the proper tool, the idea or sentiment you no longer wish to convey is unable to be erased. Without erasure one cannot begin anew, but one must retain the detritus of an ill-considered act. This is not a good thing. I will admit, however, that, due to the simple fact that it takes so damn long to scribble the letters onto the paper, when you’re writing longhand it’s easier to stop yourself from blurting out stupidities than when you’re talking. This fact, in light of the embarrassing "incarnate souls" fiasco, is of little consolation to me at present!

I’m taking another cleansing breath now. I need one... Two.

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