“All movements go too far.”

– Bertrand Russell

MARCH 2014

DAIN GALDIKAS DIDN’T HAVE TO WATCH LONG: glistening perspiration, thrashing of naked limbs, the thrusting of a pelvis, soft moans and unrestrained squeals, the calling out of a name that wasn’t his.

He closed the lid of his laptop. There was Betty Boop, and there was Betty Bitch. Dain’s wife had just unequivocally become the latter.

Dain began to suspect Betty was having an affair a few weeks ago, when their sex life changed.

After ten years of marriage one expects subtle changes in marital relationships as well as relations. But Dain had worked hard to keep his marriage fresh. He kept in the forefront of his mind what it was that first drew him to Betty. He maintained date nights, brought home flowers for no better reason than Betty loved them, cooked occasional meals because, frankly, he was better in the kitchen than she. He rubbed her feet at the end of the day, and did little things for her because he understood that marriage wasn’t for him.

If that sounds strange, that marriage wasn’t for Dain, consider that successful marriages are those where both partners understand that the contract is for the other person. When one partner sees it as about themselves, when one begins to take instead of give, the deal is doomed.

Foreplay began with Sunday breakfast in bed, loving words throughout the day, a caress here, a kiss there, a candlelit romantic massage in the evening; it was all about Betty… and the anticipation.

Prior to their wedding, a marriage counselor asked Dain how he would feel about Betty telling him “no” to sex. He replied that he didn’t expect to have to ask. Given the aforementioned foreplay, Dain suspected that he’d know whether Betty was in the mood – “the rhythm’s gonna put the woman in the mood, now you definitely want to…”

It was in giving that Dain received: the warm and sensitive man every woman claims to want only to, as Dain just learned, dump him in the end for the bad boy.

That didn’t happen with Betty, that Dain sensed she was taking or that she was taking him for granted. But something changed in their physical relationship. It was subtle: her touches seemed decidedly more obligatory – the mother’s lesson imparted to the new bride on the morning of her wedding: “Sex is a necessary evil, dear. It’s your duty to spread your legs and allow him to get the dirty deed done; the sooner you get pregnant, the sooner he’ll leave you alone in the dark” – and she seemed to retreat from his touch, as well as his caress in the sanctuary of their bedroom.

When he noticed that she was arriving home from work later and more often, he asked her if everything was all right between them. He wasn’t a mind reader, nor did he consider himself breviloquent, a man of few words. Other men might be bashed for not talking, divorced for not being the man the woman married after spending twenty years trying to do just that, change him; but not Dain. If Betty wasn’t getting something from him that she needed, and she didn’t communicate to him what that something was, then he felt accountable for asking. She replied that everything was fine. Then, instead of telling him, “Thank you. You’re a dear for asking,” she only sighed. So he pushed her – not hard, a simple nudge, a virtual touch on her shoulder:

“Everything okay at work? You’re coming home later more often.”

Betty sighed again and told him she was stressed. “I have a project that’s nearing deadline. It’s not going well.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can do to help,” Dain said.

Betty remained silent and went to bed early, turning down Dain’s offer to massage away her stressful day.

Convinced her sighs were hiding something, and dreading what he might learn was behind them, Dain hired a private detective to follow her after she left work. It didn’t take long. On the morning after his second night on the job, Dain got a call from Deke the private dick:

“You’re not going to like it.”

Dain gave his own sigh into the phone, then told Deke to stop by his office to present the evidence.

After Deke left, Dain dropped the disk into his laptop’s drive and watched, amazed by the clarity of Deke’s video, shot with his cell phone through the window of a seedy motel on Eight Mile Road near Woodward Avenue – an area of town noted for its topless bars, purveyors of triple-X rated DVDs, streetwalkers, and filthy motels for which patrons paid by the hour, and where Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith, Jr. in 1995 launched his rap career as Eminem. Dain’s mouth went dry as his suspicions were confirmed.

You’re not going to like it was a gross understatement.

What Dain hadn’t counted on was that Betty’s lover was another woman.

IT FELT ODD TO BRITNEY – no, wrong – kissing a stranger in her foyer. She was a married woman, had taken a vow to remain faithful to her husband till death did they part. But the second kiss, when he pushed his tongue into her mouth… it was like the painting on the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where God is about to touch Adam’s lifeless hand to spark him into being.

Who was it that painted that? she thought through a haze of marijuana and a reawakened passion. Michael Angelo?

This stranger was breathing life into her as surely as Michelangelo had given life to the act of creation, as surely as God had given life to Adam.

A Charles Bronson lookalike if ever there was one.

The way the stranger looked at her, after her t-shirt was gone, took away her breath. No one had ever looked at her like that, not even Jeff. His eyes, along with his comments about her being fat, always left her feeling self-conscious about her body.

But in this stranger’s eyes she saw desire, yes, and also lust. But there was admiration, too. Now his eyes met hers, and they seemed to be asking her permission, if it was okay that he drink in her nakedness. He seemed nearly apologetic that her nakedness filled him with desire, want, and need. All she ever saw in Jeff’s face was horniness and the need to get off. Never ever did he ever think about her pleasure.

Then the stranger’s hands were on her: holding her face as he kissed her yet a third time, softly, sensuously, with passion, not roughly; gently grasping her shoulders to pull her against him – their tongues still wrestling inside her mouth – sliding down her flanks and around to knead her buttocks, gently, with purpose, and more passion.

There’s magic in dem dere hands, she thought, moaning into his mouth, until he bent to take a breast in his mouth, sucking its nipple so tenderly, so lovingly. Not like – what was his name?

Jeff.

He always pawed at her, like an animal, and liked to bite her nipples, often hard enough to draw blood.

The stranger’s fingers now worked the button on her jeans, ever so slowly, as if the simple act of undressing her was itself foreplay to him, a moment to be savored, and she was surprised that she didn’t resist. There was still time for her to say, “No,” even as the zzz sound of her zipper filled her ears and he peeled her jeans down over her hips, stopping a moment to work his warm, moist tongue into her navel; but all she wanted to say was, “Yes” and “yes” and “yes” yet again, screaming her accedence if she had to, to make this moment real.

That was me, she realized, the sound of her gasp in her ears.

With Jeff, whenever he told her he “wanted it,” she always sighed. But it was a sigh of disappointment. Jeff was just too dense to know it.

Or maybe he just didn’t care so long as he got his own rocks off.

Her jeans were now at her feet; she stepped out of them, still in her panties, leaning on the stranger kneeling before her to maintain her balance. His face was level with her mons Venus, his eyes fixed on her pink lace bikini panties, admiring them and what lay concealed inside them, perhaps lost in a fantasy, as she was lost in one of her own, wondering what he might do next, hoping it would be what her husband had never done.

On his knees before her, his hands resting lightly on her hips, he looked as if he was in church, kneeling before the altar that was her body, about to partake of communion, of the bodily fluid that gives life to erections.

He inhaled deeply and glanced up into her eyes again, as if seeking her consent; Britney smiled at him.

Forgoing conversation, he sighed and kissed her sex through the thin fabric of her panties. Whimpering, she threw back her head, her desire growing.

A moment later he hooked his fingers under the waistband of her panties and eased them down over her hips, down past her knees, down to her ankles.

After she stepped out of them, he began to kiss and lick the inside of her left thigh, right there in the foyer. With her back against the front door, she heard the footsteps of the mailman on the porch. Her heartbeat quickened and her breathing came in short gasps. “Ohhh,” she groaned. The thought that the mailman might hear her inflamed her passion. She heard the squeak of the mailbox’s metal hinge, the clang of its closure, his departing footsteps.

Then the stranger proceeded to give her right thigh the same treatment, as if he didn’t wish it to feel neglected. His hot, fervid kisses on her inner thighs felt heavenly; as foreplay they were divine. Her husband’s idea of foreplay was telling her to spread her legs and then falling on top of her to have his way with her.

Slowly, gently, he kissed and nibbled his way higher, alternating between both legs, leaving a thin trail of saliva.

She was thoroughly, utterly wet, ready and willing for anything the stranger might do.

Knees trembling, she spread her legs wider, inviting him to… and caught her own scent.

Will he? she wondered when he could go no further, hoping, praying. Her husband never had and professed he never would.

“Yesss,” she breathed as she felt the stranger’s torrid tongue dance across her blooming clit.

“Oh, my god,” she groaned, raising herself up on the balls of her feet.

She thought she’d just died and gone to heaven.

“I’m sorry, but—”

“No, you’re not sorry,” he said.

“But—”

“There you go again, trying to justify your decision—the choice you made. Erich Segal got it all wrong. Being in love means forever having to say you’re sorry. Putting the needs of your family ahead of your own. An apology with an explanation is really no apology at all.”

“What would you have me say then, Paul?” Carla’s voice sounded thin with digital distance.

“I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to come home, to your husband and our daughters.”

“It’s my job, Paul.”

“Your job is to take the assignments CNN gives you. They didn’t assign this one. You asked for it, then clamored for it, next kicked and screamed to get it. They didn’t want to send you because they knew the risks.”

“It’s a once in a lifetime story.”

“And what do I tell Mindy and Stacy when their once in a lifetime mommy doesn’t come home?”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Paul.”

“I wish we wish we could be as sure.”

When Carla said nothing Paul feared the call had dropped.

“You still there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Carla, you’re in a Middle East nation that’s just overthrown its government. You don’t belong there.”

“I’m a journalist. I belong where the story takes me. And I have my team with me.”

“Oh, that makes me feel much better—three guys, one of them armed with a camera. I’ll be able to watch, live, the first ever rape-execution of a Western journalist. I’m sure Sid will get some creative shots.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”

“You’re a woman, blond, in a Muslim nation that treats women like property and resents Westerners—especially Western women. I’ve seen what’s going on. The streets are filled with thousands of unruly people.”

“Celebrants.”

“And what better way to celebrate than by abducting a white blond woman and—”

“Don’t say it, Paul.”

“You think by not saying it that it won’t happen? You think you’re invincible because you are woman? Damn Helen Reddy.”

Carla said nothing.

“This is all about you and your career. Always has been.”

“You knew what you were getting when you asked me to marry you.”

“Did I? I knew what you were—a journalist. What I didn’t know was how selfish you can be.”

Carla went silent again.

“Carla?”

Silence.

“Shit,” Paul said. Already sorry for his last comment and wondering how much of it Carla had heard, he thought the call had merely dropped and that she would call back.

But she didn’t.

***

Sid refused to tell Paul anything of what he witnessed, saying only, “You don’t want to know.”

Paul didn’t know if not knowing Carla’s fate only made it more horrendous. He had a fairly fertile imagination.

Paul suspected he was suffering a sort of survivor’s guilt, not being able to tell his wife how sorry he was—no “buts” about it—for calling her selfish.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. With the words, “Let there be light,” I spoke existence into existence.

But now I think it’s time I did something about this creation of mine called Man.

He’s evil plain and simple, and I’m deluding myself by insisting that sometimes good beings just do bad things. The truth is, he has always been fascinated by the allure of the fruit—indulge the desire, ignore the cost. He has come to worship the seven: lusxuria, gula, varitia, acedia, ira, invidia and superbia.

I’ve always despised haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plots, feet that are swift to run into mischief, a deceitful witness that utters lies, and, most of all, he who sows discord among his brethren. Like the child who chooses to ignore his parents’ warning against disobedience, man has embraced the seven; indeed, he has taken them to levels even I could not imagine.Darkness

And still I forgave him. To love someone is to forgive them.

Adam was the crowning achievement of my creation. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for Adam, nothing I wouldn’t give him, and so when I saw that he was lonely, that he hungered for a companion, I created for him a woman. When Eve bid him to taste of the fruit, I knew I had lost him forever.

From that moment I knew nothing I offered could compare to earthly delights, not even the promise of eternity.

I once sent a great flood to wash away the evil, to start anew, but man again chose pursuit of that which he could see, taste, touch. For that I have no one to blame but myself. Being human must be very lonely.

As a deity, I am everywhere at once; wherever I am I am at the center of the universe, and can commune with the lowliest creatures.

I trapped the spirit of man in flesh. As a fetus he is one with his mother; but at birth he knows solitude, and for the remainder of his life he seeks the comfort of earthly pleasures—food, wine, the touch of others. Man mistakes communion of the flesh as love (a lie to himself as well as his mate), while woman is untrue to her mate in the intimacy of darkness.

The comfort I can provide he eschews because I am something he cannot see, touch.

And his desire, his need for creature comforts only grows with each generation.

Like the child who outgrows the need for parents, man has cast me aside. His hunger for knowledge has turned to a thirst for power and materialism, which, in the end, he must leave behind. Sadly, his wisdom has not kept pace with his knowledge.

I am at fault for setting rules to which he could not adhere. I set him up for failure, giving him the freedom to choose, fully aware that he might choose against me. I knew this, yet I hoped it would be otherwise. Such is hindsight, even for God.

There were, are, good men, and women, but always I know their hearts.

Mother Theresa, who endeavored so diligently to do my work, knew doubt. In her doubt, she chose not to feel my presence within herself.

Rodin created beautiful works of art, but always he lusted for that which he sought to immortalize in clay. I cannot condone beautiful creations born of vulgar, evil thoughts.

Mozart sought, in his musical creations, to be godlike. Does God suffer superbia in wishing acknowledgement of the gifts he bestows upon his creation?

Man has become a blight on my creation. Like a germ that devours its benevolent environment, he takes and gives nothing in return, not to his environment nor his brethren. He knowingly wreaks havoc and absolves himself of any wrongdoing. He is ego, avaritia his birthright. The world around him, his brothers and sisters, exist only for his benefit. No other creature save man savors, revels, in its cruelty toward others.

And so I find myself at this precipice—a perfect being having created in man imperfection incarnate. I wonder if, long ago, evil once lived in me and, in seeking to rid myself of the bile, I poured forth the evil into my creation. Perhaps the vitriol sought a host it could manipulate to its own ends and slipped from me into the flesh of man, where it, too, could be fruitful. Surely, before this instant to which man refers as the universe, evil had not existed.

With no one to blame but myself, I speak the words:

“Let there be darkness.”

But she’d gone back to her own wet work, the room quiet save for her occasional moans, Dain’s grunts, and the sounds of their mouths, each working to feed the pleasure of the other. Even the walls seemed to lean in close, curious about what they were doing, perhaps even envious.

#prosechallenge

Where have all the years gone?

Would have, could have, should have.

Me, my, mine justified choice, as did means.

Now: regret for what could have been, for what might have been, for tomorrow. Sadness, repentance, disappointment reign over for you, who could have been.

Guilt: the progeny of abortion.

... Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love—and to put its trust in life!

—Joseph Conrad

Prologue

September 2083

Many people obsess over their past, but no one more than I. Perchance it’s because, as a man out of time, I left behind so much of it unlived. If that makes little sense, consider that I’m a time traveler.

Most people either find love or love finds them, and they hold onto it, stay with it their entire lives. They are the fortunate ones. The unfortunate manage to make it out of this life without experiencing love, perhaps taking solace in the juxtaposed adage that it is better never to have loved than to have loved and lost.

I was fortunate in that love found me not once but twice, in two different centuries. In the first case I never realized what I had until it was too late. In the second, I fully realized what I had, but knowing didn’t prevent my losing her. You could say I’m living proof that one can be both lucky and unlucky in love.

Love found me the second time a hundred years after the first time. Her name was Ecstasy and she once told me that she loved my loneliness—a man out of place out of time. I surmised that her love for me was born of pity. I didn’t have the heart to tell her my loneliness was the result of my losing the one woman who, at one time, mattered most to me. To this day I regret that I never told her how much she mattered. After I lost Ecstasy, I often wondered if she might not have known that all along—that my loneliness was for a woman who could never usurp her place in my life.

People love for a variety of reasons. Initially I loved Ecstasy for her body. But in time, as I realized I’d never again see my native New York City circa 1947, she came to mean much more to me.

Was our love—hers for my aloneness and mine for her acceptance of my aloneness—of any less value than any other couple’s love? Not to us it wasn’t.

Still, during those initial months, each time I poured myself into Ecstasy’s body, in the afterglow it was of Lindy, my first love, that I thought. If Ecstasy knew, she never let on.

In the pages that follow, I attempt, however clumsily, to conclude my life’s story. I will chronicle the events that led to my appearance in a future a century and a lifetime removed from where my story began.

But there is more. Much more.

Although the backdrop for my story is time travel and alternate realities, the underlying theme is a more human one—of love lost, another love found only to be lost, and of a decision, the result of a single regret brought about by the realization that my self-professed courage to never risk my heart to love was instead cowardice, to rectify a wrong in a life filled with myriad regrets.

By the end of this account, perhaps you will understand why I risked giving my past self the chance at the happiness that long eluded him. I failed and he paid with his life. But those of you who’ve read volume one of my life’s story know that. Since then I’ve many times considered making another attempt. Was I justified to try even once?

You may judge me, as it is man’s nature to judge others, or discount my story as the ravings of a lunatic mind or simply the fiction of an overactive imagination—but before you do, I ask that you read on to the end, and then ask yourself if you would have acted any differently.

Kris Kristofferson wrote, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."

Seems the more we own, the more we have to lose, the less freedom we truly have; therefore, we are trapped by our own desires.

Dave Matthews: "What I want is what I've not got, and what I need is all around me."

To those we claim there is no evidence of a god, I say, look around you, the evidence is all around us. The world, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, didn't just will itself into existence. There is design behind creation, without intelligence there can be no design.

To those who claim creation is the result of the Big Bang, I ask, "Well, what existed before existence?"

Arnold the atheist dies and finds himself at the Gates of Heaven, where he is greeted by St. Peter, who tells him that, because he was an atheist in life, he must answer a biblical question in order to be allowed in. The question is an essay question: define the meaning of Easter.

Arnold thinks long and hard and then gives his best response: “A holy man is beaten, hung from a tree where he dies, is taken down and laid in a cave. A big rock is rolled in front of the cave. Three days later, the man in the cave rolls the rock away, steps out, sees his shadow, and goes back into the cave—six more weeks of winter.”