Rose

Her laughter attracts my attention from the other side of the room and I turn around. She notices my stare and winks, eyes glittering with some heady rush, lips curved upwards with a hint of mischief.

She takes my breath away.

Her dress slips, revealing one shoulder, and I resist the urge to touch that ivory skin. She is sin and temptation wrapped in golden silk, and for a second she looks like a goddess. Her hair, black and glossy, tumbles down her back in waves and bounces with her every move, drawing attention to her curves.

Her name is Rose and she is a courtesan. Her business is the temptation of men and women, temptation with her flesh, and she is no stranger to the trade. She is so experienced, they say, that she is her own woman, and her clients are of her own choice. As she weaves through the crowd towards me and smiles, I suspect that tonight I am the prey, and she the hunter.

She walks with the air of a woman aware of her charms, the silk of her dress clinging to her body, coaxing images of nakedness to the imagination. As she walks she turns heads and I laugh as men almost knock themselves over trying to catch a glimpse.

At least, until she walks up to me, and catches my eye, and I understand why every other man in the room is watching her. It is her eyes. Eyes the colour of the honey and amber and gold, and when she looked at me, it almost seemed like she could look right through me, right through the core of the person I was. Her eyes promised heaven and hell and everything in between.

Then I notice her lips, full, red and lush, and she licked them deliberately with her tongue in a decidedly suggestive motion. She leans over and presses her body against mine, standing on her tip-toes to whisper in my ear and I feel all the blood rushing to my body.

She passes me and I catch a faint whiff of perfume. Heady, sensual and exotic. I am light-headed and aroused, and I follow her as she instructed me to. As she walked, her dress parts to allow minute glimpses of her leg and images of her nakedness dance tantalisingly through my head. My thoughts turn to the pleasures of the flesh, of hers and mine, entwined, of sweat and pleasure and pain, of her gentle moans and primal screams.

She leads me to a secluded room and bids me to draw the curtain. As I turned around, she dropped the silk to the floor, and I am reminded of the image of Venus rising from the waves,

Her name is Rose, and she is a courtesan, a temptress and pure sin. She is one night of magic.

It's in His Voice

It’s in the way his voice softens when he speaks to her.

He is not an emotional man. Quiet, even-tempered and laidback. He is typically emotionally reserved, the way a lot of traditional men are, rarely displaying their emotions because they are so unused to doing so.

Yet, there are the times when the mask drops, revealing a softer side.

As voyeuristic as it seems, I live for moments like those. I love catching the few precious seconds when a man’s face changes, when their demeanour softens, in those few minutes when they think no one is watching and they reveal another side.

It is the way he calls her name, in the different inflections of his voice as when they carry on with their private conversation.

Life has a tendency to change a person, to shield their thoughts, to build walls around their hearts, and sometimes I feel that people walk through life with their barriers constantly up, and I think that men are more likely to be emotionally guarded than women, and some definitely more than others.

It feels privileged to catch a moment of softness, with emotions raw and exposed, only because these moments are so rare. The small nuances of voice, the softening of the face, the gentleness of actions. Small things, and yet these are the things that possibly give life the most meaning. The things that give the world meaning and colour.

It is in the way he speaks to her.

Monologue

“I thought I was invincible, y’know? It’s the poison of youth, it tricks you into thinking that nothing can harm you.”

“I had to try absolutely everything, everything in the world that was offered to me, and I suppose part of that was the dark side of the world.”

“Yeah, nothing wrong with a little experimenting.”

“Sure, I was careful. Careful that I didn’t get into anything that was blatantly wrong, but those grey areas – the grey areas that no one ever explains – those were the things that I thrived on.”

“I enjoyed living with the shadows, surrounded by people who were rampantly having sex, and drinking and doing drugs. Absolutely. Not that I did any of that, mind you. But nothing wrong with a bit of partying.”

“Well, maybe some drugs. Stuff that I made sure didn’t have any huge lasting side effects. You can’t say you know what it’s all about when you’ve never tried it.”

“The point is, it was like living in another world. A world of decadence, sheltered by the veneer of civil society. But I knew the ugly side of what lay beneath. I knew what happened when the sun went down and these beautiful, upstanding citizens peeled off their masks and showed their true veneers.”

“Bloody hell, it was interesting as.”

“The thing was, I always enjoyed rebelling against authority. Rules were made to be broken, I suppose. A bit of a rebel child. That’s when I started doing things, that, well… Perhaps weren’t as accepted in society.”

“I was angry. Perhaps at God as well. And goodness knows why. I guess I just wanted to see what would happen if I did what I did.”

“I wanted to see what it was like if I stopped being the golden child.”

“Call it a bit of a test.”

“It was interesting. Y’ know what was the most interesting bit?”

“People never believed me.”

“I was the golden child for so long I got away with absolute bloody murder, I tell you, and no one believed that angelic little me could possibly be behind all that.”

“No, it’s all rumours, they told me. We know better.”

“And they would smile and nod. And I would smile and nod as well, but inside I would laugh.”

“No, I never did it to hurt anyone. I’m an observer, you see.”

“Action and reaction, and that sort of thing.”

“I grew out of it. Basically because I knew I was starting to venture into things that were a little too dark for my liking.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. The whole sex, drugs and rock and roll thing, that was a blast.”

“But you just outgrow, that sort of thing, y’know?”

“Part of me grew up very fast back then. From an innocent sheltered background, to those days. It was pretty interesting.”

“Now?”

“Well, I can’t lie. It was fun, and I would have done it all over again. Part of my craves for those days of decadence and freedom. Every now and again I taste it in the wind, and my senses throw me back to those dark halls of self-indulgence and I’d wish I was there again.”

“There’s a reason why so many people fall into sin, because it’s so damned enjoyable. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t be doing it, hey?”

“I guess you could say I found myself. Or rather, I found that a part of me would die the more I stayed with them. Maybe I’m not as bad-as as I thought I was.”

“I guess I decided I wasn’t invincible after all.”

A Letter to My Unborn Child

A doctor once told me that I might not be able to have children.

To me, that was a devastating couple of days. It was just one of those things that I assumed would happen in life; a natural progression of things to come, and to be told that I might not be able to have the one thing I wanted so much was an affirmation of how much I truly craved family of my own.

I have since made peace with myself. Life is in God’s hands, after all, and I believe that crying over a possibility that may not come to pass is a life I cannot lead.

So I sit here and reflect on the twist of fate that has brought me here today, on this cold wintry night, as I think about my unborn child, and the things I would like to say.

What does any mother want to tell her child? What indeed?

There are so many things I could say to you, so many things that seems trivial and clichéd, but these are things that I hope you will carry with you as you step through life.

To my unborn child,

Or children (the more the merrier, certainly a basketball team would be nice),

I wish you love and happiness.

I hope you never want for the love that your father and I unconditionally offer, or those of your family. I hope our love does not make you grow up spoilt and sheltered, and that you have a larger capacity for love for others than you do for yourself.

I hope you will constantly question me, for although mothers mean well, they do not always know everything, and I hope you will grow up with a boundless imagination and a million questions. May you learn to form your own opinions, opinions from knowledge that you seek, and not take the words of others entirely at face value.

May you take the advice of others well, and may you stand by your values. There will always be people who disagree, there will be those who try to sway you, and there will be those who mean you harm, but may you rise above the ill will of others, and lead your life to the best of your abilities. Every challenge you overcome will make you stronger, but may your faith be unwavering, and your heart be gentle.

Every mother hopes that she will be able to protect her children from the darkness of the world. It is a rather depressing thought, to think that one’s children will be subject to grief and sadness, to watch your eyes lose their innocence but that is life, and I can only hope that your father and I will be there to help you through everything.

May you be kind and humble. May you make many mistakes, but may you learn from the mistakes that you have made. Remember, you always have choices, and it is the choices you make that will shape your future.

I wish you greatness, if your wish is to be great, but I counsel caution, for the path to greatness is littered with greed and corruption. And if you wish nothing more than to live your life in peace, I wish you peace, for I only wish you contentment.

May you live your life by God’s will.

I will always love you.