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Can anyone be more lonely than a
shy linguist? Josiah Finn loved language more than life. To him
the spoken and written word was a feast of complex intellectual
delights. Studying linguistics gave his existence direction and
purpose. It shielded him from the messiness of relationships with
his fellow humans. It filled his hours and his days and provided
him with everything he needed. Almost everything.
He was lonely.
He craved human touch. He needed the touch of a woman as a
thirsty man needs water. He was slowly withering away in his
abstract wonderland of intellectual delights.
Then he discovered Sassanid Dynasty love poetry.
The translations couldn't do it justice. Learning the old
Persian dialects had posed no great difficulties for an
accomplished linguist. The poetry, in its original language, rang
as clearly as a bell in the empty cathedral of his heart.
His previous attempts to approach women had
invariably ended in disaster. They either laughed or totally
ignored him. In the shark-infested waters of the dating market, a
balding middle-aged professor is dead meat.
But the poetry, ah, those magic syllables, that enchanting
rhythm.
Some crazy impulse made him walk into a dance club. The
Snakepit was a maelstrom of drifting blue cigarette smoke,
mirrors, flashing multicolored lights, and loud heavy metal music
that made meaningful conversation superfluous. He sat down at a
battered wooden table two vacant chairs distant from a woman. She
was young, still in her twenties perhaps, dishwater blonde, and
she gave no sign that she noticed his presence. Or would have
particularly cared if she had.
This guy plops his fat butt down at my table. Dressed in a suit
and
tie, Coke-bottle glasses, missing half his hair. Older. Old
enough
to be my father. Geez, must be one of those prof types from the
college. Ultra-nerd. What's he doing here? Must have got lost.
He felt totally out of place. He *was* out of place. What was
he doing here anyhow? Sweating and feeling uncomfortable, that was
what he was doing here. Get up and leave? Not yet, damn it.
The poetry. Remember the poetry. Why? It'll take your mind off
the damn nervousness. He began tapping the rhythm on the tabletop.
The singsong syllables struggled to emerge from his larynx, then
he set them free and chanted. First under his breath, then with
growing confidence as the power took hold of him. The woman had
turned around and was staring at him. Her eyes were enormous. They
were immense pools of darkness.
He starts jabbering some kind of nonsense. Can't understand a
word
of it. Must be foreign talk. He has bad breath. Never mind.
What's
happening to me? I'm drifting off somewhere. Must have had too
much to drink. I'm in a fog. The fog. The Female Fog, my ex
used
to call it. When my mind would sort of curl up and go to sleep
and
the Woman Beast in me would take over. That guy's starting to
look
pretty good. I could --
Her fingernails were digging painfully into his arm as she
snarled at him, "Get me away from this place. Now. Take me home,
damn you!"
She was a natural blonde. Unless had she dyed her pubic hair
too. But he had no attention to spare for inane speculation
because he had to maintain discipline. To keep chanting the
poetry. Every time he stopped, she seemed to get distracted, to
lose interest. Right now she was kneeling astride him, and the
sight of his organ disappearing into the darkness of her, then
emerging . . . made it hard to remember . . . the cadence . . .
the syllables . . . but he had to keep chanting . . . or she'd
lose interest . . . and go away.
What am I doing humping this guy? Don't even know his name.
Can't
stop. He has bad breath. His armpits stink. Never mind. It
feels
so good having him inside me.
They fell asleep in each other's arms, and when he awoke she
was gone. The note read, "It was nice being with you, I guess.
Best wishes." He knew he'd never see her again. Somehow it didn't
matter.
Josiah had been having problems with his
department head at the college. She was a dried-up old prune in
her late 50s who seemed to have nothing better to do than to
harass him in a variety of petty ways and turn down his grant
requests.
"Pro-fes-sor Finn. Certainly you are familiar with the old
adage that scholars either publish or perish. Based on that
criterion, you are perilously . . . perilously close to perishing,
I'm afraid. If your research fails to yield at least three
published articles in the coming academic year, then you might
well consider taking up something you are better suited for.
Selling used vehicles comes to mind."
"Dr. Martinette, with your indulgence, I would like to
demonstrate to you that my research is indeed bearing fruit.
Kindly permit me to read you a brief selection of poetry from the
Sassanid dynasty."
He shouldn't have been surprised to find out that Petulia
Martinette was a virgin. At her age, too. My, my. But that hadn't
seemed to diminish her passion any. She had left deep gouges on
his back and bite marks on his neck.
How would she feel about him now? He desperately needed her
good will and patronage. His livelihood depended on it. How could
he bind her to him securely and irrevocably?
"Petulia, my pet, let me love you in a very special way . . . "
(Pause to chant a few quatrains of poetry) "This will bring you to
a peak of rapture attained only by a select few. It must remain a
dark secret between just the two of us. Now get on your hands and
knees and lower your head."
Fucking her in the ass caused momentary discomfort when he
entered, but the *chant* relaxed her back into a receptive trance
state. She was moaning with pleasure by the time he withdrew
himself from her anal aperture with a distinct slurp.
"The liquid sounds of love, my love. Now we are forever
entwined."
Her eyes were distant and dreamy as she smiled at him and
sighed. She was his, his alone . . . and he need never again worry
about his next paycheck.
Four dozen women later, Josiah had refined
and elaborated the details of the seduction system. Certain
combinations of sounds chanted in a particular cadence induced a
hypnotic state in "receptive" women. It didn't need to be ancient
Persian poetry. It didn't even need to be any kind of poetry at
all. It was the sound and the rhythm that did it, that neutralized
the brain's higher thinking centers.
It worked on lonely women, vulnerable women, women with
unfulfilled needs for affection, for touching, for simple sensual
release. Such women were abundant -- all too abundant as it turned
out. Josiah had long since had his fill of flesh and lust and
sloppy, wet couplings. Now he just wanted to be left alone to
pursue his studies of his beloved linguistics.
He wasn't left alone. Women constantly approached him, bothered
him,
*hounded* him. The only explanation he could come up with was
that he had unconsciously assimilated the "magic" seduction
cadence into his speech and manner. Or maybe it was his reputation
as a demon lover. The only remedy he could think of was to seclude
himself, to avoid human contact.
It was the cleaning lady who did him in. She was a 40-year-old
divorcee with three half-grown children and an annoying habit of
snapping her chewing gum while she talked. She had a quick and
lively intelligence, to be sure, but her tastes were rather
low-class.
She was dusting the bookshelves in Josiah's study one afternoon
when she happened to bump up against his tape recorder. It clicked
on and began playing back his transcribed notes.
Seduction? Hypnotizing people into sleeping with you? Suddenly,
Maybelline Bumpus, afficionado of soap operas and avid devourer of
romance novels, became extremely interested. She rewound the tape
and began mouthing sequences of peculiar nonsense syllables over
and over.
Josiah Finn awoke in the arms of a woman who
looked oddly familiar. Last night was a blur. All he remembered
was coming home and finding the cleaning lady still there. Had she
broken one of his Rosetta Stone facsimiles yet again (clumsy
woman!)? Had he forgotten to pay her for the week (too many things
to remember!)? No, but she had cocked her head sideways and smiled
at him with a strange glint in her eye. She was missing a couple
of teeth in front and this gave her a vaguely predatory
appearance. She had said something. What? Nothing he could recall.
She was awake now and smiling at him. It was the same
gap-toothed smile. It was, in fact, the cleaning lady who was
sharing his bed. His bed! Had they made love? They had made love!
She was saying something. No, chanting. The seduction chant! He
felt himself disappearing into a black hole as his consciousness
began to fade. A savage, mindless lust was taking possession of
him. He had to have this woman! He had to lose himself in her! He
had to . . .
Mrs. Maybelline Bumpus Finn is fiercely
protective of her husband. She respects his need to devote himself
to his studies and research free from the distractions of dealing
with people. She screens his visitors very carefully. Women have
an especially hard time getting an appointment with the professor.
Attractive women have no chance at all.
Mrs. Finn is an eminently practical person. She understands her
husband's need for an occasional tryst with the department head.
It's a matter of job security. She knows he'll always come home to
her. After all, she's the only one who speaks his language.
Copyright 2003 by M. Leo Cooper
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