I’m known professionally as P.T. Eriksen, sort of the way Edward Estlin Cummings was known as E.E. Cummings. I can’t defend the fact that I never revealed any of this to her, except that I was an asshole, and I thought secrecy and privacy might maintain some barriers between us. When they didn’t, I got uncomfortable and left.
I didn’t leave her with nothing. To atone for my crimes against her body and her psyche, I gave her an apartment. I got her into my alma mater, the prestigious Norton School of Art and Design, by arranging a fake scholarship in my grandmother’s name. You could do that kind of shit when you had money and influence, even if you were an asshole. I’d watched from across the street as she arrived for class the first day, nervous, newly dark-haired, clutching a large leather portfolio. She didn’t see me, although I was sitting in front of a coffee shop not fifty yards away. In the beginning I’d watched her a lot, watched her in her apartment, watched her on the subway. It wasn’t stalking.
Well, yeah. It was stalking, but only with benevolent intent. I had to be sure she’d swim instead of sink. I had to be sure she wouldn’t go running back to her drug-addicted boyfriend or her smooth-talking pimp as soon as I was out of the picture. I had to be sure she was as strong as I thought she was, and she’d impressed me by being even stronger than I thought she was.
Once she’d settled into her new life, I tried to settle back into mine. There was always work to do, a skyscraper to design in Jordan, and then a suspension bridge to consult on in Brussels. I stressed about her when I was away, but then I’d return and look through my binoculars into her sixth floor apartment, and find her completely safe. She was secure and busy, if not happy.
She hadn’t been happy in a while now.
I’m sorry I left you, Chere. It was better that way.
Now I was just back from Edinburgh, skulking around the same coffee shop, watching her leave Norton with her curly-haired buddy. They’d been hanging out for a couple weeks now, but he wasn’t her boyfriend. I’d checked. No, he was gay as fuck, and steady and well-adjusted, so I approved. He smiled at her and seemed to care about her. She needed that, all those things I could never give her. Kindness. Nurturing. Love.
I preferred hurting and mindfucking to love. I liked rough, encompassing control and sexual mayhem. Unfortunately, Chere didn’t need another asshole taking over her life and jerking her around. Oh, I would have treated her better than Simon, but I wasn’t sure it would feel better to her, because she was looking for romantic, caring love, and I had none of that to give.
I have nothing against romantic love. I don’t care if other people want to believe in it, but I personally think it’s shit. I think it’s fake, imaginary, stupid, a fairy tale made up for the weak and needy people of the world. It’s a construct created to sell roses on Valentine’s Day, and seats at fantasy-fulfillment chick-flicks. I avoided romance as a rule, even if I’d written out a few lovey-dovey poems for a bleach-blonde prostitute. Momentary weakness, nothing more.
Now Chere had dark hair and spiral curls she tugged on while she sat at her computer working on her design projects. I wanted to fuck those curls. I wanted to fuck Chere, but I couldn’t, because I wasn’t what she was looking for. She’d taken so many positive steps to turn around her life. She was in school. She was kicking ass. I had to leave her alone. She was serious about becoming a designer, and she’d be happier as a designer than an escort. As much as I enjoyed fucking her, she wasn’t for me.
But sometimes I wished she was for me. Sometimes I sat in the dungeon next to my bedroom and imagined her bound to the rack, or manacled to the chains anchored in the ceiling. Sometimes when I stared at her through my binoculars, I imagined knocking on her door and inviting her to my place, and taking her in that dungeon and keeping her there, even against her will.
Chere thought the worst thing between us was the leaving. She was wrong. The worst thing was what I had started wanting from her by the end, what I still wanted from her with inappropriate intensity: her tears and misery, her trembling surrender, and my selfish perversity unhinging her soul.
Chere
Andrew half-skipped, half-walked me down a silent hallway, past office doors and faint fluorescent lights. It was almost midnight and the studio wing was closed, but Andrew knew the night guard and managed to get us in.