Order amid Chaos: Kindred is a saga.

I really came apart when she put her arm around me. I don’t recall how much time I lost in the storm. Her touch was fiery. Burnt ecstasy through me that brought me to my knees. My sorrow was thrown into excruciating contrast, as I felt them both together.

I am not surprised that I was overwhelmed. Hadn’t been held the way she held me in a long time. I craved it so much, the intimacy. The caring. I was tired of being stoic all the time. So tired of being hard. I think any girl could have affected me to a degree. Serai though, was different in fact, not just metaphor. Her hand against my cheek felt more powerful, more intimate than the deepest penetration I’d ever achieved before.

She broke through my stony facade like it was porcelain. Opened me to my core. I was so unprepared, I wonder how I survived. Either one of us, really.

*****
I felt more human in that moment than I had felt in many many years. He poured his soul out to me, he couldn’t help it, and his words were laced with emotions so powerful they reached inside me and exploded. His ambience, aura, his spirit filled the room, dwarfing me. I felt like I’d been flung into an ocean with casual tides that could move continents and not even notice I was there. I felt stripped down by my own reaction to him.

Sympathy, it came rushing through my veins like fresh blood. I couldn’t bear his suffering. It called to me, to a soul I hadn’t felt in a while. It beckoned, and I could do nothing but follow.

So I drew near his posing figure and without hesitation put my arms around his shoulders, and pressed the side of his shaven head to my chest. I felt so many things all at once then, they collided into each other with alarming force. My first thought was how small I felt next to him, and even though I am only an inch above five feet tall, I never, ever feel small.

I didn’t say anything. Words refused to come to my lips, like I was winded. My mind was so preoccupied with growing hunger, confusion, desire, agony, and fear that I truly began to feel my composure erode. I couldn’t think. I wanted . . . God I couldn’t decide. I wanted to feed, on his emotions, I felt so alive, leeching vitality from his agony. I wanted to feel him, every way I could, physically, mentally, I wanted to hear his voice, I wanted to see his lips say my name again.

My hunger grew. I could feel his pulse throughout his body, resonating like the bass of a rock concert. It grew to a thunder in my skull, throbbing. My own heartrate had risen fantastically. I knew he would begin to notice my increasing vexation all to soon. I didn’t care. I needed him, inside me, as quickly as was possible.

I leant closer, my hands holding the sides of his head. My own was buzzing incessantly. I felt drunk. I pressed my body tightly against his, feeling the flow of every fluid in me quicken. My lips brushed past his ear, and hovered there. I was trembling quite suddenly.

"Serai?" I heard him whisper. My jaw clenched in furious conflict, indecision. Jarrod began moving again, and his arms encircled me effortlessly.

"Serai, are you okay?" He tried to turn his head to look in my desperate eyes, but I held him fast. I was far stronger than he had expected, and it was all beginning to frighten him. I could taste the tremor in his voice. But I was frozen.

"Please, Serai . . . its okay," he pleaded. He got one arm inside mine, and reached up towards my face. I watched his long, tapered fingers approach with mixed horror and flaming desire. They drew near, and finally found my face. I couldn’t move, as he tenderly cupped my jaw, with two fingers curled up behind my ear.

I shut my eyes and opened my mouth.

"Run, Jarrod. You have to go quickly now. I am so sorry."

The words tumbled out in a terrified rush. I was desperate. He had to get out now, or he’d never leave. I was out of control, and that horrified me. I never lost control. I forced myself to release him, and I stumbed a retreat backwards several steps, to my easel. My breathing was hard and fast.

"Dont!" I cried. Jarrod jumped at my volume.

"Just go, please go I’m sorry," I begged, loudly.

"What? I don’t understand," his voice was shaky, catching in his mesmeric throat.

"Its my . . . fault. I, can’t, right now. Just go. Quickly."

I held my breath as Jarrod’s forlorn eyes probed me.

He clapped his hat on his head and blew out of the room like a tempest.

He took my spirit with him. I collapsed to my knees and sagged sideways against the wall. I felt it vibrate as the front door slammed. The light was still baking three covered boxes with bright light. My sketch was close to finished, most of the details were there. Only the face was empty, a ghostly white island amid my chiaroscuro.

"What have I done?" I asked the faceless man.

I realized then that I was crying. Tears were running down my face freely- I’d been weeping for quite some time. And that scared me. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. The feelings Jarrod had allowed me to remember were amusing at first. But now he was gone, and the feelings weren’t amusing anymore, I was a shattered thing, broken shards. I did not feel powerful anymore, not confidant, not myself at all. I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted to be held by the man who I’d been about two inches away from consuming entirely, barely ninety seconds ago.

What was he doing to me? No. What had he done to me. It was over. What could I do now? I had lost control, and probably terrified him to his core, then told him to leave. To run. I would never know what he was. I would never understand. I’d never again feel him close to me, or see his lips say my name.

It doesn’t matter who you are, never is a very, very long time.

Order amid Chaos: Kindred is a saga.

Several minutes passed silently before Jarrod spoke again. I was content in this, as absorbed as I became in my art. Offereing to sketch him was perhaps not the wisest course in that early time, as it opened my empathy towards him even wider than it already was. When I sketched a figure, I always thought of it as a character, an individual, with personality, emotions, history and future. I sought to enter that persona, in order to represent some of it on the canvas. My own consciousness became muted, as I felt every shade of black I created on the page, as I experienced that which created my subject itself.

So when Jarrod did speak, I was already halfway inside his head.

*****
“She was my first,” I began, “and my last. We were together four years. That’s a long time as young as we were. I miss her still, and its been nearly a year since it all ended. There is still a void where she should be, because I can’t replace her. Trying to would be a lie. Be unfair to whoever I tried to fit in that mould.

“In the end, it was about maturity. We were both just kids, and kids can’t maintain a real relationship for very long. Change too much. Problem was, we both thought were were quite mature, in our own way. I thought she was still childish. She thought I was becoming some boring old man.

“I was constantly wrapped up in the future. Was totally occupied with my plan to get there. The step by step process I, and she, would follow to get to a point where I could start enjoying life. She was already enjoying life. I began to accuse her of not having goals. Wanting to be a child forever. I stopped appreciating the present. Stopped respecting her, as she was.

“We fought. Things came to a head… Think I made one of the single biggest mistakes in my life then. Forced a choice on her. Demanded that she choose to come with me now, or its over. She didn’t come.

“So I went away for a while. When I came back, she was being held in a psychiatric hospital. She literally snapped- had a nervous breakdown, and spent her twenty-first birthday in a mental ward. Apparently she was calling for me for days.

“By the time I got there, with hope burning wildly in my heart, she had turned around. Told me point blank that she couldn’t trust me. Said a few things I didn’t want to hear actually, but it was that trust thing that broke me.

“We spoke again once after that, but by then I was so bitter that all I could do was hurl anger at her in selfish self-defence. There’s been nothing since.

“Now she haunts me. Her memories are my strongest feelings, as distant as they are. I don’t know what to do with them. And as bad as I am with the past, I am worse with the future. I defined myself by what I was going to be with her. And now, I am alone. Have no idea where I am going. I still can’t live in the moment the way she could. Happily.

"I’ve told this story so many times now. I mean, I said before I haven’t met many new people, but there have been a few. And at long intervals. But the story is still the same," I said. Then I left the silence hanging. I let my breathing fill my thoughts. Deeply in, hold, deeply out. Deeply in, hold, deeply out. Slowly. It was the only thing keeping me from sobbing uncontrollably.

"Are you sure about that?" Serai asked after several breath cycles. "I would be surprised if you said that very last part to the last person to whom you told this ’same’ story." She paused, and I considered her words. Tried to anyway, I was pretty busy feeling sorry for myself.

"The story may start off the same, these last few times you’ve told it, but it isn’t the same. Its longer now. You have done a few things worth remembering, worth mentioning. You have survived for one! That is an accomplisment. Your… muse did not quite so well, I daresay. You only feel like the story is the same now because you’ve underlined the same part repeatedly. You have little to compete with how you feel about her, about that time, in intensity, but there will be. I promise you that. There will be a joy that makes all this suffering worthwhile. A joy that without those weeks, months of hardship, would not have been possible, because you would not have been able to appreciate it.

"To love and lose, as I see it, is not to forever sour love, but makes one love the stronger, for as long as it lasts, with its fragility, its preciousness, revealed."

Stunned. I was literally stunned, in shock. My breathing pattern was interrupted by the raw emotion, pure intense feeling that poured out of her and into the air in her studio. I couldn’t interpret the way her voice felt. She overwhelmed me. I felt my eyes start to burn, and my throat harden. I can now, but then, I couldn’t have repeated any of the words she’d just said. My mind was completely occupied with the effect her words had on me. I wanted to feel anything the way she felt it. All I had was loss. She had belief. Love. Conviction. I had emptiness. I had love- and then it left me. I had nothing.

Then she touched me.

Order amid Chaos: Kindred is a saga.

Serai provided for me exceptionally well. So well, it was like she had expected me to be there that day. Int he bathroom, with its intimidating, seductive mirror, I found my long coat hanging, and smelling clean. On the countertop there was a folded towel beneath a virgin bar of soap, a razor, and mercifully, a brand-new toothbrush.

The feeling swept over me quite suddenly, as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My face was a little pale, and the beard getting dark against my skin. I thought it gave me an intensity that I liked. I would shave anyway, she’d given me a razor after all. My eyes stared out at me like an accusation. Remember why you are here. And the warmth of appreciation and plain old happiness was crushed by tons of familiar regret. My oppressive self-pity.

For ten minutes I tried to steam, scald, and scrub the despair out through my skin. A war of emotions resumed within me. The battle of attrition that was claiming more and more of my energy every day. My spirit was waning.

I’d become pretty good at soaking sorrow with willful napalm. I used the stubborn resolve to move on, but Charlie always creapt back when I started to relax again. Why can’t I just enjoy myself here? I asked in a desperate whisper.

Gradually, it started to work again. I forced myself to think of Serai, and the situation I found myself in suddenly. I said things like "This is life motherfucker, start paying attention to it," and "Look at where you are right now! What the hell are you complaining about?" My language always got worse when I was angry.

I wanted to stay near her, I suddenly realized. Seeing her, or maybe just being close by her, made a difference. I hadn’t felt better in months, then when I met her eyes at breakfast. I could lose myself in that moment. I could become that moment, and learn to be a real person again.

Philosophy only gets you so far though. So I started being practical again. I always said that pragmatic was one of my favorite words. I shaved, looking myself in the eye as often as the sharp blades and slicable skin would allow. How was I supposed to keep myself here with Serai? What are we going to do?

In that moment I remembered how bad I am with new people. And I am too calculating. And insecure. And inflexible. Go with the fucking flow, Jarrod.

I walked back out into Serai’s living room. I felt scrubbed raw. I was neither up or down after the crazy leaps and dives my mood had just been through. If Serai could see any difference in me, I couldn’t read it from her expression. All I saw was the only smile I’d ever want to see again. It started to matter a little less what I ended up doing that day. Just let me see her smile.

"Are you feeling better now?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you again," I was stuck for words, so I just stood there.

"Well," she said. "I wonder, what do two people who have just met do on a day such as this?"

I paused. Then admitted, "No idea. I am really bad at this part. Don’t do it very often."

"Is that right? Well, no, I suppose you do not strike me as the sort who is good at making casual, superficial friends. Do forgive me for analysing you though!" She stood from her soft white leather chair. The billow of her satiny robe almost sent me to the floor. I felt a little like a Spanish bull in fact.

"I haven’t a clue what ‘normal’ people do when they first meet either. So don’t feel bad about it all right? I suppose then we should do something that normal people most certainly wouldn’t do today." She started towards the back of the flat. "Come to my studio, I will sketch or paint you- you’ve a striking face you know. Bring your hat and coat though: they’ll make for an interesting persona. And we’ll talk. I would like to hear the story behind the character."

A giddy sort of anticipation went humming through my veins as I entered her studio. I felt like I was being taken somewhere sacred. It was the second bedroom really, but had an easel in the centre. There were various boxes and chairs positioned dramatically against the walls and in corners. The light was a little dim, very ambient. Serai attended to that quickly by setting a bright lamp to shine on a particular set of boxes.

"Can you sit here for me?"

I was smiling. Relief filled me. I would get to sit here and stare at this gorgeous creature while she started back at me for who knows how long.

"Sure," I replied.

"Get the coat hanging, yes, there. Lean your elbows on your knees… actually, hold the hat. One foot there. The left one down here. Yes. Oh I like that already," she made motions with her hands while I posed. "Now, look down at your hat. That’s brilliant!"

A large sheet of paper went over the board on the easel, and Serai’s charcoal began its dance. I didn’t get to stare at her at all in the end. But not staring at her was tantric. I smiled.

"No no, you can’t smile. The battered warrior does not smile!"

"Battered warrior?" I asked.

"Aye," she affirmed. "That’s what I’m seeing here. You have a strong form, you figure is sharp. Your eyes are intense, bold. Your clothes are confident, they look like you’re going somewhere. But your posture is… well battered. A little worn. You have a strength, but it is being sorely tested," she paused.

"Artistically, I mean."

I couldn’t reply for several very long heartbeats. I was not used to be examined. Usually it was me assessing other people- as I was failing to do to Serai quite successfully. Her accuracy made me feel… odd. Then I began to think about how I could always construe horoscopes to mean something relevant to me. Even for other star signs.

"What if I do smile?" I asked. "What’s that mean?"

I felt her gaze really fall on me fully for a moment before she replied. It made it harder not to look up at her.

"Why don’t you tell me."

Order amid Chaos: Kindred is a saga.

My life was rapidly spiralling into a cycle of self-pity. I found myself spending more and more time alone, contemplating my suffering, my sorrow, my pain. So much that I didn’t have time to move on from it. I’d lost an important part of my life, and wasn’t allowing myself to believe in anything else. Only my pain was real, everything else was just going through the motions.

Until I met her. Looking back, I shouldn’t have been waiting. Looking back, I am incredibly lucky that someone extended a hand to pull me out of my funk. I should have pulled myself out. But it was her, and she came like an explosion.

No one had ever come into my life like she’d been there before. I tend to put people off, I come off as a bit too much, a bit weird. I have to ease people into my personality if I want them to know me at all. But she came as if she knew who I really was already. She showed me compassion, without fear. She was a challenge for me to keep up with, not one for me to slow down to.

It made sense after a while.

*****
There was so much I could tell him, too much, I knew. He would either not believe me and fear my insanity; or worse, he would believe, and be far more afraid. So I decided we’d talk about him, try to anyway, and perhaps come to understand why I liked it so much when he looked at me.

"What is your name?" I asked finally. We sat on intersecting sides of my glass square dining table.

He finished chewing before answering- slowly, as if he were thinking his answer over.

"Jarrod."

"Is that your real name?" I asked. I hoped it was, I hoped he trusted me at least a little. He half-smiled, and I suddenly knew why the line running down the left side of his face was deeper than the right.

"Yes it is," he replied. "What’s yours?"

"Mostly, people call me Sarah. But that isn’t my name, its not spelled or pronounced that way; average people struggle with my real name more than you can imagine. My name is Serai," I smiled. Talking to him felt good.

"I do not consider myself average, Serai. Well met." He held his coffee cup up in toast. Watching his lips form my name was more thrilling than I’d expected. The whole experience was something close to surreal. So many, countless years upon years had gone by since I had found someone I could engage with. Mostly, men collapsed before my sexuality, and women found me intimidating, even when I tried to be meek. But this Jarrod, surely even more on the back foot than I—after all, I was in my own house—met my gaze. He met my gaze and I liked it. I wanted to keep going, throw myself at him, and upset my perfect, tedious balance even more.

But not yet. Physically I would still overwhelm him, and wouldn’t be able to control my thirst. If I took him now, I would probably drink every drop, and never forgive myself for it.

"It’s a lovely name," he said. "I feel like I’ve heard it before."

“Perhaps I whispered it in your ear as I undressed you last night." I hadn’t. I smiled at him as he suppressed a rush of adrenaline.

"Maybe," I don’t think he believed me, but he smiled with me anyway. I probed a little deeper.

"You had friends last night…but you seemed very alone," I said quietly.

He looked up at me rather suddenly, and wiped his lips. He had a goatee, and his face would be rough with a day or two of beard. But I found myself indulging once more in his eyes. He was looking at me hard now, concentrating this time only on my face.

"You’re very perceptive," he said finally.

"I have had a lot of practice," I replied. "And it wasn’t hard to see who’d be sleeping with whom in your little group. You looked like you could use some real company, rather than that gangly fellow you were staring daggers at."

Something strange acted out across his features just in that instant. I’m pretty sure I watched gratitude, hate, desire, and despair all leap into a half-second battle royale, then disappear back into mild confusion and genuine amusement.

"Owe you one for stopping me attacking him. As much as I would enjoy it, I don’t think it would have helped things much," Jarrod took a bite of his bacon.

"You owe me nothing!" I almost laughed. I was curious though, to known how he would have handled himself in a fight, even though I wouldn’t have let anyone get near him had it come to blows.

"I was there alone too, remember? I needed the company as much as you did." I have been alone for much, much longer, I added silently. At this Jarrod smiled broadly, genuinely.

"Ah, so self-serving after all!" He said. "Am I all you hoped for?" I laughed just a little.

"You just may be, Jarrod. You just may be." I paused. "Go have your shower and I’ll clean up." We stood, and he took a step towards me. I felt adrenaline of my own burning through my stomach.

"Thank you Serai. I really appreciate all this, already," and he stepped around me.

As I listened to the sound of hot water splashing around his bare feet, I contemplated what I was doing. I didn’t make friends easily. Usually it was a waste of time- I simply could not allow people the chance to know me; there were very real boundaries that could not be crossed. I had to lie to have friends, and I would eventually lose them anyway. What was the point?

There were, of course, ways to get around it. To make him like me. Unbelievably, I was already pondering this option! Incredible selfishness! To take away his life, his death, so that I would not have to suffer solitude any longer. But then, if I was right, neither would he.

Alone. After living nearly eight hundred years, I feel just as alone as I vaguely remember feeling at seventeen. Maybe even more so. Until tonight. Tonight I feel like more.

******

I took quite some time before deciding whether to approach the young man in the black coat, or watch him snap and lash out at the lanky, slightly older man with irritating hair. Clearly, one or the other was going to happen. I could taste the quiet rage building in the man with the coat. I don’t think I have developed any sort of extra-sensory perception of emotion; I think I have simply learned how to read the signs over the years, but maybe I’m wrong. The feeling was so strong.

I could hear most of their conversation from where I sat on my high corner chair. They had claimed three small couches across the barroom, the two men, one other, and two young women together. Apparently the two I watched were discussing a mutual friend—although there was so much mockery in the voice of the long-haired one, I wonder what the word friend means to him.

I’d noticed the one in the hat and coat as soon as I’d entered my favourite little bar. He had such energy, such intensity. When the bands were playing their sets earlier, he had been absorbed by the music, and cried for more with almost ridiculous passion. His eyes flicked around the room incessantly, even when he was talking to someone, as he seemed quite happy to maintain conversation and survey his surroundings simultaneously. Every so often though, I saw him catch himself staring into the eyes of one of his companions, and immediately turn aside his intense gaze.

******

‘That’s it,’ I thought to myself. ‘Fuck it. Fuck it, and fuck him. I’ve been here years longer than this lanky bastard, and I’ll be here long after he’s gone. But first…’ I stood up quite suddenly, making the room reel pleasantly around my ears. ‘I’ll grab a shot or two of tequila, then tell him where to shove it.’

I sauntered over to the bar (or at least I thought I was sauntering) enjoying the dramatic snap the heels of my boots made against the wooden floor, and the swirl of my longish coat around my knees.

"Two shots of tequila and a bourbon and coke thanks," I slapped a note on the bar, not figuring I’d see much of it returned to me. I’d shot through the first half of my tequila before my few coins made their voyage back to my pocket.

"Rough night?" asked the gorgeous woman I’d seen earlier. I knew it was her before I’d even turned to look; not a doubt in my mind. And for a moment, I just stared at her.

"Might get that way in about three minutes," I said.

"The tall one, he is giving you some grief, yes?" she asked, coming just a little closer. I blinked a few times, my fuzzy head frustrating me immensely.

"Yeah, you could say that."

"He’s a bit bigger than you. And not quite as drunk."

"What’s your point?" I knew what her point was.

"Is it worth the very real chance of you leaving here with a broken nose?" she asked.

"Seemed like it before you came along," I couldn’t shift my gaze from her incredible eyes. And my voice hadn’t taken on that cocky, rough edge it often had when I was intoxicated. "Now I’m not so sure."

"I think maybe you’d rather come for a walk with me."

"I think you’re right." The words tumbled out of my mouth slightly before I’d realized what they meant. Not forty seconds ago, I’d been violently furious at Cameron, and now, I was following this woman outside. Rage had been utterly replaced by terrified fascination. She’d compelled me to leave with her just like that, and I was hardly even thinking about sex.

Outside the air was shockingly cold. The mistiness in my head began to clear, and I suddenly realized I hadn’t told my friends I was leaving. I turned back slightly.

"Don’t worry about them. The short dark-haired one saw you leave the bar with a woman. They won’t worry about you tonight," she promised.

I was having a lot of trouble trying to speak. Who was this…where are…how did…when…how long? All I was sure of was that every time she looked at me, a giddy rush of adrenaline shot through my body, and my palms were a little sweaty.

"You are quite drunk, you know?"

"Yes," I admitted, feeling far more ashamed of the fact than was usual.

"I’m not judging you, just explaining why I’m not saying much right now. You will forget anything I do say, and wake up tomorrow morning extremely confused anyway." She smiled at me and time stopped. "Oh, I am not planning on using you for hours of sexual gratification tonight, so don’t get too excited." Time started up again.

"I am good at remembering things while drunk." I tried to hide my momentary explosion of ecstasy.

"That, or you’re far better at forgetting than you can ever know."

**
When I woke up, the wretched taste in my mouth immediately told me I was not at home. No matter how drunk, I never skip brushing my teeth before bed. I sat up quickly when memories clicked. Far too quickly. A spike I couldn’t see drove itself down the back of my skull, and made my ears ring. I groaned a little, and held the sides of my head carefully.

A moment later she was standing in the doorway, wearing a long silky robe of wonderful crimson—open. My normal eyes slammed against lace like an Indy car into brick, but my mind’s eye raced ahead. I assume a smirk accompanied the little laugh I heard her make.

"One would imagine you’d never seen a girl’s skin before. Get dressed, we’ll have breakfast!" She slipped out of the room just as I realized I was successfully tenting her sheets in my glorious morning nakedness. I laughed for several seconds quite helplessly contemplating the fact that this woman had apparently undressed me, and I couldn’t remember a single second of it.

I stood up gingerly, muttering "I will never drink tequila again."

"It’s not really the tequila’s fault," she replied from God-knows-where. I pulled my pants on, incredulous.

"’Scuse me?"

"Don’t blame your memory loss on the tequila. There were so many spirits coursing through your veins last night, it seems unfair to blame just one," she replied casually.

‘I can’t believe she can hear me.’ I thought. There was no way she was close enough to have heard my little oath. I pulled on a shirt and stepped out of her bedroom. Glancing back, I saw that I had in fact slept on a fold-away bed. Too bad.

The layout of the place was pretty simple. I walked forward towards an arcadia glass door about thirty feet away. Thirty feet beyond that, and one would have been hanging mid-air above Sydney harbour. The kitchen was off to the side. I sat down at the bar.

"Nice place," I said as a smiling cup of coffee was placed in front of me right on cue. "What the fuck am I doing here?"

"For the next couple of hours, recovering from alcoholic over-indulgence my friend. You’re probably a food-then-shower type on these days, right? Ah, see, you’re looking better already."
Either she’d put something in the coffee (other than sugar and milk) or her mere presence was invigorating. Vaguely disconcerting, and certainly bizarre; the whole time she looked at me, I felt as if I were feeding off her eyes. They were just so deep! I couldn’t help but look right into them—and I try not to focus on people’s eyes for too long. They tend to get a bit squeamish. She seemed not to mind, if anything, she enjoyed it because she held my gaze for much longer than was necessary.

"Okay, so after this hangover cure?" I asked after she’d turned back to her frying pan of delicious smells.

"Then we’ll talk! I’ll explain, I promise. I just want you to be ready."

Something about the way she said that did not make me laugh. Her tone was light, cheerful, but left no space for mirth or mockery. She meant what she said, and I believed her.

"Will you at least tell me your name?" I asked.

"Will you tell me yours?" she turned again, with no smile on her face.

‘Oh if only she could see me now. Being served breakfast by this half-naked knock-out after waking up in her waterfront flat, and we don’t even know each others names. This is fabulous.’

“There is no object, no prize. The game is simply to survive,” Marc said. “Sort of like real life.”

“Are there obstacles, or traps you’ve installed to make this game more difficult?”

“Not as much as you are thinking, lad. This is a real survivor contest, this island is a real jungle, with real animals, real weather. There is no TV crew basecamp, since all the cameras are automated. The players have nowhere to turn, no one to help them, except each other. That really should be sufficient to prove difficult to deal with,” Mark concluded. “What is more interesting than life and death?”

“Death? Surely you won’t allow anyone to die on this island,” an incredulous note-taker asked.

“I won’t be doing anything at all, madam. Once the camera starts rolling, the only people who will have any control over what happens on that island are the players.”

“What can you tell us about them, the players?”

“Oh, well, there are forty people being placed on the island as we speak. We checked the place out first, by the way, it is large and fertile enough to support forty people quite indefinitely- provided that they’re at least a little bit clever about it.”

“Anyway, I won’t say too much about their personalities as to give away too much, but we were careful in our selections. There are definitely some interesting characters in the group, I assure you! I interviewed them each personally at one point or another. There are a few natural leaders- or people who are accustomed to leadership -some middle management types, some labourers. Some of them get their tans from flourescent lights, others are quite out-doorsy already. There is a fair mix, I think, to give the group plenty of chance to flourish in a number of different configurations.” Marc replied.

“Can you give us any more information about this island?”

At this, Marc’s grin was wider than ever. “At least you lot waited a good ten minutes before asking that. Once again, for the last time I hope: no. I will not be revealing the location of the island to you- or anyone, so don’t worry about missing a scoop. I have gone to great pains to make sure no one will be able to get to this island while the game is on. This is a social experiment, ladies and gentlemen. The first its kind- with a real, isolated environment. The whole point is that this little group is to be its own society, untouchable by the rest of us. I want to see what happens. I think it will be interesting. So if you want to have something interesting to write about over the next year or two, then quit trying to find the damn island, and just watch the video streams!”

“That’ll be all for today, I think. Broadcast will be up in about three hours.”

Apparently I’ve crossed the language barrier recently… acidsugar I’m the daily read of someone who’s blog I cannot read! I wish I had the powers of laungauge that this author has. He/she switches back and forth between English and German like its a pair of socks. I am just hanging on by my fingernails with English. Fighting for every phrase!

“Flirtation? I have not presided over a flirtation case in quite some time, young man. Most of the world seems to realize that you cannot simply approach someone you do not know and talk to her! Who do you think you are, some sort of Errol Flynn character?”

James realized immediately that this was not going to go well. One did not hear such ugly words as ‘flirtation’ nor the Errol Flynn moniker tossed around in polite conversation.

****
“Did you at any time actually take into account the feelings of your victim, Mr. Banks?” asked the prosecutor.

“Of course I did. I had seen her several days in a row, eating her lunch alone in the park. I thought she would perhaps enjoy some company, someone to talk to for a little while. I thought she might get lonely day after day.”

“So you admit to monitoring your target over an extended period, planning- premeditating -your assault?”

****
“What was it about Miss Swan that caused you to select her for this attack?”

“Nothing!” replied James. “I didn’t know anything about her. I still don’t. She was just there.”

“You knew at least one thing, sir. She was a woman. And another, she was alone. Defenseless against your brazen advances.”

James did not reply.

“You did know she was a woman?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you are obviously a man,” the prosecutor paused briefly. “Are you homosexual, Mr. Banks?”

“No!”

“So you find women attractive.”

“Yes.”

“Do you find Miss Swan attractive?”

Briefly, James wondered what it would have been like in the old days, when an accused man was permitted defense counsel. The impatient prosecutor was on a roll, and repeated his question.

“Yes,” James replied.

“Indeed.”

*****
“Are you in a sexual relationship currently, Mr. Banks?”

“No.”

“Would you like to be?”

“I would like to be in a romantic relationship.”

“Would that invovle sex?” asked the prosecutor.

“Probably.”

“Would you enjoy the sex?”

“Yes.”

“With an attractive woman?”

“Yes.”

“Less important, it would seem, was Miss Swan’s supposed loneliness, in comparison to your own, then.”

“No! I wasn’t thinking about myself when I saw her, I was thinking about her!”

“Your honor!” The prosecutor was actually suppressing laughter. “He speaks of empathy!”

“Duly noted counsellor.”

Continually worse, James was now labelled an empathetic flirt by the court.

“You were the lonely one, hungry for company yourself. Hungry for sex, which you saw in Miss Swan. She sat innocently enjoying her quiet moments in her busy day, wishing only to be allowed her own privacy but for a few minutes a day. You empathetically approach her, seeking what a man seeks from a woman – a woman you do not know! It is offensive for me to even imagine your thoughts. Did you expect her to submit to you right there on the park bench?”

“No! I didn’t want any submission. I just wanted to talk.”

“To what end? You sought the company of a woman, Mr. Banks. Men do not converse idly with women. It is an accepted fact. You approached a woman you did not know. You are a man. Men want sex from women, as you say yourself you do. Particularly from attractive women, as you say Miss Swan is. What are we to believe, sir? We are to believe that you did not want sex from this attractive woman who sat alone? I think not, Mr. Banks. I think not.”

I took a step towards existing today.

oh, and she’s an absolute pleasure to talk to.

This is one of those I wrote in a notebook while in a lecture

I am sitting here quite remarkably amid a group of young women. I am the lone male in this little group today. Two of them I know, two I just met today. This has become typical! I- in the past few months -have met so many girls, far out-numbering the men I’ve come to know. Its not so suprising to me; I have always had a sort of social affinity or preference for the company of women. I never quite decided why this is. Maybe a simple case of heightened sexual attraction. Maybe a more metaphysical attraction- that is, perhaps something beyond the physical, something about the feminine which resounds more harmoniously within me. Something about creation, art, romance… these are, I suppose, not typical attributes of masculinity.

So fine, I like women better, and I seem to be reasonably good at getting to know them. So why am I still single? Where is that next level? I mean, so many times, I have heard the despair of men (or women) who find it so hard to even meet new people. I seem to have more luck, skill, whatever, in this regard. So where do I go from here? I don’t suppose I am complaining really. Its not a terrible stifling problem just yet. It is something of a tease though! And it does give me something to work on. After all, who would I be if I weren’t always working on something?