the gorgeous emile arrived back yesterday and was so excited to see me she cancelled her shifts and met me down at dy, looking like a ranch hand in her straw hat, tanned and sexy, seeing her face was like being poured into a vat of treacle, i was slightly melting and it felt very much like i was where i need to be, we both are, it's a known fact, if there is a fundamental truth or intelligence in the universe which i know there is, then it has brought us both together for the correct reasons, i have known emile would manifest for 30 odd years, however she did not see me coming being slightly outta whack i guess. i helped her move into her new home, turned out i know her flat mate, the crystal woman, and the guy who owns the house turned out to be a really interesting person, so generally there was a nice vibe in the air.
we sat in the kitchen chatting and emilie asked me, 'would you like to have a baby?'
i was surprised and said yes almost immediately, after which i received a baileys cocktail, mmm, must have misread her.
i noticed emilie had a book called, 'how to make men fall in love with you' i started to flick through it and warned her that most of the strategies in it would not work. I helped put her clothes away, a range of dresses and skirts, no specific styles or themes, just a lot of clothes, we assembled her futon and set up the ambiance in the room, very nice, i know she's going to be happy there.
later we had a meal down at the beach, where finally we spoke about us, the state of play being emilie does not find me sexually attractive, she has quite a distorted perception of me, i am not bad enough, slim enough, sexy enough and quite probably rich enough although that was not spoken, yeah it's true i am none of those things in an obvious way, more subltle i guess, other women do find me attractive, but i concede it's all about pheremones.
emilie asked, 'when did you know you were in love with me?'
'well it started many many years ago, but if you're asking for a specific point it was when we went for the sushi dinner on our second date.
'it was not love at first sight?' she enquires.
'well it was love at second sight'. i answer.

i mean how do you explain to some one that you created them and manifested them. the poor girl has no idea that i plucked her from the universe of potentiality and she answered because we are perfect. here it is, love and non locality.

Love and Non-locality
by
Capt. Mission

The same suit I got married in, that’s the one I wore to court the day I
Wait, sorry, we
No lets get this bit right, she divorced me.
(It was my dumb sense of irony that she was attracted to in the first place.)
Black, silk, loose, dishevelled and crumpled, the kind of suit Sean Penn wears in a film where he wakes up drunk at the end of a bar and gets beaten up by a gang of bikers all because he woke up. That’s kind of how I felt, getting beaten up because I just woke up in the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong planet.
The only noticeable difference in the space between marriage to divorce is a few years on my face and gravity taking its toll, taking me places I don’t want to go, leaving traces I don’t want to know.
Gravity according to Newton is a force that pulls towards the centre of the Earth but for me it is also a force that pulls all subjective experience together. Thus creating an unquantifiable mass, intangible and immeasurable somewhere in the mind or maybe even the soul, the specifics don’t matter only the gut wrenching feeling it leaves because its like a hole that cannot ever be filled, it has substantiality but no weight.
It is not exactly a measurement but it is there, residing somewhere, feeding like a strange vampire from an incorporeal dimension, draining this one, sucking the life from the lonely and defeated.
I feel its presence everyday, heavy and sad, like an old painful necessary memory. Perhaps it is measured in pain.
She still looked beautiful, no sign of stress, tension or age. No signs of wear and tear etched on her pristine aquiline face. No sign of life, full stop. She was the walking dead or was that me? It’s hard to be objective.
I wouldn’t say she was cold but there was a definite lack of warmth emanating my way from her dark soulless eyes, eyes that I couldn’t meet for fear of being trapped in a gaze from a Jungian myth, they never really looked my way anyway, just beyond me. Even time itself seems frozen around her, held at bay by her icy stare and clinical indifference.
The woman I had married had turned into a shark, her dorsal fin had cut the calm surface of the tranquil ocean that I had swam in for years and now I was being torn in shreds by razor sharp solicitors and a complex ritual of courtroom drama and dialogue. There was a pack of them, predators, slicing me up in a frenzy, ripping into reason, balance and all that I thought was decent and honourable.
They wore sharp black Armani suits, tight and slick, almost like wet suits sprayed straight from a can. Together the collective swarm, operated and controlled by the queen shark, showed little mercy.
They had my life in files in front of them. Information, gossip, hearsay, they had every shred of useless trivia at their disposal in non–threatening beige manila folders. It is this type of beige coloured threat that helps them win their small victory, the lies, the manipulation of truth, the savage inquisition, question after question into a maze of no return, my mind disengaged from every piece of their pathetic theatre.
They would tell me what I had for breakfast this morning and with the money that she was paying them they could probably divulge what I would be having tomorrow.
Truth and justice does not enter into courtrooms, as long as every one gets paid, truth is of no consequence. The law is for sale like everything else, it’s the economics of the illusion of truth.
Trapped in the labyrinth of questions, relentlessly following a continuity I cannot fathom, knowing that each time I speak they roll their eyes and mutter amongst themselves, conspiring in monotone shark whispers, the hidden language of false laws. I am lost.
Pressure builds in my head. Like a black hole has just engulfed my mind and sucked my body into it, almost cartoon quality, I see the coyote flash by, road runner ‘beep beeps’ me.
All is surreal. The magistrate looking at me like he is just about to scrape me from his shoe. And opposite me her lawyers conferred, whispered to the queen shark who had held us all in her court room ritual. I caught her thin fragment of a smile as she issued instructions, she licked her lips, must be the smell of blood hanging in the air, they moved in for the kill, one swift blow to the heart, that useless organ that offered no resistance, no fight, nothing. Just a fucking broken useless lump of throbbing meat on autopilot.
Words were spoken. The hammer falls. The legality somehow legitimised everything although from my side of the fence nothing had changed. Everything had changed. It was over.
Later I stand outside. It’s raining. On a second attempt to light my cigarette she glides passed me, entourage in tow, all holding umbrellas out, above her head, like she’s some fucking princess. God forbid if her hair should get wet. I don’t even know if she noticed me, she’s to efficient to notice anything that doesn't matter. She slides into the back of a car and is gone. Gone into the soft watery evening.
There is a strange blue tinge to Sydney. It’s the time when car headlights begin to turn on, it’s the time of evening when some people leave the office, other people begin to arrive home, to girlfriends, husbands, wives, kids and faithful dogs.
The evening is an underwater dream. I smoke my cigarette, my head feels sluggish, thoughts seem far to grey to assemble, they don’t have any substance to them, they come apart in the rain, floating off in fragments they just don’t seem to add up to much.
I’ve just been assaulted, violated by some invisible force, something that I don’t quite understand but will change my life profoundly. I throw the butt away and walk out into the closing darkness with my water-logged trauma.

I didn’t mean to find a bar, it kind of found me, dragging me in a magnetic pull, its warm glow an anaesthetic proposition. It seems appropriate to drink whisky tonight. I handed the bartender some change and knocked back the amber fluid burning my throat and rushing straight into my bloodstream. The next one was more contemplative. The space between the sips are places that thoughts seemed to come together, patterns start to form and a numb force field materialised around me. It was all to overwhelming to make sense but at least that was a start.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and was shocked at the dramatic change in my appearance. I looked harder, worn in, weary like an old blues singer standing at the crossroads after a bad deal with the devil. A thin slow crack forced it’s way across my face, a hollow self-pity smile that I was very self- conscious about. In the distance, somewhere in the background a piano played a slow blues.
I was unsure how I felt. Anxious about a future I was unprepared for, nervous about being alone, watching my reflection staring back at me, wondering if a human being falls in this city would any one hear it, frightened because I already knew the answer.
Consumed by strange apocalyptic existential fear, a state of dread creeping along my spine and eating its way into my head.
Fear has a moment, the decisive moment when it hovers between recognition, reaction or response. Fear comes in many guises but when it’s the face of the familiar another dimension comes into play. The complication of conflicting emotions, betrayed by the one who says she loves you, a snipers promise to his victim, the thin cross hairs meeting somewhere deep in the heart, finger on the trigger, one gentle squeeze, she loves you, yeah yeah yeah. She loves you NOT.
Didn’t see that coming?
Emotional assassins get away with murder.
Why would someone that once loved you, someone that shared 8 years of their life with you, someone that married you for better or for worse suddenly for no apparent reason turn so bitter, so cold hearted and cruel, so unexpectedly?
There are no answers and I certainly wouldn’t find them here in the narcotic flavoured atmosphere of this bar. It was out there in life that answers lie.
Everything that had gone on before this moment, every cumulative event, experience and situation was distant, like a lost country on the other side of the horizon, a myth, I was connected to somehow but not.
I made a decision, then and there to start again, to forget the past and just look forwards, to whatever that may be, but that’s the universe for you, if you want to make it laugh, just tell it your plans.
I turned to leave when I caught a glimpse of the girl besides me. She looked strikingly familiar, but I couldn’t place her, maybe from some television show. She certainly had the glamour and style of an actress. Maybe she was waiting for her date. She looked at me and smiled, ‘Mind if I join you?’
I wasn’t in a particular social mood, didn’t really want to chew the fat with anyone, no matter how glamorous in appearance. But I was fragile, she had disarmed me completely. I was a push over for anyone with a smile and a sparkle in their eye.
‘I guess not.’
She moved closer, sort of slid across, with the grace and mystery of a tame gazelle. I scanned her, looking for clues. No jewellery around that beautiful pristine neck, but an elegant gold watch around her wrist, a hint of expensive perfume. She was wearing a sheer black dress, had electric blue eyes and short black hair cut in a zen type of oriental style. She wore dark lipstick and her face was kind of interesting and it was just a matter of seconds before we were engaged in conversation. A few drinks later and we were up close, personal and talking intimately like long lost lovers, hanging around for one last fuck. I could smell her soft seduction, exotic and sensual drawing us closer and warmer and I realized how hungry and desperate I was.
She laughed, pulling away from me and suddenly we both became self-conscious, stuck for words, caught in the fork in the road, not knowing where it may lead or what possibilities lay ahead.
I fiddled around in my pocket for a cigarette, and with perfect timing she brought her lighter up. The flame danced in front of my face, an invitation.
I asked her what she had planned. She gave me a pained look and I rephrased the question.
I asked her if she wanted to meet me in the morning for a coffee. I told her that I liked talking to her and that I would like to see her again, keeping it all civil and clean and embarrassingly English. She nodded her head as if carefully considering my proposition. She was biting her bottom lip, in an appealing way, looking upwards following the trail of smoke that left my cigarette. I waited for her fixation to end.
It finished when I put my cigarette out.
‘Okay. I’ll give you a number. It’s my mobile, call me anytime after 9 am. But if you say you are going to call, you better call, I don’t like being disappointed. ’She scrawled out a number on the back of a coaster. I promised her that I would call.
It was to late when I realised that I didn’t know her name.

The next morning I woke up and checked the time. 6.30am. I lay on the mattress staring at the ceiling smoked my first cigarette. I tried to think of something profound being the first day of my life as a divorced man but I could only see those beautiful eyes and the echo of soft jazz and blues in the background. I lay there for a while, smoked another cigarette then rolled a joint and figured that my day would have to start later.
Shower, dress in my crumpled suit again, eat porridge, drink herb tea but really need coffee, sit, contemplate my navel, stare out the window at clouds, scratch, rub face, stretch, a pathetic attempt at yoga, fall back on the mattress and smoke half a joint.
The room was bare. One mattress, a few books, a camera case, a CD player, some CDs and a photograph of her that I had taken a long time ago. It was in the early days, she was smiling naturally, holding on to her sun hat with one hand, waving at the camera with the other. Behind her the blue Mediterranean sprawled out to the horizon. It was a honeymoon shot. Taken at a moment in the happiness that blessed me for a few years, a happiness that I thought would last infinitely, it was a photograph of a 500th of a second of our life together. I reached for my cigarettes and matches lit the tobacco and with the same match set the photograph alight. A blue flame curled up around my wrist, I twisted the photograph around so the flame stopped licking my hands and watched the image of the woman that I had loved so purposefully for 6 years turn to carbon.
‘Okay bitch, it’s over,’ I mumbled to myself, Clint Eastwood style. ‘This is divorce, my way.’
Lloyd Cole was singing about, ‘pulling stars out from the sky,’ I felt kind of sick inside.
I stuck what was left of the burning image into the ashtray. It was 8.30am when I found myself staring at the phone number on the back of the coaster. Her handwriting was a curvy sort of flow that matched her seductiveness, I might have smiled, it would have been fleeting and you probably would not have noticed.
I watched the clock for 30 minutes, smoked three cigarettes.
‘Charlotte speaking.’
‘Charlotte.’ I lingered on such an apt name. ‘It’s Max. I met you last night. We had a few drinks together,’ as an afterthought I added, ‘You remember?’
‘Yes. Yes I remember. Max. How are you? What time is it?’
‘Well, I guess I’m fine. I’m perfectly fine and it’s just past 9.’
‘Oh well I should get out of bed.’
There was a moments silence but not long enough for it to be awkward.
‘Well last night I suggested coffee, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and to be honest I’m really keen to see you again, however, if you have other plans, I’m kind of understanding like that?’
‘No, no. I don’t have plans but I should tell you that my life is, kind of complicated.’
Here we go I thought, what’s this all about. ‘Is that some kind of warning?’
‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘it’s a warning.’
‘So what’s complicated about you and I having coffee together.’
‘Okay. Where?’

I was reading the Herald when she sat down and joined me at the table. She looked slightly immaculate compared to myself, who must have appeared shabby and unshaven.
I ordered her a coffee.
‘Did you sleep in your suit?’
‘I’m kind of low on clothes right now, my life is kind of complex to.’
‘Hmmm complex. Is that a warning Max?’
I smiled a big smile. ‘No. Not at all.’
‘An invitation then?’
‘Maybe.’
I called the waiter over and he took her order, coffee and toast with vegimite. I folded the paper and stuck it under the table.
‘What’s happening in the world?’ She asked lighting up a cigarette.
‘Oh you know, corruption, wars, famine, exploitation, television stars telling us who to vote for, reality TV creating television stars who tell us who to vote for. It’s just business as usual on planet earth.’
‘Oh I see. Mr. Cynical.’
‘Hey if it’s in the paper it must be true, right?’ Charlotte shrugged indifferently.

‘I never read the paper except for the stars.’
‘The stars!’ I laughed, ‘You mean you believe that a bunch of rocks floating in space have some sort of influence upon you?’
‘Yeah absolutely although I wouldn’t put it like that. What are you?’
‘Star sign? Guess?’
‘You’re a, Piscean.’
‘How did you do that?’ I said surprised.
‘It’s easy, you’re more spiritual than political, you’re a dreamer, a romantic, sensitive, literate type, you like the idea of unconditional love but I think you find that hard to aspire to, so you kind of hover in a non-committal state somewhere in the middle. You have a distant look in your eyes as though you see another dimension. You think like a poet, you like abstracts not details, and let’s see, you have an innocence that you have nearly but not quite lost, because being cynical doesn’t suit you. You love all art and watching clouds and you take photographs of people.’
I looked slightly nervous, maybe unsettled, she had me pinned. Picking up on my obvious surprise she added, ‘Actually you did tell me all this stuff last night.’
I relaxed. ‘Beautiful and smart. That’s why I wanted to have breakfast with you.’
She smiled. And it was quite a smile I can tell you.
‘So what’s complicated Charlotte? Is there a man in your life?’
Charlotte gave me a coy look but she didn’t reveal anything. Women are great at this, they have mastered the art of manipulating men, twisting them around their little fingers without even moving a muscle and we let them do it to us because at the end of the day we fear beauty. I saved Charlotte from herself by embarrassing her further.
‘I’m just being friendly. It’s a clique I know, and you, maybe you get loads of guys coming up to you and saying that all the time, but what’s the point of being friends when you can’t be completely honest. No one does that any more. We can at least start our friendship by being honest with one another, so it’s your call. Whatever you feel comfortable with, it’s going to be fine by me Charlotte.’
‘You think you can be my friend?’
‘Yes. I think I can be your friend.’
‘And that’s all you want?’
‘Well what do you mean?’
‘Do you want to have sex with me?
‘Absolutely. Yes.’
She smiled.
So did I.
Coffee came, we skimmed the surface around some small talk then back to important matters.
‘Look I do have an unusual lifestyle. It’s pretty difficult to have a relationship at the same time.’
‘I don’t want to mess up your lifestyle Charlotte. I have a life as well. Look I’m just a friend, a new kind of friend.’
‘A friend who wants to sleep with me.’
‘Yeah. I’m a friend who wants to sleep with you on a regular basis.’
‘You don’t even know me. You met me in a bar. We had a few drinks together.’
‘Yeah okay, it’s true. I don’t know you, but that should not be a reason for me not to get to know you. What is life if you don’t take risks and chances, getting to know people, to sleep with them.’ I added as an afterthought.
She smiled again, ‘But I could be married.’
‘Well then I will have to concede that your husband is a very lucky man and bow out gracefully.’
‘Anyways I am not married but we did only just meet.’
‘And I am just getting to know you.’
‘But you still want to sleep with me.’
‘Yes, that’s not meant to be an insult.’
Another coy look, some processing behind her eyes. ‘Yeah, I guess it isn’t.’
‘What I am saying is, in the short time I’ve spent with you I see something, a kind of, future.’
‘A future. Now Max you’re beginning to scare me and as your friend I should say, right now, seeing as we are being honest, you will get your heart broken.’
I looked at her beautiful eyes. I nodded. I could only agree.
Charlotte leaned forwards and sized me up in a very obvious way,
‘I’m a Mistress. Do you know what a Mistress does Max?’
‘Yeah. I know what a Mistress does.’
‘I am a sort of prostitute Max. Do you still want to sleep with me?’
‘Yeah. Absolutely, it doesn’t matter what you do. Do I have to pay though? Do you take Visa?’
‘She laughed. ‘Yes as a matter of fact. It doesn’t bother you that I am a prostitute?’
‘We’re all prostitutes Charlotte. We all sell our bodies one way or the other, usually to the highest bidder. At least you are honest about it. I admire that in a strange kind of way. The important thing is not to sell our souls and that’s what I am interested in.’
‘My soul is not for sale but a lot of men they start out saying that they can handle it and sooner or later it gets to them, but it’s my life not theirs, mine.’
‘Well then why should it bother me. I’m nothing like other men.’
A slow smile and a sparkle behind the eyes, she relaxes back into her seat as she looks at me with a new found curiosity.
‘Lets go some place, any place, I want to find out more about you Max, my mysterious new friend.’
We ended up in my favourite place in Sydney, the aquarium. It was my suggestion and Charlotte seemed quite excited when we walked through the sliding doors.
‘Oh fantastic, more fish,’ she giggled having a joke at my star sign.
‘Yeah we can have fish for lunch if you want.’
‘What is it with all the fish?’
‘I just feel more at ease with my own kind.’
Charlotte looked pretty stunning even in the strange underwater light, new colours bounced of her face as she walked beside me, pastels, purples, indigoes and violets, shades of turquoise and blues rich and deep with a hint of mystery.
We were both staring at the octopus, captivated. Time had slipped away beyond us and everything was still. It was an immaculate moment where it all just made perfect uncomplicated sense. I don’t know how long we stood in front of that tank, gazing into a shared space silently connected by a sense of wonder and something else, the hint of possibility.
‘They change colour. With each emotional state.’
‘Yeah. They also have eight legs.’
‘How do you know they are legs? They could be hands.’
We laughed, our hands met and I clasped mine into hers and squeezed. She squeezed back. It was a good feeling. I think we both blushed with a new emotional state.
Outside eyes adjusted to the Darling Harbour sunlight and Charlotte suddenly became all self-conscious, like a nervous schoolgirl. She ran her hands through her hair and bit her lip in a seductive kind of way. ‘I have to go to work.’
‘Okay then.
‘I’ll call you later.’
I smiled and whispered, more for myself than her, because I had seen a future and it was good, it was a word that caught me by surprise as much as her, ‘Promise.’
She smiled back, but it was restrained this time, a hint of uncertainty. She spun around and left. I sat on the steps and watched her disappear into the crowd. I had nothing better to do, could not think of anything better.


The rest of the day passed in a swirling movement of inactivity, frenetic energy all around me, I could feel it at the edge of my fingers and the tip of my tongue. The world suddenly seemed so focused as I slipped through slightly out of whack, blurred and not quite part of it all. I can’t even remember what I did, maybe walked around, smoked a few cigarettes, had a coffee and somehow made my way home.
I must have fallen asleep for a few hours and dreamt about the shark queen. She was like a ghost walking through my sleep. I woke up suddenly, sweating a deep heat but really cold.
Get the hell out of my head I thought. But she was lodged in like a splinter.
It had only been yesterday our lives together were officially annulled.
The shark had destroyed my whole identity in a matter of hours and I still had these strange confused feelings towards her. Loss and grief can be substantial emotions, they have their own insidious nature and they can be unfathomable and confusing to the point where they overwhelm and possess, despite all attempts to resist, the emotion defies the logic. I was at war with myself.
I was going for the future, attempting optimism and the past was trying to fuck with me. My stomach began to tie itself in knots as I rummaged around for my phone and checked my messages.
There were two. The first was from a gallery who was interested in some of my photographs, they were talking percentages and opening nights and their enthusiasm felt good under the circumstances, but right now work was far from my mind.
Charlotte’s voice took me by surprise. She sounded vibrant and sexy, her enthusiasm made me forget any residual angst.
‘Hi Max. I just wanted to thank you for a fantastic morning. It was great. Just what I needed, something real. I thought you may want to have dinner with me tonight, my treat. Call me soon.’
It took me twenty minuets to find the coaster with her number but I eventually found it, under the mattress of all places. This time I programmed it into my phone.
‘Charlotte speaking.’
‘Hey, It’s me, Max.’
‘Hi. Did you get my message?’
‘Yeah, I’d love to have dinner with you. You just say where and when and I’ll be there.’
Later after a shower I lay back on my mattress and listened to her soft sweet voice again and again.
I showered, cleaned my teeth obsessively and put on my still crumpled suit.

I was early. Newtown throbbed with its vibrant energy and street culture down one end, while the other was a fluorescent almost complete development just in time for the oncoming Olympics. As I walked into the cocktail bar on the corner I bumped in to an old friend and a new enemy all in one nasty coincidental package.
‘Jesus! What the hell do you think you’re doing? You can take that smile off your face you idiot.’
‘What are you doing here?’
She gave me a cold glare, ‘I am having a fucking cocktail. What’s your excuse?’
‘I’m having dinner with someone. A friend,’ I shuffled uncomfortably, nervously caught of guard, ‘I’m a bit early.’
I scratched my head, fumbled for a smoke with one hand, a light with the other. It was a shock seeing her like this, so soon, so unexpectedly.
She had changed her image completely leaving behind her past life, new hair style, new shoes, new kind of everything.
‘Well don’t just stand there, blocking the passage.’ I stepped out of the way, she gave me a pitiful look, ‘Get a drink and come and sit down.’
Like a lost sheep I followed, part of me not wanting to but another just running on auto piolet. The bar was still quite empty, there was a couple of advertising people posing as rock stars, maybe they were rock stars posing as advertising people, these days it’s hard to tell. They were drinking primary coloured cocktails and looked like they were having some sort of fun that had been denied to me through some error in my genetic programming. We sat at a table hidden away in an alcove.
‘You were outrageous yesterday.’ Was all i could mutter as I knocked back the scotch.
‘Look it was really just business. You shouldn’t take it so personally.’
‘So personally! We were married for Gods sake. How the fuck do I not take it personally?’
‘Christ Max! You really need to just accept that things change and people change. We agreed that if either one of us felt unhappy about being in this relationship we were free to do what ever we needed to, to make it work.’
‘Yeah but you should have said something to me, we could have talked it over at least. Why did you have to be so nasty about everything?’
‘Nasty! Me! Christ what is it with men?’ She looked at me as if talking to a small child, ‘It’s reality Max. You adapt to things a lot slower than I do. I have to accept that you are not part of my life any more, so I do. It’s nature, evolution.’
‘Yeah well it’s not my nature.’
‘Nature is cruel. It’s eat or be eaten, beat or be beaten. You just are to fucking safe Max, a woman needs adventure and excitement occasionally. You’re just sweet and sentimental.’
‘To nice! I'm to fucking nice, how can anyone be to nice?’
‘Look I don’t want to fight with you. Do you want another drink?’
‘Fuck, yeah, make it a double.’
I knock that back fast, just to numb me out and maybe offer me that extra confidence I lacked around her, it had leaked out from my aura, displaced by anxiety and a nervous delirium.
‘Look just tell me. Was there some one else in your life?’
She gave me the shark look, ‘That’s none of your business.’
I shook my head. ‘A simple yes or no would have been enough Dom. I’m not the jealous type, you know that, but I need to know, I need to understand what the fuck happened.’
She smiled but her lips remained sealed.
There was a cold moment’s silence. I could hear my ice melting. The scotch raced around my head like a swirling heat wave, my legs began to feel strange and I was certain I could hear a helicopter somewhere close, maybe in-between my ears.
We sat there in a frozen moment, time ceasing and then almost like a wave time started again on it’s linear flow. For an eternity our eyes locked yet it was a fraction of a second. If the eyes are the key to the soul then hers were empty and I knew it no longer mattered, if there were someone else then he was welcome to her.
She was right about one thing. I just have to accept that my life with her was over. I felt as if my emotions were trapped in a vortex inside my chest, spinning outwards, ripping open my ribs and exposing my dumb heart for the world to see.
She composed herself, sipped her drink and gave me a stern look, ‘I have to go. I’d prefer it if you no longer had any contact with me. If you have to, do so through the solicitor, you know how it is Max. That’s the way it has to be.’
I must have looked pretty stupid slumped there dumbfounded when Charlotte appeared. She nuzzled up by my side and gave me a cheeky elfish look and fished for a smile. It was easy to smile around her but she had seen the look in my eyes and could tell I was disturbed.
‘What’s up?’
‘Oh, I just bumped into a skeleton from a closet. I’m okay, really, it’s nothing.’
‘Do you want to talk?’
‘No. No it’s fine, really.’
‘I understand, even though I’m not convinced, let’s just have a drink together, darling,’ She whispered the last word under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.
We drank the primary coloured cocktails. They went down easy. We completely forgot about dinner, lost in our conversation, now both smashed, attempting to converse about important things, the bigger picture, life the universe and everything else that eludes us, yet we always come back to question. Philosophy I guess.
At the moment the talk was around quantum physics. I was explaining to Charlotte this theory I had read about, it had stuck in my mind and it seemed somehow romantic.
Every photon of light has a partner somewhere in the universe and if anything alters in one, at exactly the same time the partner will alter, no matter how far apart the photons are from one another. There is a force that eventually draws them together. Yet when they meet there is a paradox as both photons cannot exist in the same space/time and are cast in separate directions again only to repeat their attraction.
Charlotte looked bemused. ‘I wonder what the force that separates them is? It is very sad that the two photons cannot exist together.’
‘Ah. You like happy endings.’
‘I like them Max but I don’t believe in them. It’s luck not love, that’s the force I believe in.’
Her statement made me feel sad but I tried not to show it.
We talked about our lives the way people do these days, we talked, new physics, eastern philosophy, spiritual beliefs, personnel experiences and synchronistic events.
Charlotte had such a beautiful way with words, her voice deep and seductive, stopping and starting, pausing for thought, smiling at some private memory that danced on the tip of her tongue, hovering in the space between us, never quite making it to me.
The bar was less crowded now, people had settled in for the night in their respective pockets, a warm intimacy prevailed. The active ingredients in the red cocktails had kicked in, everyone’s drugs rapidly absorbed into central nervous systems and everyone was relaxed and comfortably spilling their heart and souls out to whom ever was near and dear. The room was heavy with our dreams and desires, secrets thoughts and fantasies.
I listened.
‘When I was first starting out, learning the ropes so to speak, how to be a Mistress....’
‘Was this at Mistress University then?’
‘No,’ she laughed, it was actually a seedy B and D parlour in Redfern if you must know. Anyway, I had a client, a woman. She was really beautiful, kind of, well, elegant. And clever, really clever, and I began to enjoy our sessions together, look forward to her coming and that is very unusual. Very unusual because in my type of work it’s best to be as detached from your clients as possible. She had the most amazing eyes, they were so fierce and such a good body, you know, Amazonian. Her name was Theresa, not her real name, no-one uses their real name of course.’
Charlotte had paused, a long pause, her memory cast, an exquisite look crossed over her, as if she had found some sort of bliss. She smiled to herself in a Mona Lisa type of way, then continued, ‘She had a specific request, it was very, bizarre, certainly unique and although I get a lot of strange requests this was different, it was really quite, well ha. Anyway we crossed a line, I mean a real line Max, it’s never happened to me before…’
‘This sounds interesting,’ I said somehow managing to become all attentive through my alcoholic glamour and male ego.
‘...it will never happen again but I kissed her and then we made love. Made love, really, really, made love. It was very tender and gentle. It was not part of the session at all, not part of anything we planned, it just happened. Afterwards she began to open up and tell me a bit about herself. Personal stuff, very personal. Now, Max, here is where it does get interesting. She was born on the same date as me, exactly, day, month and year. Her mother died when she was seven, same as me, her father was a military man, same as mine. She had been expelled from private school, same as me, she had finished a degree in Arts same as me, she had an allergy to strawberries, same as me. That’s just the beginning Max, we both had the same tastes in music, films, books, flowers, people, everything under the sun. It was like we had lived parallel lives. We had travelled to the same places at the same times, same countries, towns, cities, beaches. But to top it all we even had the same tattoo on the same place.’
‘That’s incredible, that’s absolutely incredible.’ It was incredible. ‘What happened?’
‘After that, nothing. I never saw her again.’
‘Wow. Would you like to?’
‘Yes. I would. Very much so. I think we may have the same relationship as those photons you mentioned.’
Charlotte looked sad. ‘I think I was in love with her, well as close as being in love as I will ever be, you know. You understand what I am saying.’
The talk finished and there was a long silence, I took the question as rhetorical and I couldn’t think of anything to say anyway. Somehow I felt kind of sad and empty.
‘What was the tattoo?’
Charlotte looked at me as if I had asked the only question that I was not allowed to ask. She sighed, ‘It’s a small yin yang symbol with red and yellow triangles going up and down the spine. It’s on my lower back.’
I was momentarily stunned. Something had struck me in the face with the force of a missile. It had nothing to do with alcohol. ‘Show me.’
Charlotte pulled up her top and bent over the table. It was the same, exactly the same as hers. I could feel the blood race through my head, ‘Date of birth?’
‘What!’
Your date of birth?’
‘April 3rd 1969.’
‘Jesus Fucking Christ!’
My brain was going ballistic, slowly it was coming together but there were substantial gaps, but not enough to keep synapses from making the right connections.
Strawberries, mother died, father in the military, a degree in Arts. It had to be her, it had to be, date of birth, the tattoo confirmed it.
The room started to spin. The primary colours had leaked into my brain, and my eyes started to hurt, blinded with the violence of truth.
‘What’s wrong Max?’ I heard Charlotte ask, distorted, warped soundwaves, slowed down to an almost incomprehensible strange new language.
I could see her leaning over me, her lips moving, like some sort of exotic fish, then I must have blacked out.

I was falling up. It was the opposite of falling down. I regained consciousness. My soul came rushing back into myself and searched for something familiar, some ethereal anchor to tether me, to keep me fixed and stable but everything was slipping well beyond my grasp.
The room was dark, filled with incomplete shadows and the bed was incredibly hard. Above me hanging down from the ceiling, chains, rope bindings and leather straps and a huge square cage directly over my head. Things fell into place in a series of big heavy loud CHUNKS. The mechanics of my brain were slow and clumsy, but they worked.
I was at Charlotte’s.
‘Charlotte,’ I yelled, my voice hoarse with a raw edge, failed. ‘Charlotte,’ I rasped.
‘I’m here,’ a voice whispered from the shadows.
Stepping forwards into a soft light I could see Charlotte, dressed in her Mistress gear, just like she had stepped out from the glossy shiny pages of an adult magazine, my vision fixated on her lips and then to her boots, she looked stunning and dangerous but I was defiantly not in the mood for sex games.
I coughed, my head pounded. ‘What the fuck happened?’
‘You passed out. I just brought you back to my place. It took two men to carry you into the taxi and getting you down here the driver nearly fainted himself. You should be careful when you drink. How do you feel?’
I shook my head as if to disagree. It hurt.
‘I think it’s about time you see what I do in my other life Max.’
‘Charlotte. I feel like shit, my head feels like it’s been worked over from the inside. This is defiantly not the time for play.’
‘Max. Mistress Charlotte commands you. Stand up slave.’
A silent rage surged though my blood but I couldn’t move, could not even feel my legs.
‘That woman, the one you fell in love with, even though you don’t believe in love, that was my wife. Theresa. Only her name is really Dominique. The woman with the tattoo is my wife.’
Charlotte moved closer, a panther in shiny latex, a strange looked crossed her, calm and in control. ‘A wife, you never mentioned a wife.’
‘Ex. My ex-wife. The night I met you, that was the day I got divorced.’
A moment of surprise and the hint of a small smile, ‘A coincidence within a coincidence. How coincidental. Or perhaps it is just luck.’
A tear escaped, fell from my cheek like a stolen jewel. I didn’t want Charlotte to see me like this and a trace of shame echoed somewhere in my heart.
‘Look,’ I stood up slowly, my legs felt like they would give way, it took a moment to find my centre of gravity. Pulling up my shirt and pulling down my pants to reveal the tattoo Dominique had made me get one evening. I remember her saying so clearly that if I really loved her then I should get the tattoo. It was proof and evidence that we were connected.
I felt stupid. The floodgates had opened and I think I started to sob, more through relief than anything else.
Cupping my face in both her hands Charlotte kissed away the tears, she held me closer to her. I surrendered falling into the warmth of her embrace. It must have looked pretty weird, me weeping, being held by a woman in a shiny cat suit in a room full of whips and chains.
Charlotte kissed me on the forehead. She smiled at me and stroked my cheek. Eventually I had the courage to look into her eyes.
‘What did she do, in the sessions I mean?’
‘I can’t tell Max. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Right! What the hell is right in a situation like this? There is no right Charlotte.’
‘You know what I mean. Don’t put me in a position.’
I thought about it, it seemed reasonable, after all she was a professional and I think part of me did not really want to know, ‘Okay. I can respect that.’
We sat there together in a silence that wrapped around us like a magic cloak that didn’t make us invisible but mute.
After some time passed I broke the spell by laughing aloud.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘This is. It’s absurd. You and I. And Dominique to. That we should converge under these circumstances, it’s extraordinary. It’s as if we have been directed by something other than ourselves. We really should go and find her, the three of us should sit down together and have a little reunion. It’s such a coincidence, it can’t be a coincidence.’
‘It must be fate.’
‘You don’t believe in fate.’
‘Fate or luck, maybe they are just the same after all. Two sides of the same coin.’
‘Charlotte, with me it’s just a one sided coin, and it’s all bad luck as far as Dom is concerned.’
I told Charlotte about the sudden divorce, the radical shift from content wife to angry bitch from hell.
It was the first time I had really talked about it to anyone and once I started I found I couldn’t stop myself, the words poured out from the void, that black empty space, the unfathomable trench of pointlessness and meaninglessness, not really making much sense, feelings confused, mixed up and scattered filled with holes so overwhelming I thought I would disappear into one of them.
But Charlotte listened patiently, she held my hand and smiled when I needed reassurance. For the human touch there is no substitute.
As I spoke I felt this incredible pain and longing for Dominique yet I also felt this strange love for Charlotte revealing itself, it was not a sexual kind of urge, it was different, in the heart, filled with hope and a sense of wonder. These extremes polarised around two women who were connected in a way neither understood.
Charlotte eased me back onto the rack, she sat down in front of me and told me that for her it was not love at first sight. Her feelings had developed in absence. It was a romantic love that was based on the idea that there was some mystical connection between them. She was certain that the universe had brought them together for some as yet unknown reason convinced that Dominique would reappear in her life, she was waiting for that moment and it seemed like the universe had led her to me.
Selfishly, I thought to myself, maybe the universe had brought Charlotte to me.
It didn’t matter either way soon the puzzle would be completed. It seemed only reasonable to agree that all of us would benefit from some form of encounter although I was not really sure if seeing after Dominique I would come out victorious.
Charlotte eased out off her boots, the latex glimmering in the darkness. Stretched out on her back unlacing them on the floor, a sexy panther rolling on her back. Instinctively I moved over to her like an animal, she smiled, misunderstanding my intentions as I whispered, my voice with an unusual edge to it, ‘Get up.’
Startled and looking somewhat shocked, she stood. One boot on, the other lay on the floor. I moved towards her, we were equal height now. Her dominant posture diminished as she stepped back against the wall, vulnerable, with one boot on and one laying on the floor, she flinched momentarily recognising what she sought to avoid in her life as a Mistress. I looked into her eyes and something melted as our souls kissed, although we never touched physically I felt as if we could not be any closer.
I guess at the end of the day all dominant women want secretly to be dominated, all wild women to be tamed, all submissives yearn to be dominant.

Later we drove into the city, I carried my camera, it was to perfect a day not to take a few photos and Charlotte was in a playful mood. I was clicking away as she posed for me, like an Italian model on holiday. She drove a yellow convertible Volkswagen, the older type. It suited her well.
Sitting in the back smoking I lay my head back and watched the wispy clouds roll by. I took a shot of the cirrus clouds catching the back of her head, with her scarf flowing behind like a banner for beauty. On the radio they played some funky trumpet music. Charlotte did look beautiful, like an angel. I could see her lips in the rear view mirror and her profile in the side mirror. She looked as if she were surrounded by a circle of light. She was radiant, glowing like the sun.
I wondered if Dominique was glowing. I thought about the Yin Yang tattoo, about photons, about the hidden patterns in life and about the nature of chance and coincidence, luck and probability, about love and non-locality about the rules of attraction and repulsion and about Charlotte Dominique and myself.
Had the universe conspired to bring them together, twin entities of light, sharing the same soul, completed together, and then cruelly thrown apart by more mysterious forces.
Is the Universe that poetic?
It certainly seems cruel enough.
There was a flaw to this concept that I had not considered before. Why had Charlotte become a prostitute and Dominique hadn’t.
I sat with this for a few minuets and all points of thought focused on one point, there was no escaping the conclusion no matter how hard I tried, the truth seemed just to bizarre to be true. And the bizzare seemed to be truth.
We flowed with the city traffic. Charlotte in a private tranquillity and looking bright, like a new born star, me just soaking her in.
We parked a few streets away and walked the rest of the journey, basking in the sunlight like two butterflies.
Predicably there was trouble at reception, a security guard listened to instructions from a telephone while giving me increasingly menacing looks. The receptionist looked nervous, she had a fake smile to match the rest of her. I glared back at everyone while Charlotte just looked beautiful and relaxed. She glowed, filling the room with some weird radiance.
Eventually we were escorted to the elevator and after a few seconds we were in Dom’s office, she didn’t look happy about it either.
‘This had better be good,’ she said, ‘Who the hell is this?’
‘Charlotte this is Dominique. Dom, Charlotte. Actually you two have met before. On a more intimate level.’
I pulled Charlotte towards the sofa, may as well get comfortable but I also knew it would piss Dom off.
Dominique’s initial reaction to the both of us was genuine puzzlement.
She displayed her traditional temperament by remaining cold and aloof yet suddenly there was a slight fracture in her impenetrable demur, it lasted a split second after which she composed herself, I caught it at 1/25th.
In quick strides she locked the door of her office and told her secretary to cancel her next appointment. She paced around while we sat watching her personal entropy. However if she felt any embarrassment she never showed it, she was stone, she was ice to my scorching melting soul.
‘I think about you a lot,’ Dom said suddenly, ‘I think about you quite obsessively. It’s sometimes quite a distraction,’ she smiled, surprised me by adding, ‘a pleasant one.’ Her voice became softer, ‘After our time together nothing would ever touch me the same way as that moment we shared. Nothing, not sex, drugs, alcohol and even power seemed to have lost its thrill. And marriage. I rather be alone than live that kind of lie. I mean we were so alike, down to the final secret details.’
Conformation. She flashed me a look of pity, it was so unexpected and possibly the only form of emotional warmth I would get, if you can call it warmth.
Speaking of warmth, the room was becoming warmer, actually very warmer. Dom moved closer to Charlotte, they were looking at one another in a way I could never hope to describe. I brought the viewfinder to my eye and took a quick shot, both of them together, looking at one another, and at me, three pairs of eyes in a relationship that defies the boundaries of language.
‘I think about you as well. I thought that you would return, call me at least, but you just vanished as if it meant nothing. Our connection. It meant something to me.’
‘It meant everything, but there would be no point in seeing one another again, nothing could compare to that moment. It was a perfect moment. Everything else would be a supreme disappointment. It has been. My life since has been a complete anti climax.’
‘We are meant to be together. It is obvious to me.’
‘We are together.’
‘No together together.’
‘I think we will destroy something perfect if we are together. It’s the way things are, nothing is permanent’
‘No Theresa, oh, excuse me, Dominique. We would be perfect.’
Dom looked sad, ‘There is no perfect. Everything is imperfect by its impermanency.’
Typical I thought she has to play the same role over and over. She could never allow herself to be happy. That was her velocity, mine was different, I was going for simple joys. I gave Charlotte a smile but she didn’t notice, she was absorbed in her own thoughts.
As usual I felt awkward and out of place I wondered if I should give them some time together besides I needed to get some fresh air, the energy in the room was changing, it was getting really hot. There was some weird alchemy at work, a chemical change reflected in our entanglements. I could feel it. We could all feel it. My skin felt sticky and I noticed tiny beads of sweat upon Charlotte’s brow, she was now beaming, almost ethereal, an angel. Yes call me romantic and a dreamer but that is what she was slowly becoming, my angel. In the space of a few seconds it had become insanely hot. Even the clock began to melt.
I stood up taking them by surprise, ‘I’m going out for a while. You two should talk in private. I’ll just be outside having a coffee and a smoke, maybe in the park across the way. Take your time, talk, I’ll come back in about two hours.’ Turning to Dom, ‘Tell that Barbie doll at reception not to give me any grief next time.’
I leaned over and kissed Charlotte, ‘Good luck. Don’t take any of her shit,’ I whispered.
She flashed me a nervous smile, part of me that had not yet melted melted.
Turning back to Dominique I said, ‘I don’t think I will ever see you again but I want you to know that I love you. Goodbye.’
I love you goodbye, such strange words to say, they are like a formula, a type of evocation.
Dominique took a sharp breath, I could see the oxygen drawing over her lips. ‘You know why I left you?’
‘Yes Dom. I do now.’
‘Well then you understand why I don’t want you hanging around my office. I need to be very careful that my private life does not get entangled with my professional one,’
‘Or that your professional one doesn’t get entangled with your professional one.’
‘Touche Max.’
I left them to it.
Outside I felt the relief of a moderate climate.
A lot can be accomplished in two hours but I walked to the nearest park and sat under a tree and watched the clouds, smoked a cigarette and listened to the birds chatter in the tree tops.
Dominique was repulsed by me. That kind of emotion must come from somewhere. You don’t just wake up one day and hate someone just for the sake of it. It must have a beginning, a source. I had always known about her bisexual fantasies, she did have a magnetism that seemed attractive to some women. At first she was totally innocent of it but gradually she became more and more aware, flirtatious and sometimes even carefree. Eventually she accepted her nature with the kind of enthusiasm that I just accepted as ‘sexual experimentation.’ Both of us experimented with a few different combinations but the truth is the sex part of our relationship was just supplementary to everything else. I just was into the idea of commitment. I was old fashioned like that. I always have been.
A man could go crazy trying to understand the ways a woman would think. I smoked another cigarette. I felt strangely calm and even happy. It was a relief to have an answer albeit one I didn’t particularly like.
The light was filtering through the trees, streaming in from above and for a fraction of a second I caught a glimpse of myself out of body. A birds eye view from above the tree tops far above the clouds, almost a super fast zoom-in, right back into myself. I stood up.
I glanced over to the building up at the windows to what I assumed was the 7th floor, as I followed them down, floor by floor to the entrance there was Charlotte, stepping out through the sliding doors. Alone. She looked visibly upset, crying. Part of me wanted to race towards her but a larger part was in conflict. I wanted to do the right thing, I wanted to whisk her away and love her supremely for the rest of her life the way she deserved to be loved but was that what she wanted as well. To her, are we those particles of light?
Are we destined for one another with the same intensity?
She looked across into the park, she was looking for me, I could see her desperation, the glimmer of tears in her eyes, the defeat.
I waited till her back was turned then shuffled off into the crowd.
I don’t really understand why I was testing the universe, God, love and non- locality. Maybe I was really testing myself. My ability to let go off that which I most desired and see if it would return, love and non-locality. A hinge upon which all my belief patterns spun. Does the universe operate to a complex arrangement that we are conducted by, unknowingly? Is it fate or luck? Or do we have the kind of power to make our own destinies?
The truth is, it was a desperate act. An act of faith. Fate or luck.
I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and walked towards the main street fumbling for a match. Museum Station was just kind of there and I don’t really know why I walked in, descending the steps. What was going on inside my head was not rational, just an impulse to walk away from the situation, to surrender, escape both the cause and the effect.
The idea of a train ride was the last thing I would normally think of, but there I was, heading around in circles on the circle line, following a crazy loop that was going nowhere, over and over again. In a blank state, unable to even think of anything. It was not until someone nudged me and pointed at a ‘No Smoking’ sign that I really even started to notice that I was in an endless underground orbit.
I swapped trains, moving in automatic pilot mode and 10 minuets later I emerged at Central Station.
I wandered around on the platform following the crowd, it felt safe to be part of a mass of anonymous people. I felt like now I had some purpose to my drifting, that my meaningless wanderings would somehow be engulfed by the rituals of those with structure and routine. I found myself on a platform and jumped on another train. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing, just killing time and playing out some strange unrealised design.
I ended up in Kings Cross, riding the escalator, up to the surface.
Walking away from the main drag I came to Le Petit Cafe, the French cafe that I liked to hang out in the days before I had met Dom. I sat down and ordered a coffee, lit another cigarette and gazed at the massive faded poster of Beatrice Dalle that had hung there for years. Betty Blue almost fading away with time and sun. It was Zorg that I really liked in that movie, it should have been called Zorg, not Betty Blue. He was the star that didn’t burn out, the movie was about him as much as it was about Betty. And then casually my gaze wandered out through the window.
It was late afternoon and the street was not yet fully crowded, there were a few people leaving work for the day but the street itself was relatively quiet.
She was there, opposite, waiting at a cab rank. I watched her for a moment. She was beautiful in her tragic circumstance. She looked sad and lost and desperately alone.
There was no time to waste.
I yelled out but a cab had already pulled up and she was sliding inside.
I found myself running along the road dodging the on coming traffic like some mad whacked out hooligan, visualising myself leaping into the back seat with her, calculating the time to the very split second. Getting closer and closer my hand reached out to the door handle as the taxi gained momentum, pulling away, her face turning towards me in slow motion, just like a French movie, the door was locked, the car racing off.
‘Fuck!’
Don’t do this to me I thought, wondering if I was talking to her, myself or a God that listens but never intervenes.
I ran after it, pace increasing with each step, adrenalin surging through my body like an on-coming tidal wave. I could feel its energy pulse through my muscles but it was not enough to make a difference. Charlotte and hope receded further away into the city, further away from me.
And there was me, out of breath, alone in a universe that attracts and repels love sometimes both at the same time. There is no way to understand why or what it may signify, it’s just the way it is. Love is loss. You cannot keep it or hold on to it, only treasure it while it is in your life and let it go when it is time.
From my pocket I pulled out my phone and deleted Charlotte’s number. I had let everything go in the last two hours, Charlotte Dominique, my need for them, my attachment to them, my connection, desperation and my loss. Totality. It was a painful act but came from some where in my heart and soul and it felt true to the nature of things.
This was the path to freedom but not happiness. Happiness is the holy grail of relationships, perhaps itself only a myth. We all seek it, God knows I have. I have even deluded myself and others looking for it but perhaps it cannot possibly be found in my partner only somewhere deep in me.
I walked back to the café slowly stopping to gaze at myself reflected in a window. I smoked a cigarette and looked at the Betty Blue poster, slowly sipped my coffee and smiled when Charlotte offered me a light. I held the camera towards uson autofocus and took the picture.