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God have mercy on her.
God have mercy on me.
Here we sit, playing the normal bedtime routine - intertwined on the bed in yet another dusky hotel room du jour. We gleam together, I with my perpetual sweat and her with lusty youth, sparkling in the firecracker light of streetlamps outside. Her breath has long since slowed, and as I watch the tide of her chest rise and recede, I wonder what starlet haunts her dreams tonight. Perhaps, in another lifetime, in the nuclear family dream we'd left behind, Humbert would have been the tuxedoed stranger sashaying his way through little Lolita's fantasies, swinging his jazzy cane and shuffling off to Buffalo in sharp, black-tipped Capezios. The days of Carmen are long lost, though - the both of us know it, and if she dreamed about me, it wouldn't be with the soft smile that she is nursing now.
I can only stare as the string-straps of her nightgown slip off their collarbone perch, sliding down her skin like the fingers of the devil himself. But there is little else for me to do; my eyelids are seemingly possessed by the demon of lost sleep, and for now, my own has no desire to return. Still, it is a travesty, to sleep next to such a beautiful brimful of electric shocks, knowing that a single touch may end the dignity of my hapless fatherhood. (I am certainly perpetuating an illusion here, but bear with it, s'il vous plaît - how else could I cope?)
Beata, Maria, you know I am a righteous man.
I pray she is at rest, so that she will not know the weakness of my self-control. Le decor s'écroule, toujours. Toujours je m'écroule. She remains still as I inch my clumsy hand up the nymph-flesh of her freckled thigh, pausing twice for every single shuddery breath she makes in her sleep. Warmth pulses through my fingertips, alternating with the strange, alien chill of her skin. Why, Lo, you are so cold. Let me share my heat.
I arrive at her dormant floodgate, glory-hot and cringing. Ay, díos mío, Ponce de León has found his fountain of youth! He hesitates, and I stroke the soft film of Lo's sole protection in baleful introspection. She will never let me buy lingerie for her; it is her greatest secret, her only means to exclude me from her life, and thus she never lets me look. But, nay, she is not fully present at the moment; her consciousness still sleeps. Oh, the tragic historien wonders now: was it once a sin to lay eyes upon the sacred Aztec gold? Surely, most assuredly, it was punishable by death.
Oh! Oh, mon dieu! Je me sens comme l'enfer. Her eyes flash like a storm, glint like lightning in the night sky. Cleopatra has awakened, and she stares at me with a mean, tired look on her sleep-addled face.
"L-Lo," I whisper, now burning with embarrassment alongside desire. She has caught me red-handed - oh, what a wicked expression, though her maidenhead is long lost. My fingers are intertwined with the white girlish lace lurking beneath her nightgown. I am too mortified to move. "Go... go back to sleep, my darling."
She rubs her thighs together, and my hand peevishly grinds between her skin. Ah, Lo, please don't make me leave you be. It would be foolishness; I couldn't move, even if I wished it for all the world. She is so soft, and she is mine besides. Why bother?
Lo scowls in the dark. "Stop touching me," she says, grumbling with exhaustion. "Go away."
Of course. Of course, you know, I can never go against her will for very long. The regret of my deed washes over me as I drag my palm downwards, over the mound of her thigh and onto the sheets, but it is like trying to drown a son of Poseidon in water. I cannot feel anything but what I wish to feel. That and shame, at least, but the shame is a constant companion.
"Hey."
The lyrical coarseness of her voice never ceases to catch my ear - quite literally, now, because she has me lassoed and tied with a rope of woven lechery. I whip back to face her, listening intently. Anything she desires. If she wants a drink of water, then she can pay me back with a kiss.
Her eyebrows form a dimple of aggravation in the center of her forehead, but still, Lo leans in. She frowns the whole time (I can feel it), but nonetheless it does not look like I will be needing any transactions tonight. Her tongue enters the cave of my mouth like a smarmy snake, flicking in and out, sliding up my cupid's bow and then falling back onto the bed along with a tangle of limbs and an exaggerated eyeroll.
Like fire, hellfire, this fire in my skin.
I stare at her for a few long moments, trying to think of something to say. I know I ought to bring her a drink of water, but she doesn't seem thirsty. She glares back at me, though it is less deadly than her glares by daylight, and I resolve to glare back.
Still staring me in the eye, Lo arches her back and jams a hand under her dress, and pulls - repugnantly so, and there is a loud snapping sound before she flops back down on the bed with a dramatic flourish. I do my best to ignore it, but my indifference is feigned a second too late. She sneers at me in satisfaction, taking petty amusement in taunting her dear old man, Humbert Humbert with his stuffy European airs.
As she opens her mouth once more, I feel a small surge of thrill; surely this will be her request for sustenance. I shan't have to dirty my lips with the proposal on my own.
Lo lets out a low groan and tosses her head to the side. Her gesture is one of irritation, not lethargy. "You know," she murmurs, and there's a sultriness to her words that sends palpitations pounding up my neck. "You'll never be my dad." Abruptly, she turns away from me and shivers with a sudden fit of cold.
Ah.
Well, that was that. She was an honest-to-goodness mind reader, on her more thoughtful days. Unfortunately, she'd turned into a dormant rock once again, not to be roused by anything but the threat of her threadbare chastity. And once again, I remained, scalded. Scalded by the ice in her tone.
Lo's contempt never fails to scorch me. Men like you would think that, by this point, I'd transformed into the most despicable of lust-driven creatures, a craven with cold blue eyes and a predatory gait. Veritably, you cannot understand it - not even I, the mangled monster of love, can comprehend why she still hurts me so. Tell me that I no longer possess a heart. Shout at me from behind your Greek pillars, close your temple doors in my face - but I will never become the callous incubus that I once dreamed I would be.
I am a sensitive man. All poets are, really - not men, I mean, but thin-skinned and delicate devils. Our hearts are jagged, double-edged glass. See it, behold it; my paradise of hell-colored flame sky, the child demon tearing up my heart. The deeper I cut into my darling, the harder I thrust into her soul, the more I wound myself. It is an agony that we Babel-born could never dream of articulating, and thank God that we possess not the language to do so. Perhaps the angels could put my anguish into words, but I fear that I will never meet them. The only angel I know is her, and hearing those hateful words spew from her mouth, always, though she knows how much I worship her - I want to throw her on the bed, ravage her and crush her beautiful fragile neck between my hairy fists.
She rolls over on the bed, out of my arms, bare shoulderblades jutting out like knives. The spot where she lay is now screaming with heat. She will pierce me forever with those eyes, with that wretched voice of hers, for there is no affection in her cold little heart except for herself. But I must be sure that she will never leave me - I have no choice, because to think otherwise is unbearable. And if she does, there is only one possible outcome in the entire world.
Choose me, or your pyre.
Be mine or you will burn.