An Attempt to Write A Novel -- First 2 Pages

LIQUID SILK

By Susan B. Reinhard

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength,

who makes enormous demands on me,

who does not doubt my courage or my toughness,

who does not believe me naïve or innocent,

who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

She was not a person who wrote about sex. She believed that humans should simply do it. She did not need pictures or lace or leather or “dirty” words. She was a gray-haired older woman with her hair in a bun and she was speaking of long ago, but vivid memories. “You know from his touch. You know from his scent. This is my male. I want to mate with this one.”  Susan lowered her coffee cup and asked rhetorically:  “Does the Wolf in the forest know the age of his female? Does he check her over from head to toe and reject her for an asymmetrical paw or ragged patch of her fur? No. The Wolf has never seen a commercial or read a book. His mind is completely free of all the noises that infect that of the modern human male. They sniff. They mate. Then, trot off to live together forever.”

Velda and Brigltte exchanged the tiniest of quick glances, praying no one in the crowed atrium restaurant could hear. They were holding their breaths, praying that Susan’s lecture would not demand any audience participation. Velda, the redhead, and the taller of the two, raised her hands and mimed writing on a pad,  the universal gesture for “bring the check.” Brigette, the tiny blonde her purse up from the floor and began looking for something, anything, to change the subject.

Back in the 1960’s, you didn’t need anything but a naked body. Maybe because it wasn’t a world of television and commercials and the internet, people weren’t seduced into thinking that they could have the movie star…that they DESERVED the movie star and would get him if they just bought this product or that service.

There is a sterile scent to sex nowadays. It is perfume, not scent. There is a shiny paper, computer screen indulgence that lets you have anyone, take anyone in your imagination. Worse of all, there are prices for services and not just from prostitutes. The best women, meaning most sexual, will get the best men, meaning most salaried. She will close her eyes and dreams of his checkbook will inspire her to act out whatever climax he needs.

But women are are only permitted to select if she is young and beautiful. One wonders if animals need anything other than health and strength If we had not gotten so far from our animal instincts, we would not need pornography. We would know what the word “satisfaction” means.

So who am I writing this for?

Am I writing it for the women of the harem or the Prince who is peeking in through a crack in the wall, silently praying for a flash of flesh? Would that I had a way to secretly glimpse at him asleep in his bed, his broad shoulders bare. The throat flowing into clavicles like graceful bows of bone that lead to strong arms which end in those amazing long and tapered hands that we would happily fill with our velvet breasts.

But he is not a Prince and American women do not live in harems. American women don’t want to dwell in Harems, even though it would mean we would have a sisterhood of enslavement. No. We want to be free. We want to be the only woman in his life. We want to be enough.