Fiction, of course, and all participants in sexual activity are over 18. One, in fact, is ageless. "Death in the saddle" with a twist.
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He was feeling his years, both the physical weight and the intellectual weight. And the tension of being a "grand old man" of his discipline and, simultaneously, of being a dinosaur, a hold-over from a by-gone era. A pioneer who no longer truly understood where things were going.
He had started his life in academia as a student of the mythological, some might say mythical, beings. He had been especially enamored of the psychopomps, those beings that came to shepherd the dying to the next phase of existence. The trajectory of his career took him into the study of compassion, with forays into medicine, both folk and modern, the comparisons of modern and "ancient" technology and, perhaps most surprisingly, law. But in the end, it was compassion that became his passion, so to speak. It was that line of study that brought him to the conference, the opening speaker of a three-day orgy of intellectual onanism in which presenter after presenter would attempt to either convey their understanding of hidden secrets of human culture or explain why someone else's understanding was fatally flawed.
His keynote presentation complete, he sought refuge in the hotel's opulent open-air coffee lounge. This was one of the things he loved about this hotel -- the courtyard with its water features, and the way the architecture created a natural cooling effect when there was a slight breeze. This afternoon, though, the air was still. It seemed as if everything around him had slowed.
The decadently rich essencia in front of him was just what he needed, dark and so thick the spoon he stirred it with would almost stand up on its own. The curl of lemon added a tartness that offset the potent bitterness of the drink. Think high octane Turkish coffee, and you understand what he was drinking. His eyes closed, he savored the aroma, then the mouthfeel and the taste. A luxurious, if small, reward for a talk well delivered. He opened his eyes to see he had acquired a table-mate. The hairs on his neck prickled. How had she joined him so silently?
Any number of things about her struck him as different. The hint of smoke in her eyes? Perhaps the way her hair seemed to move without the help of that now-absent breeze? Maybe it was the way she began to draw the words out of him without effort. While he was an accomplished public speaker, he was less than fluent in one-on-one settings. Especially those in which his discourse partner was so beguilingly beautiful. He typically found himself bumblingly tongue-tied.
She had introduced herself as Cinna. "Like the spice, just shorter," she explained. Not quite 5 feet tall, she certainly was short. And like the spice, her overall appearance evoked warmth. Her dusky skin glowed with an inner radiance. Her eyes, slightly asymmetric, were a deep brown flecked with green and gold. Her hair hung in jet black ringlets, all seemingly with a life of their own.
Her voice was like honey-mead, and her smile -- oh lord, her smile was a small fission reactor, spewing heat, light and subatomic joy particles. He simply could not look away, nor could he divert any other part of his attention.
Why on earth had this divine beauty chosen to sit with him, a pleasant enough looking man but no great prize visually? Maybe she'd been in the audience when he'd spoken about compassion earlier, and why there had to be room for compassion in leadership.
"I liked your talk," Cinna said, almost as if reading his mind. "Your words struck a chord in me, but I felt as though perhaps you had overlooked something."
Cocking an eyebrow, he replied, "I'm glad you enjoyed. Please, share your thoughts."
"You spoke eloquently of compassion for the 'other' as you put it, and for the process of leadership. Compassion for both the followers and the beneficiaries of the project."
He nodded. So, she had been in the audience.
"But you were silent about compassion for the self. If you omit self-compassion, how can you be whole enough to hold compassion for others?"
"Cinna," he said, quickly mulling the answer over, "might it be that self-compassion is implicit? And so there was no need to mention it in the talk?"
"Oh, I don't think that could work. What isn't explicit is often left out, lost." He could swear the neckline of her blouse lowered, baring a bit more cleavage. Perhaps she had just leant forward.
He frowned, concentrating on the implications of her statement. "What do you propose, that self-compassion must be considered consciously, must be acknowledged openly in order to not fall by the wayside?"
She nodded, and a lock of hair shifted to trail across the tops of her breasts. Was it her breasts or the movement of her hair that seized his eye?
"Exactly so. The element of self-compassion has to be held up and explicitly recognized. But that is not enough. The need for self-compassion, and the thing itself, has to be accepted, without judgment, without self-criticism."
Her eyes bore into him as she spoke. It was as though she knew that, as they sat, he was denying himself the pleasure of imagining what her touch felt like. Just as he had denied himself the pleasure of so many things over the years. Yes, he had lusted over certain students, certain colleagues. But he felt that his position of relative power meant he had to exercise extra caution to ensure he coerced no one. He never did think that maybe his denial affected not just himself -- maybe he was withholding compassion from those around him.
Cinna reached across the table and placed her hand on his. "You can't give others what they need if you consistently deny yourself what you want, what you
need
