A Long Distance Love Affair (4 page)

Chariette

Dear Chariot

It's lovely to hear from you. 

Hope your business in Cairns goes well for you.  It's probably a great time of year to be visiting up there.  I never got that far when I was in Queensland.  I would like to swim and frolic with you in the waters there (dodging all the deadly stuff that lives in them...)  I'm definitely into water and frolicking and my body's curves take on a particular appeal when they're wet and weightless.  Just thought I'd let you know that...

I'd better stop this now or I'll lose control (as usual...)

Thinking of you divine one...

Chariette

Dear Chariot

I came across a lot of wild freesias on a walk and picked a lovely bunch of them.  They make the house smell just beautiful.

I've been having lovely thoughts of you today (what else is new?) But I've also discovered that there is another woman lurking in me called Wicked Wanda.  I think you'll like her when you meet her...  She makes me think things like how delicious it would be to feel you in silk boxer shorts, and what I'd like to do with you and Bailey's Irish Cream at the same time... (see if you can work that one out...)  I was also thinking (no sorry it was Wanda) of using Drambuie which is my favourite liqueur, but the alcohol content might be a bit strong.  I probably need to do a bit of scientific research on this. Would you be interested in being my research assistant?

Feeling every sort of passion for you tonight...

From Chariette

Dear Chariot

I found it really hard to get out of bed this morning after a wakeful night.  I think the possums have orgies outside my bedroom window around 4.00am because I seem to wake up then quite consistently.  I turn on the light and try to read myself back to sleep because otherwise all work issues flood into my brain and won't go away. 

Madame Bovary is really starting to irritate me though.  Stupid bint should at the very least consider topping herself and that would make much more interesting reading.  I need to buy myself a gripping detective novel.  I have a few favourite authors and three of them have new books out...it's just a matter of getting out to get one.  (You might like to know that I'm a lovely hot pie in bed - my body seems to generate a lot of heat - and that's when I'm just lying there doing nothing!  I hope you'll find that out for yourself one day.)

I would love to kiss your fingertips gently right now (and Wanda would like to put your fingers in her mouth).  It's funny how I can experience such dual feelings for you at the same time - deep, deep tenderness and rampant wantonness.  I shouldn't have put my face in the freesias before I left this morning...

Chariette

Dear Chariot

I'm so glad you've agreed to be my research assistant.  I can't offer you any pay but the fringe benefits will be something else!

I am positively awash with you this morning.  I seem to be the worst for this in the mornings.  I feel so consumed with you and so eager.  I've always been a morning person though (not just in that regard) and feel good about the potential for life and experience a new day brings.  If you were here though, I'd never get to work...

I love to think of your face as you're reading my emails.  I imagine you sitting there with a quiet smile hovering on your lips (I hope this is the case!)

Oh those lips...how I want them all over me.  And your hands! (I am trying to keep Wanda at bay - I had to trash an email from her last night...)

I'm on the late train today - the school kids' one. They're so loud!  But I'm even feeling benign towards them for once because I'm so full of you (wish I was REALLY full of you...and right now...at this very moment!)

Oh what an embrace I'll give you when we finally meet up.  It will be an embrace fuelled by months (years) of pent up passion and desire for you.

What is to become of me....poor possessed creature that I am.

Your Chariette

Dear Chariot

Thank you for your call last night - lovely to hear from you as always.  I find it really hard to message you back because my fingers always start shaking....that's why there's always a bit of a delay.  You can just ring me at any time. There's no need to message beforehand, but I'm grateful to you for the thoughtfulness of that anyway.  And you could speak complete drivel to me for as long as you like and I'd still be a very happy woman!  What a voice!

It's Spring Fashion week down here.  The shops are full of flimsy apparel and strappy sandals, but everyone is still rugged up as if for the Antarctic.  It's such a trial taking off all the layers to try on something in the fitting rooms.  You need an extra half hour for lunch!!  However I find the idea of taking off many layers for you much more appealing and much more worth the effort and pretty tantalizing really...

I'll leave you with this lovely piece:

 "The thirst that from the soul doth rise

 Doth ask a drink divine;

 But might I of Jove's nectar sup

 I would not change for thine."

This translates roughly as "I think you're the most divine creature in the universe and I really fancy you."

And here's a Spring ditty for you from Wanda:

 "Apples are ripe

 Nuts are brown

 Petticoats up

 And trousers down"

I don't think this needs any translation...

From Chariette

Dear Chariot

Pounce doesn't even come close to what I would like to do to you...but yes, that's probably where I'll start so you better be ready!

I'm feeling a bit on the distraught side today.  I realised yesterday that I had missed the opening episode of the Forsyte Saga on TV on Sunday night.  I hardly watch any TV but I'd been looking forward to that for a long time (looking forward to other things too as you already know....). No one at work had videoed it (not surprisingly considering they're all engineers...) The Forsyte Saga was one of my all time favourite series of books.  I read the whole collection when I was about 19 and recall how absorbed I was in them at the time.  It was a real study of huge social change at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries and of course it focused on passionate love, unrequited love, love gained, love lost, hate and despair...all the stuff that gets me in.  I may just have to go to the ABC shop and buy the video.  I can't even remember what I was doing on Sunday night.

I still haven't finished Madame Bovary - it sends me to sleep – but there was one very memorable line in it last night:  "You should never touch your idol, because the gilt will come off on your fingers."  I have certainly found that with some of my favourite authors - there were some like Lawrence, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy whose works had such a dramatic effect on my life - helping to form me into the creature I am today - that I wanted to know as much as I could about the people who had created these wondrous works.  I started reading biographies and found that the men behind these works were deeply flawed (this probably led to their literary genius mind you), but what was so disturbing to me was that I discovered that, as men, I wouldn't have wanted to know them.  Lawrence was a positive little Fascist, Dostoyevsky a hopeless drunk and gambler, and Tolstoy seemed to lose the plot towards the end of his life and abandon his wife and family.  That's the problem with being a romantic - reality can bring you crashing to the ground.

I devoured everything Lawrence had written by the time I was 20 or so and was just blown away with it.   There was one book "The Rainbow" that I think was just the perfect novel.  One of the female character's names was 'Gudrun' and if I had a daughter it's likely the poor thing would have ended up with that name. My sons tell me they're really glad they were born males!  Everyone thinks of Lawrence for Lady Chatterley's Lover - but this was just a lightweight piece really, lacking the intense passion of his other works.  There's a poem by Lawrence called 'The Fig' that I will read out to you one day.  It's very sensual and daring for its time (Wanda is interrupting me here, wanting to tell you that the fig is likened to a particular part of a woman's body and describes how this fruit is best eaten...Sorry!!!)  I think you'll like it.  In The Rainbow he describes a kiss that goes on for a page.  I read that to my literature class of all girls once and they were all ears.  I asked them if they had ever been kissed like that before and they all just slowly shook their heads.  That was bad of me. I probably ruined any hope of normal relationships for them...they will be spending their lives looking for someone who could kiss them like that... I'm hoping I may have found that person...we'll see.   But to get back to my original point, I've stopped reading biographies of authors now.  I'd rather hang on to my romantic illusions about them.

To finish in a style reminiscent of Lawrence, both Wanda are I are dying to experience the fecundity of you in every possible profound way...

Your Chariette

Dear Chariot

In answer to your question will Wanda be accompanying me when we do meet up it will definitely be both of us, and you will have your hands (and other parts) fully engaged, but I'm sure you can cope with it.

When we do meet up you'll know it's me coming down the street because I'll be lugging a big bag full of books so that I can read you all the passages I have promised you to date ....

I loved this email from you.  Especially you homing in on the 'gilt' part.  I find your confidence reassuring.

And 'fecund' was Lawrence's favourite word.  He used it 12 times on one page once, trying to grapple with describing the intensity of sexual feelings and relationships .... I'll read you that page too!

At least the sun is out today.  And you sent me this lovely lovely email.  It's nice to see people lying on the lawns outside the State Library soaking up the sun.  I wish I were lying in your arms soaking you up just now.  (Wanda's thinking of more energetic things than that...)

And I am just waiting...

Chariette