2001-04-03 - 7:39 a.m.

Fugue Project Sixteen: Your Sensual Side: two vignettes

Whether we like it or not, human beings care about physical appearance. No matter how we might deny it, we care about the reflection staring back at us in the mirror and are affected if that reflection changes. And more often than not, our reactions to those reflections are negative and critical: I need to lose weight, I'm too short, my nose is too big, I hate my hair.

It's time to change that. Describe yourself as the hero or heroine of a romance novel. Don't concentrate on the negative aspects or "cheat" by changing your physical appearance. Instead, focus on the assets you do have, and on what makes you sexy, unique, and loveable.

Chain Me To Thee With That Hair by Cee Ree Ustayk

Even as an old woman, Sylvia could still remember the rich, sleek weight of Mechaieh's hair against her fingers. She remembered studying its colors in rapt fascination as M. read Dickinson on the windowseat - how the sunlight brought out the red-brown undertones of M's shining black locks. Sylvia had not realized how many different shades of black existed until she found herself yearning to touch Mechaieh's hair, although she would learn that merely touching it would not be enough. She was especially surprised to discover that she didn't mind when strangers approached M. - at the bar and on the sidewalk - just to say to her that she had beautiful hair: Sylvia found that the familiar embrace of possessive envy failed to envelop her because, unlike those strangers, she'd been able to sink her fingers into that hair, and to feel its cool dark spell spill over her fingers.

Throughout the years - in spite of many other loves and many other cities - hearing Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings always stopped her in her tracks, because to hear it was akin to drinking sunlight, which within her mind was inseparable from the thrill within her blood whenever her senses - eyes, nose, lips, hands - had been allowed to seek out and sink into the hypnotic textures of Mechaieh's hair.

Have I found her? o rich finding!...
Chain me, chain me, o most fair!
Chain me to thee with that hair.


(Francis Pilkington)

Interlewd by Roe Mantecfule

It was a dark and stormy night, and Agent Pearce was getting more annoyed with his partner by the second.

"Look here, Fermat, the broad's legs couldn't have been THAT long, the driver's seat is practically under the steering wheel."

Fermat stood his ground. "Dude, I'm telling you, they were just like the Smithereens song. And she wasn't even wearing heels - how do you think she managed to outrun me?"

Pearce rolled his eyes. "Maybe she wanted to get away from you more than you wanted to get to her, eh?" He squinted at the prints on the wheel. "Gad, those are skinny little digits. No wonder she looked so plausible typing into her fake checkbook calculators."

"Yeah, Graham Kraka's still irate that we didn't smoke her out on that one."

"I'd like to see him do better," Pearce huffed. "I've been in this business a long time. When I see a woman use a mini-calculator, I figure she's too cheap to buy Quicken, not that she's cornering the black market on marshmallows."

Fermat licked his lips. "Besides, those fingers are fun to watch. You see her type? 80 words a minute, all fingers, non-stop. I wonder what she's like on the piano?"

A gleam appeared in Pearce's eye. "My blood is Czerny with lust at the mere thought."