Love's Interest Lost

Ecstasy dripped from them. Nomads from the southland, she had born her soul to him in quiet conversation. But today she simply handed him a ball of her concessions, truly a schematic affair which left her feeling a little less than human. With casual interest he began to peel, dropping layers to the floor with vaguely curious nonchalance. Eight days they had been here, at this inn, waiting. Waiting and making love. Sidestepping the stampedes of barroom foolishness, they had found solace and even joy in each other’s arms. But it wasn’t to last.

Now, on the eighth day, after night after night of screeching, soul-bending, (“eat your face”) sex, they were beginning to get to know each other. They were beyond the casual exchange of dreams, now. There was little to do but talk, and they had talked of each other for too long, gleefully asking and answering questions that would make most whores blush. They had passed beyond sharing their exploits, their interests and their ideas and their idiosyncrasies. They had passed into the realm of true personality, being hardly separated from one another they began, far too early, to see each other no longer as ideas, but as human beings.

Even the sex, the mad co-exploration of two writhing bodies that had first brought them together, was beginning to show signs of fading. There were hints now of shame, of embarrassment for the other person, and of a newly limited interest in the workings of the bright, luminescent body they were pressed against. None of this was yet obvious enough for them to name, of course, but it was manifested in a new need to feign interest, and even worse in a failure to draw the experience out, as sleep gradually gained enough appeal to inspire them to hurry up and get it over with.