I heard thru the grapevine you could shed some light on a particularly bad situation I seem to have gotten myself into. So I had this birthday party last weekend and I invited this amazing guy who just happens to be extremely hot. First off, if I wrote down everything I wanted in a guy, it would be him.

Anywho, at the party, as he was getting ready to leave I told him he was my only chance for birthday sex this year. Think he'll ever talk to me again? (this guy is either really classy 'cause he left to go to his friend's birthday party or he's insecure about sex for some reason like an std or maybe he already has a sex buddy)? help!?!?

Thanks,
Tara

Dearest Tara,

Shame though I fill with at the admittance, a similar occurrence happened once to me. Whensoever I reflect upon it, again I am awash in the sad and churlish depths of despondency, since my massive, boar-large triple-hearts had been broken by the devious and francais Mme. Marie Curie.

One night we had together, that was all. We met in a salon on the Left Bank and talked for long hours. I was new to the walking world, and impressed by her worldliness, scientific rigor and ability to remain upright for great periods of time. We spoke of half-lives half-lived, of passion and of the necessity of living life so as to be as full as possible. She was impressed by the 35 tons of my girth, and my many-yards-long tentacles. Marie smelled of talcum and vanilla, of bed-sheets newly rumpled— or so I was told. To me, that night on the Left Bank, Marie was the Avatar of the new century, zeitgeist given flesh. Her eyes were radiant, and gave off a bewitching green glow. There is little I would have refused her— perhaps nothing at all.

She lured me back to her demesne with promises and sweet words. Once inside, I slipped forth from the exit hatch of my steam powered velocitating exoskeletal-suit (iron and oilskins, flint glass and brass fittings— she was little of a suit, in comparison to those I have since possessed, but how I do miss her, some evenings, as I stalk through the night, a titanium spider, skewering cats until my legs are possessed of furry little chaps not unlike the sex-cowboys of Rob's much favored anatomical films) and into a heated, spiced pool Marie maintained. It dominated the room and supplied it with voluminous clouds of perfumed steam. I then discovered, to my delights, that she was indeed scented of talcum and vanilla, bed-sheets newly soiled, sugar, spice and all of everything nice.

She opened a drawer and withdrew a small looking-glass and a leaded cylinder. "Radium," she said, "I've just discovered it." She up-ended the cylinder onto the glass and poured forth a small mountain of the radioactive isotope. Marie ¯removed her shirt, and with my razorish beak I did then slit the draw-strings of her corsetry. She was flushed and gasping, her chest heaving and her hair dis-arrayed.

Marie pointed to the pile of radium dust. "This shit'll get us so fucked up. You gotta try this." She took some in her fingers and rubbed it onto the underside of my most tender tentacle, across her own gums and inhaled some gently. I, too, partook of this newly discovered primo-shit, rubbing it onto my tentacles, into my optically perfect eyes, and on the inner most reaches of my oral cavity.

We then had a night of passion that I can only recall dimly, even on my most lucid days, but when I twirl at the deepest, dimmest depths I can sometimes recollect every scented nuance.

And despite all this (or— horrors!— because of it!) she gave to me the dumping. It was customarily reasonless and without explanation nor explication.

It was not my first rejection, but the pain it caused was not unlike the jagged bite of the Sperm Whale, or the sharp goring of the tusk of the Narwhal— it was a certain kind of discomfort that only a vicious, predatory mammal could inflict.

Tara, I was in the funk. Deep in the blue. I was moping and shuffling my tentacles listlessly, and performing a perpetual, unconscious jellyfish impersonation. My friends felt burdened by my presence, and resolved to cheer me.

Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain and their on-a-moment, off-the-next drinking brother Nikola Tesla dragged me in their horse-drawn carriage to a fancy dress party in the cryptocoastal town of Balt-and-more in the aptly named Merryland. A party, they believed, would cure my ails and ills and give unto them a newly buoyant Architeuthis.

However, I was determined that it would not work. In my crude steam-powered exo-suit, I sat in the carriage and crossed my tentacles defiantly.

"Suit yerself," Twain screamed over the racket of the pressure-maintaining steam engines, "but there are some fine-ass bitches in this fizuckin' hiz-ouse, and sure they ain't all French Nobel-prize winning atomicists, but I reckon to get real fucked up on bathtub gin and partake of some of them fine fillies anyways."

Mark-the-Twain slapped me on my heavily riveted helmet, grinned and marched house-wards.

My tentacles crossed ever tighter, and I slunk lower in the reinforced carriage. I could hear Tesla regaling the crowd with the tale of the time he constructed a three-hundred foot tall Electro-Conduction Coil in Colorado, and showered lightning on the surrounding towns, villages and livestock for fifty miles around.

It was a good yarntale, I had heard it before, and even been present during certain stages of the construction, as well as the exploding of the cow— but I took no delight in its retelling that night. Resolute, though, was I still. I would not enter the party and speak with females of any species. Cupid could not raise his archery against my massive, three-ton hearts if I did not present them to him, no? I resolved: I would not be hurt again by the hot monkey loving.

But as the domestic laughter grew in volume and frequency, my courage withered.

Tara, my dear petitioner, there are two separate ways to not be hurt by love: to avoid love and slink to the murk on the sea floor with the scuttle crabs and eels, amid the broken husks of submarine and Atlantean ruins— that is Manner the First.

Or, dear readers, you can grasp love mightily with all ten working appendages and hold on for the full ride, through all the jumps and bucks and rodeo.

Tara, you have grasped at sweet loving, and it slipped through your tentacles. Do not be discouraged; there are many reasons why Mr. Birthday-Sex Elect could have chosen not to engage in celebratory copulation.

Possibly this chosen-one had a significant other awaiting him elsewhere; or he was auto-driver designate; perhaps he is homo-sapien, and is not interested in the female of your species? Perhaps your girth and terrible rending mouth shocked and awed him with such intensity that the fearing he felt made sexual arousal to the point of penetration an impossibility, much as the tongue-tied groupie, so excited by meeting the famed idol, is unable to utter a single syllable of consent?

He could be a eunuch, or on sexual responsive deadening medication. Both reasons would make it difficult for him to assume the beast of the several backs with you.

Maybe he was diseased, plagued, afflicted with a pox, or temporarily gaseous or nauseated.

Your interest has been communicated to this sexual candidate. When next you have a party he will be all too aware of this invitation. He may act then, or not. You must not wait for this dream-vessel! Immediately you must re-mount this allegorical horse and find more lovers, who in turn shall be mounted and re-mounted until exhaustion threatens death.

As I pronounce with increasing frequency: It is necessary to mate often and with great gusto.

There will be more holidays to celebrate, and celebratory couplings to enthusiastically engage.

To resume my original tale: Goaded by the laughter and audible evidence of merriment wafting from the party, I left my carriage and the hob-kneed nags who drew it and maneuvered my steam-driven exo-suit— crafted by Tesla using misappropriated funds from George-the-Westinghouse, as a sort of pre-emptive repayment for certain services rendered (and to be rendered) achronologically— and entered the house.

Once inside I slaughtered all who stood before me, with the exception of my good and excellent friends. They I merely maimed, as good and excellent friends sometimes must be.

I left them, awash in gallons of sanguinity, moaning in agony and but slightly disfigured. I made my way to the Atlantic, shed my crude walking-suit, and slunk into the depths, much as I had slid into the warm embrace of Marie's fantastically pool of delights.

This, then, is the substance of Manner the Third by which one may be hurt by love.

From The Benthic Deep,
GS