Dismay and Distress

“Have you have ever wondered how I 'lost' my cherry, Jeremy?”, Lottie had asked.

I don't think that I am a dinosaur; I believe that I am someone who understands and has adapted to the changes in behaviour and attitudes of the modern lifestyle. Yet, while accepting the greater freedom of speech, I cannot help feeling uneasy when I hear coarse language that verges on bawdiness.

I am irked at being thought a libertine (I am a human being and I have my weaknesses but I'm not a degenerate) and as she seems to want to talk of the loss of her virginity, I am shocked and feel a surge of moral indignation.

At the same time I am confused: she's acting out of character. I haven't heard her talking or acting so recklessly before. I make a move to get out of bed and she stops me.

“Please don't leave. Forgive me for behaving like a slut but I love you and I thought that unless I took the initiative...”

She doesn't need to finish her sentence, I know that I have been too cautions and waited too long to propose to her.

“After that night in London”, she continues, “I believed that you found me unattractive and plain. Not the kind of glamorous females you liked. When you came back into my life I had to re-invent myself and be a scarlet woman, sex-mad, promiscuous and immoral; one that would be acceptable to a debonair man like you.”

I hear that she's quietly sobbing and I try to comfort her.

“Don't dwell on the past...”

“But that's what I can't stop doing. When you rejected me, I felt humiliated and it destroyed my confidence.”

I am dumbfounded. How could a beautiful and sophisticated woman be so self-abasing as to find it necessary to resort to unorthodox seductive wiles to ensnare a lover?

“Tut-tut, mon petit choux, you needn't have worried. The woman you thought would be ideal for me, a glamorous vamp, is the complete opposite to the one I want to share my life with.”

“Trust me,” I add, “you have been the girl of my dreams since I first set my eyes on you,.”

I had been besotted by her long before that night in London.
I am of course referring to the time of Elizabeth's funeral when, despite the sad occasion, she had made a great impression on me with her elegant and confident poise which I now found hard to reconcile with her current attitude of uncertainty and doubt.

She had seen my dismay when she mentioned the loss of her 'cherry' and now explains that she wants me to know that although it was Hugo taking her virginity on their wedding night, it was virtually I who was deflowering her.

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“You old fox. what have you got to say for yourself”, says Jessica, “I saw Lottie coming out of your room last night.”

© Luigi Pagano 2020

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