The Debate

As published in Dutch in my book of 2015 'Lustkronieken 2".
With 1000 thanks to the wonderfull Mahotsukai and Marie Rebelle to help me translate my favorite story into English. Marvelous that she posted me on Wicked Wednesday, her weekly meme. If you click Marie Rebelle here, you will learn more about this special meme!

That day, Anya lay stretched out and lazy on his sofa in front of the fireplace. The only thing she wore was a tiny silk nightie and she had surrounded herself with a muddle of newspapers. She had even taken a couple of books by two well-known Japanese authors from his shelves and had put them opened and face down on the wooden floor. Steven had just gotten out of the shower and walked into the room carrying two steaming cups of coffee. Slightly annoyed, he looked at the mess she created around her, and immediately started picking up the books from the floor. 

“You’re straining the back and cover like this, Anya. You know how carefully I treat my books. At least put a sheet of paperbetween the pages if you have to.” He still thought it was complicated, having a female human being like Anya around in his safe haven. Not that she took any notice of this. The spontaneous erection she caused when she gazed at him with her cheeky eyes, again and again, had her shamelessly penetrating his life and she wasn’t planning to relinquish the lust she was the source of.

 “Don’t be such a drag, Steven. Come here, ignore those books and sit beside me,” Anya responded. “I was just reading this very interesting article.” Anya read aloud the feature that compared two works by Kenzaburo Oë and Haruki Murakami from the viewpoint of Sartrian philosophy. 

“Both authors belong to the pinnacle of Japanese post-war literature and are renowned for their modern, existentialist view of the world. A world full of magic, imagination, and a flow of sequential events,” were the initial words of the article. 

“You know, that is so appealing in your existentialism, the imagination,” Anya continued. 

“The author of the article states that if you understand Sartre’s philosophy, it is easier to understand the work of both Japanese writers. In particular the concept of how one requires fantasy and imagination to create future improvements of a current situation. But also that an imaginative mind will not automatically cause a person to act accordingly. Unless there is vigour, propensity to change, and willingness to interact with the world, you may remain stuck in mere fantasy,” Anya summarized. 

Steven sighed. The prospect of a quiet Saturday went up in flames and blew out the chimney. Anya sat up straight and Steven recognised the sparkle in her eyes: she had only just got into her stride.

“This is the case with you, Steven. You imagine all kinds of things, but you need me to get the action going. Am I right?  Could that be the answer, that existentialism and naturalism should be considered inseparable? That you need interaction with me, in order for me to drag you out of your existentialist cave?”

As she spoke these words, Anya could not help to chuckle. She did not notice Steven blushing. She moved some of the newspapers aside and put her naked legs on his lap. “My nutty professor…”

Steven responded with folding his arms and simply refusing to touch her legs. He took a deep breath and clearly did his utmost to preserve his calmness and reason. As long as he could avoid the sight of the soft white skin of Anya’s legs, he knew he’d manage to keep his composure and make a reasonable and well-founded response.

 “You seem to forget, Anya, that both in Oë’s The Silent Cry and Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, the books the writer of this article refers to, time only passes by very slowly. In both novels, the protagonist’s individual seclusion from the outside world turns out to be an important turning point. You seem to forget that, without contemplation and withdrawal into their own minds and imagination, which in both books is represented by literally spending time in a dark pit, they would not have been capable to handle the new reality that subsequently emerged. Afterwards, they manage to shape reality as they had envisioned whilst in the pit. You see, as such they did not need anyone at all, only themselves, the micro-cosmos of their own minds, the acceptance of the reality they were not merely a spectator of, but of which they were part. 

It’s really no mumbo-jumbo about wandering souls that had to be saved by a worldly woman”. Steven scowled, his eyes fixed on the flames to avoid any eye contact with Anya.

Anya was not certain what provoked her most: his apparent aversion to her presence, his continuous refusal to accept her as a factor in his life, or the fact that he seemed to completely ignore Sartre’s engagement principle. But that he excited her was crystal clear. The more he withdrew from her emotionally, while at the same time keeping her close physically, the more she wanted to seduce him and draw him out. For a moment she went quiet. His words had an effect on her; she decided to try another track.

“Do you know what your problem is, Steven? You yourself are The Dark Pit!. And me, I am the reality you ought to envision and shape. And touch, for that matter. Touch me, Steven! Live, live now and here! I am here! Engagement also implies that you accept the inevitable reality and live in this world. Go on, touch me, or are you too much of a coward to live?”

Anya spoke with verbal aggression. To enforce her arguments, she resolutely rose to her feet and posted herself firmly in his eye-range. With a swift movement, she grabbed her iPhone from somewhere beneath the wrinkled newspapers and put on a song that she knew Steven would find horribly shallow: John Legend’s All of me. In harmony with the sweet piano melody and Legend’s melodic voice, Anya swayed her hips and seductively caressed her tummy and her breasts. She turned around gracefully and lifted her negligée slowly to the rounding of her bum. She then bent over slightly, right in front of Steven’s face, and crumpled the cloth further upwards with her hands, leaving her buttocks naked and seductive right in front of him. 

Step by step she shuffled backwards, until her feet were next to his and her buttocks were – almost literally -  in Steven’s face. He sat constrained and gruffly on the couch. 

She knew he was watching her, as he was always watching her, as he had to watch her. The music continued: Seal, a track from the Soul album. His raw and virile voice encouraged Anya to go even further. She not only wanted to seduce Steven, she wanted to have him, crack him open, possess and devour him.

As if possessed by the music, Anya merged with the sweet melody and let herself go. She moved rhythmically to the sounds, slowly removed her negligée with striptease-like movements and bent backwards, hovering over Steven’s lap. She pretended to give a lap dance, leaning on her elbows, naked and vulnerable. When she gazed down between her legs for a second, Steven clearly had an enormous erection. The fly of his beige pants appeared painfully tight. Anya stretched out her hand and affectionately caressed his crotch, with her legs opened widely and her bottom so close to his face she could feel his accelerated breath against her skin. 

As much as he tried to maintain his stoic stance, Steven could not help to slowly raise his hand to touch the wonderfully tight skin of her buttocks. But he had not counted on Anya anticipating this; just before he could touch her, she got upright and stepped forward. She turned around and stood, barefooted, on the pile of crumpled newspapers, dancing to the music ferociously and moving backward, away from him.

“If you want me, dear professor, you will have to seduce me. Just choose, Mister Existentialism. Will you stay in your Sartrian pit or do you prefer the Camusian life, in which you can manifest yourself as your own work of art? An erotic work of art, in this case! Do you choose to be solitary in your damned pit or do you prefer to be together, with me, in real life?” she asked, with explicit earnestness.

For a moment Steven thought he saw tears in her eyes. Her words reverberated in his head, his heart shriveled under the look in her eyes.

“Come on, choose!” Anya screamed. “Aren’t you the person who makes a conscious choice in everything? So come on, take your pick!”

Steven sat, paralysed, incapable of speech, unable to move. In spite of, or maybe because of the tension that filled the room, his dick seemed to live a life of its own and visibly pulsated behind the fabric of his pants. Enraged by his numbness, Anya walked over to his beloved bookcase that covered an entire wall of the room, and violently started to tear one book after another from the shelves. She simply dropped them on the floor and stood upon them, enabling herself to continue her destructive deed on the higher shelves. Steven witnessed her aggressive outbreak dumbfounded. He opened his mouth but it had become so dry that he was unable to utter a single word. 

“Here, just choose, you idiot, two penny-half penny existentialist, scaredy-cat, dry old stick, jerky pain in the neck, go on, flee into the dead words of your precious books!” she screamed unremittingly, fiercely throwing one book after another to the floor. The lovely Anya had turned into a raging fury, a hurricane that had entered his room uninvited. Steven had no idea what had got him into this situation, nor how he was going to escape it.

When she had emptied at least half of the bookshelves, Anya turned around, gasping for breath. Her nudity resembled the looks of Xena The Warrior Princess more than the seductive female student she had been half an hour earlier. He watched her as she looked around, inspecting his room for something. A calm momentum, tender and painful at the same time.

Her eyes focused on a painting above his head, on the wall behind the sofa. It was his most precious belonging, painted by his first love he had lost to transience and had let slip away, like water through his fingers. It was an abstract portrait of himself, colourful and eye-catching in the predominantly grey, black and white interior of his living room. When he realised what Anya was looking at, his heart skipped a beat.

My god, she wasn’t going to.... no, she couldn’t be that vicious. Not the…

Anya saw the shock in his eyes and instantly dashed towards the sofa, in an attempt to rip the portrait off the wall. In a reflex, Steven leaped up, grabbed her by the waist and tore her backwards. Anya struggled to be released, biting his arm and kicking his legs. It was a ridiculous situation.

An enormous rage emerged in Steven, the depth of his soul unleashed a force that had always been under lock and key. He was no longer able to think clear, she had drained him of all logic, reason layered hidden between the books on the floor and his consciousness lay rumpled amidst the newspapers. He threw her onto the sofa, sat down, and in pure rage he pulled her across his knees. Her white round buttocks, shining innocently on his lap, were like a red rag to a bull. Without restraint he landed the first slap, whilst his other hand firmly held her arms on her back. At that particular moment, nothing in the world could have given him more satisfaction than giving Anya the spanking she deserved. One slap followed the other, increasingly firm; the smacking sound of skin to skin prompted him for more and harder, and for a moment he completely lost himself in the trembling flesh that turned red before his eyes. He only awoke from his flush when he heard Anya moaning and begging. 

“Steeeeven! More, touch me, give me everything, go on…oh God, more, touch me!” 

With his hand held up high in thin air, he came to his senses with a shock. Startled, he realised what he had done and in a reflex he wanted to wrap his arms around her. Only then it came to him that it had not been the pain that had caused Anya to groan. She was about to have an overwhelming orgasm.

“Ohh, this feels so good Steven, don’t stop, touch me, make me feel alive, please go on, ooh! Take me! Take me!”

He took her. By turning her around, spreading her legs, putting his hand around her neck and sliding three fingers of his other hand into her wet pussy. Not gently as was his usual approach towards her, but roughly. He thrust his fingers into her, moving his hand quickly back and forth, and with his other hand restrained her body that writhed with horniness. The beige fabric of his pants was now covered with large wet stains from her juices that dripped from his hand. Her orgasm was so intense and dense that Steven for a moment thought she was having a swoon. 

When she was raged out and lay draped on his lap like a rag doll, he gently caressed her delicate abdomen. She opened her slightly swollen eyelids. 

“Steven,” she whispered in a hoarse voice, “you see?”

He felt an unfamiliar tranquility entering his mind, a peaceful serenity. At the same time, he was so horny and excited that he lifted Anya in his arms, put her on the crumpled newspapers and took off his pants. Calm and determined, as a chef who carefully prepares a meal, he put her legs over his shoulders and subsided his hard-on, almost purple from excitement, into her. Calmly, straightforward and in a tight and vigorous rhythm, he took her. 

He felt so alive, so present. There was no need for words to encourage her nor for her to say anything. He simply took her and she received him, as if it had always meant to be like this, as if it was meant to be like this forever more. It did not take long before he felt his balls contracting and his semen surging. He bent his body further, his face close to hers. Black spiders of mascara surrounded her eyes, her cheeks were red and her hair moistly stuck to her face. 

He contemplated he had never seen her like this before: so beautiful, so real. Anya took his face into her hands and looked at him, as he freed himself of all chains of tension and shot his load, all inside her.

Anya held on to Steven, embracing him with her legs around him. 

“You see?” she whispered again. “I just know this is you. This is who you are when you’re with me, always. The only thing nature wants is that you choose her. That’s all, Steven, nothing else matters. There’s nothing more to it.”

The opening sentence of Oe’s The Silent Cry resounded in his mind: “Awakening in the predawn darkness, I grope among the anguished remnants of dreams that linger in my consciousness, in search of some ardent sense of expectation.” 

Although he had read the book countless times, he felt as if he had only just grasped its full meaning.