Calban Attempts To Experience Life More Fully (Ch.18) Part 1

                           Chapter 18 : Calban Attempts To Experience Life More Fully

Part 1

24/6/95

    One day something very unexpected happened to Calban. He finally managed to find someone who would have sex with him, and was able to attempt that long awaited act which had for many years been his greatest ambition, but which he had, during most of that period, given up hope of ever achieving. At the age of 22 or 23 he had discovered the pleasures of the pornog sections in the Vidbase, buried deep, but nonetheless available to everyone except underage children. He had also found the ‘live’ pornog channels, apparently massively popular on the Vidnet, although few were ever willing to discuss their fascination with them publicly. He had not found them before because no one else had ever told him about them, certainly not his family. At work he had only heard hints, which no one had ever explained properly at that age. He had always, up until that point, lived with the general sense that he could enjoy the sexual suggestion of the film channels and archives freely, as long as the door of the bedroom closed shut when anything really started to happen. He had seen women’s bodies , of course, on ‘film’. That was commonplace, because, quite understandably, it sold films. He had been exposed from an early age to the romance of films. Although he had been educated in the scientific theory of sex, he remained ignorant of what it really looked and felt like to have sex, except that he knew what his own organ was like and what it felt like to spend time bringing it to orgasm. That was only part of sex however, and like everyone else in the world, and up on the space stations, he wished to share it. He longed for the excitement of a close female body.

3/10/95

    Until his lucky meeting with Vera and his incorporation into the group he had been far removed from any chance of real sexual experience. He had become accepting of his lot in life, loneliness, private secretive sexuality, and the pornog vids. It was the only sexual life he could hope for. The example of his parents acted as a palliative on him. He had seen from an early age that even a shared life was not necessarily a good thing. It had been good for his parents most of the time, but to him it appeared false and stifling. Marriage did not attract him, as perhaps it should. He wanted companionship, but marriage with a woman was likely to be a worse option than independence. There was loneliness even within a marriage. But marriage and relationships with women were never on offer and never likely to be. He wanted sex more than anything. As he grew older, observing the realities of the pornog vids, he became more desperate. For that the price of an end to privacy might be worth it. Any price would be worth paying if only he had courage. But he had no courage. He could not even meet women in social circumstances, let alone talk to them. He had given up hope but not desire.

     Membership of the group reawakened hope. He did not believe any woman would want him at first. They all seemed to belong to someone else, but he found he could communicate with them, and he gained confidence. Perhaps one day a woman would show signs of wanting him. Certain meetings with women suggested that some might have some interest in him after all.

25/1/99

    Dulled by the day’s dullness he counted the hours and minutes, waiting as his life wasted itself on the idol of business efficiency. Human life, shooting with optimism at its start, blooming with promise, was wasted almost before it could develop, imprisoned and chained by the practices of the competitive social systems and, above all, by the punishing work regime. Life could be so much, and yet it was worth little, as buttons pressed numbers into grey emotionless machines. Pretty women, who should be having the time of their lives wore out their beauty on keyboard pads or turned into impatient zealots as they flopped around offices, conducting business as fast as they possibly could. They always managed to make Calban feel that he was inefficient, a horrendous crime. He would never think as quickly as they could, nor derive so much apparent pleasure from their craft. Did they have souls? Were they androids, newly designed by MIOST or some such agency to replace human beings. He was a man, still in the prime of life. Every night he returned home to pornog vids and fantasy, and yet here before him at work, was the real thing, female flesh and blood. But they had no eyes for him or anything else it seemed, but work, except when some powerful and suave Director, Partner, or a rising star in the ‘rat world’ of accounting and business should come, whizzing importantly and sensationally into the world of the office. The charm would be turned on for a time, proving that these women were still alive, but even then it was false, meaningless. Calban expected that if one of these ‘attractive’ men turned their attentions towards a woman they would soon be rebuffed. These women, many of them, had been turned into asexual creatures. They probably preferred shopping and the vidnet to real sex. Many of them, he suspected would not know how to behave with a man. All they knew was the world of work, and status, monetary acquisition, shopping and wasted life.