Author's note: This is sort of a prequel to 'Language Preferences'.

Erotic Poetry

StarFleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth

Spring, 2252

Cadet Spock is reading erotic poetry. It is one of the ways he is trying to learn more about humans and how to understand them. He has always liked poetry. His mother has read poetry to him since he was a small child. But he had no exposure to erotic poetry before coming to the Academy. It is difficult to understand why this particular type of poetry is considered so compelling. The terms are cloaked in hyperbole, the terms are 'flowery'. If the writer of the poem wished to mate with the female to whom the poem was addressed, why did he not just say so? Spock is extremely confused.

He has attempted to discuss this with his roommate. But his roommate is not really the type who reads poetry. In response to Spock's questions, he has given him magazines full of pictures - pictures of poorly clad women of various types, mostly with very large mammary organs. He cannot understand how these women can function with such huge mammary organs always in the way. When he states this, his roommate howls with laughter and informs him that these women have chosen to have themselves augmented. Spock cannot understand this illogical thinking at all. He is even more confused.

He is also confused by the pictures. The positions the women are in do not look comfortable at all. He also does not understand the fact that some of them are pinching themselves or otherwise touching their bodies. Why would they do this? He does not understand. His roommate becomes quite vocal when Spock tries to get him to explain and calls him 'an asexual robot'. Spock does not understand this either - he is neither a robot nor asexual.

In extreme frustration, he calls upon his mentor, Captain Pike. While sympathetic to his concern, Captain Pike is not much help, either. For some reason, he compares Spock to a flower, calling him a 'slow bloomer'. Spock does not understand this, either. He is definitely not a flower.

He chooses selections in several different languages, from different cultures. In all of them, he sees recurrent threads - topics that are always chosen. The regard for the physical attributes of the subject of the poem, compliments on behavior, on appearance, the longing to touch, to caress, to perform acts of mating - he comes to anticipate these themes in this type of poetry. He begins to understand the format and can now differentiate between 'smut' and erotic poetry. But he is still confused. There are so many topics for poetry, why is this one considered any different?

*****

It is not until almost exactly five years later, when a particular cadet responds to his lightly veiled challenge and hands him a love sonnet written entirely in Klingon, that Spock truly begins to understand erotic poetry.