+J.M.J.+
Once You've Had Mecha…
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
More musings to veil the shameless fantasizing! I was feeling low, so I had to write this, get my feelings out. A little sad, but it gets better.
Disclaimer:
See chapter one
Chapter Five
...You'll Occasionally Wish You Never Met Him
When you really stop to think about Our Boy, you realize what a shocking creature he really is, every bit of a philosophical shock as he is a shock to the senses (in all senses).
Even as, in my musings and dreams, I lean my head on his shoulder as he holds me close, I realize that there's something gravely amiss even in this moment of perfection. I've been thrown over by guys: one guy turned me down just because I was taller than him by an inch, while another guy told me to my face that he was looking for a sophisticated woman. There's something terribly amiss in a world where a mere, albeit beautiful machine can do more to please a woman and raise her sense of self-worth than a man has. Maybe the men who've thrown me over need to be on the receiving end of that kind of rejection. But there again, the guys who are that selfish might not take any notice if I did.
But now I came to the realization that, in a sense, I was throwing over men of my own species in favor of a guy who is not. I tried to tell myself where else was I going to find someone who could accept me unconditionally, who would accept my at-times emotional neediness and would be more than willing to cuddle me back to functionality after I've had a melt-down. But the ugly truth reared it's head: it's just his programming. It's just what he does.
I felt tears in my eyes when this thought presented itself to me, even as I lay nestled in Joe's arms, just cuddling with him.
He must have sensed something, detected some change in my breathing or some chemical change in the androgens exuded from my skin. He propped himself up on his elbow and looked me in the eye. I turned my face to hide the tears.
What troubles you?" he asked, innocently. "You did not seem troubled before, or has something surfaced that you had hoped to hide?" He touched my cheek with one fingertip, lifting it away, a tear resting there like a clear pearl. "I've found a tear."
"I can't say," I said.
He looked into my eyes, something like concern there, or was it just his programmed response. "Was someone unkind to you?" he asked. "You know I can soothe your sorrow."
"I can't tell you about it." I honestly wanted to push him away and put some distance between us, but somehow I couldn't.
"You know that I cannot judge you for your sadness, nor may I laugh at what disturbs your spirit. I can calm the waters of your soul."
He was tempting me, but the realization was setting in. "I know you can't."
"Was it something that I said?" he asked.
I reached up and stroked his soft cheek, almost as soft as my own. "Joe, I don't know how to say this...I love having you around, having you here, just cuddling...but I need more."
He smiled, lowering his eyelids seductively. "Much as you protested otherwise, once was not enough." He took my hand by the wrist and started guiding it toward the neck of his shirt.
I withdrew my hand. "Joe, it's not that...*That's* the last thing I need right now." He cocked his head, puzzled. "That's just the problem."
He looked at me utterly baffled. "How could that be the problem? You yourself have said that what we have here is beautiful."
"I don't know how to say this, but I need to move on. You can't belong to me, and I can't belong to you. I have to find one of my own kind."
He drew back from me, sitting beside me on the floor, his legs folded under him. "I understand. This has happened to me once or twice before by other customers, and I must respect it."
I sat up, facing him. "That's just it." I put my hand on his knee. "I don't want to let you go, either."
Joe's eyes went blank, utterly baffled. I could almost hear his logic processors whirring madly, trying to make sense of what I had just said. "Then you mean to say, you want me and yet you do not want me?" He paused. "How can you desire two things which contradict each other?"
"That's just the way with Orga brains: our feelings can screw us up. I envy you for not really having emotions: you won't ever have to get tied up in knots the way I am right now."
He gave me a smile then. "But it is that which draws me toward your kind, this strangeness only makes you all the more attractive. You only want a sympathetic hand and ear to soothe you and assuage your loneliness."
"But that's just it," I said, laying my cards on the table. "I'm really just fooling myself when I keep going back to you. You make me feel great inside, but there's nothing behind it. I can't return the favor, not the way I can with..."
"With a 'real' man?" he asked. I hoped I only imagined that cool note in his husky voice.
"Don't misunderstand me," I said. "I'll always treasure what we had."
He looked at me almost like a liitle boy after a scolding. "Is it over then?"
"I don't want it to end, but I realize what you are. What you do for me, it's all just your programming, your responses to what I say and how I act."
"But does it not comfort you?" he asked, clearly trying to forestall the inevitable.
"It does. But I feel like I'm being dishonest with myself, like I'm fooling myself. We can't love each other the way we should. You can't love me the way I need because you don't know how, and I can't love you the right way because..."
"Because I am not real," he concluded.
He seemed so disappointed that I had to do something to soften the blow, but I knew it came too late. "Joe, don't think I don't like you any more or that I hate you."
"I understand," he said. "As I said, this has happened before, and I must respect your wishes." He got up and reached for his jacket, draped across my chair, and pulled it on slowly.
"Joe, I'm not throwing you out," I said. "I'm only trying to be completely honest with you."
He nodded almost sagely. "It is understood: you require time and space in which to decide what you truly desire." He strode to the door, opened it and started to step through, but he paused on the threshold and turned to me. "But perhaps when you have given this the consideration it requires, you will decide in my favor, which....I assure you...will only be to your benefit."
With that, he stepped through, out into the darkness of the hallway, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.
Only then, I bent my head and cried. I realized I'd probably ruined something beautiful. wasn't perfect good enough for me? I wished I had never met him. Because of him, I felt marked for life. "You'll never want a 'real' man...again" is more than just advertising copy. and now he would never return. Served me right if he avoided me from then on.
I avoided Joe out of embarassment after that. To anyone who asked me if I was still seeing "that Mecha", I claimed I had finally come to my senses and I was turning over a new leaf. But I was fooling everybody including myself. Joe might not be real, but man, he left an awful hole now that I'd turned him out of my life.
I moved on to another guy, an Orga, a 1930s era reporter and news photographer thirteen years my senior, a cold-eyed, icy-hearted cuss with bad teeth and untrimmed nails stained from working with photographic developing chemicals (translation: I saw the film *Road to Perdition* and the perverse part of me devleoped a strange crush on Jude's sinister character in it. Just to let you know, I don't always develop crushes on his characters: I actually detested the whiny, self-pitying albeit genetically perfect character he plyed in the sci-fi drama *Gattaca*: it was like listening to myself.). The one wild dream I had involving him bordered on the nightmarish. All I'm gonna say about the marginally romantic interlude with "The Reporter", in the back seat of his Model a Ford, is thatr when I woke up from that dream, I got up immediately to check and see if I really had the marks of his nails on the small of my back and a dent in the back of my head where I'd half-brained myself on a door handle.
If I ever needed Joe, if only to dispell that goon from the shadows of my mind and get me back to my senses, I needed hims like a plant needs water.
I spotted Joe one evening outside the coffee shop where we used to meet. He looked my way with a smile, but he seemed reticent, as if he were deliberately holding back, teasing me even.
I approached him. "Hey, Joe, whaddya know?" I asked.
His smiled grew warmer. "So the prodigal returns. Did you ever find the 'real' man whom you could love properly?" he asked, part gently, part teasingly, even a little cynically.
"Well, I found an Orga, but he wasn't half as good to me as you've been," I said. "He was more machine-like than you."
"So you came back to me, seeking for a soothing hand?" he asked.
"Yes...if you'll have me back," I said.
He took my hands in both of his, pulling me close to him. "You know I can never refuse you: They made me only too willing to soothe you."
I lifted my face up to his. "Just kiss me."
He pressed his face to mine, kissing me lightly, almost tentatively even teasingly, testing the waters and witholding the full glory. He released my lips; inhibitions shorted out, I moved in, lips parted, letting him probe in deeper, despite the sniffs and harrumphs of the passersby. I was in my right mind again. Joe had charmed me, I had reached out to him; and all was right with the world.
More, someday....
Once You've Had Mecha…
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
More musings to veil the shameless fantasizing! I was feeling low, so I had to write this, get my feelings out. A little sad, but it gets better.
Disclaimer:
See chapter one
Chapter Five
...You'll Occasionally Wish You Never Met Him
When you really stop to think about Our Boy, you realize what a shocking creature he really is, every bit of a philosophical shock as he is a shock to the senses (in all senses).
Even as, in my musings and dreams, I lean my head on his shoulder as he holds me close, I realize that there's something gravely amiss even in this moment of perfection. I've been thrown over by guys: one guy turned me down just because I was taller than him by an inch, while another guy told me to my face that he was looking for a sophisticated woman. There's something terribly amiss in a world where a mere, albeit beautiful machine can do more to please a woman and raise her sense of self-worth than a man has. Maybe the men who've thrown me over need to be on the receiving end of that kind of rejection. But there again, the guys who are that selfish might not take any notice if I did.
But now I came to the realization that, in a sense, I was throwing over men of my own species in favor of a guy who is not. I tried to tell myself where else was I going to find someone who could accept me unconditionally, who would accept my at-times emotional neediness and would be more than willing to cuddle me back to functionality after I've had a melt-down. But the ugly truth reared it's head: it's just his programming. It's just what he does.
I felt tears in my eyes when this thought presented itself to me, even as I lay nestled in Joe's arms, just cuddling with him.
He must have sensed something, detected some change in my breathing or some chemical change in the androgens exuded from my skin. He propped himself up on his elbow and looked me in the eye. I turned my face to hide the tears.
What troubles you?" he asked, innocently. "You did not seem troubled before, or has something surfaced that you had hoped to hide?" He touched my cheek with one fingertip, lifting it away, a tear resting there like a clear pearl. "I've found a tear."
"I can't say," I said.
He looked into my eyes, something like concern there, or was it just his programmed response. "Was someone unkind to you?" he asked. "You know I can soothe your sorrow."
"I can't tell you about it." I honestly wanted to push him away and put some distance between us, but somehow I couldn't.
"You know that I cannot judge you for your sadness, nor may I laugh at what disturbs your spirit. I can calm the waters of your soul."
He was tempting me, but the realization was setting in. "I know you can't."
"Was it something that I said?" he asked.
I reached up and stroked his soft cheek, almost as soft as my own. "Joe, I don't know how to say this...I love having you around, having you here, just cuddling...but I need more."
He smiled, lowering his eyelids seductively. "Much as you protested otherwise, once was not enough." He took my hand by the wrist and started guiding it toward the neck of his shirt.
I withdrew my hand. "Joe, it's not that...*That's* the last thing I need right now." He cocked his head, puzzled. "That's just the problem."
He looked at me utterly baffled. "How could that be the problem? You yourself have said that what we have here is beautiful."
"I don't know how to say this, but I need to move on. You can't belong to me, and I can't belong to you. I have to find one of my own kind."
He drew back from me, sitting beside me on the floor, his legs folded under him. "I understand. This has happened to me once or twice before by other customers, and I must respect it."
I sat up, facing him. "That's just it." I put my hand on his knee. "I don't want to let you go, either."
Joe's eyes went blank, utterly baffled. I could almost hear his logic processors whirring madly, trying to make sense of what I had just said. "Then you mean to say, you want me and yet you do not want me?" He paused. "How can you desire two things which contradict each other?"
"That's just the way with Orga brains: our feelings can screw us up. I envy you for not really having emotions: you won't ever have to get tied up in knots the way I am right now."
He gave me a smile then. "But it is that which draws me toward your kind, this strangeness only makes you all the more attractive. You only want a sympathetic hand and ear to soothe you and assuage your loneliness."
"But that's just it," I said, laying my cards on the table. "I'm really just fooling myself when I keep going back to you. You make me feel great inside, but there's nothing behind it. I can't return the favor, not the way I can with..."
"With a 'real' man?" he asked. I hoped I only imagined that cool note in his husky voice.
"Don't misunderstand me," I said. "I'll always treasure what we had."
He looked at me almost like a liitle boy after a scolding. "Is it over then?"
"I don't want it to end, but I realize what you are. What you do for me, it's all just your programming, your responses to what I say and how I act."
"But does it not comfort you?" he asked, clearly trying to forestall the inevitable.
"It does. But I feel like I'm being dishonest with myself, like I'm fooling myself. We can't love each other the way we should. You can't love me the way I need because you don't know how, and I can't love you the right way because..."
"Because I am not real," he concluded.
He seemed so disappointed that I had to do something to soften the blow, but I knew it came too late. "Joe, don't think I don't like you any more or that I hate you."
"I understand," he said. "As I said, this has happened before, and I must respect your wishes." He got up and reached for his jacket, draped across my chair, and pulled it on slowly.
"Joe, I'm not throwing you out," I said. "I'm only trying to be completely honest with you."
He nodded almost sagely. "It is understood: you require time and space in which to decide what you truly desire." He strode to the door, opened it and started to step through, but he paused on the threshold and turned to me. "But perhaps when you have given this the consideration it requires, you will decide in my favor, which....I assure you...will only be to your benefit."
With that, he stepped through, out into the darkness of the hallway, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.
Only then, I bent my head and cried. I realized I'd probably ruined something beautiful. wasn't perfect good enough for me? I wished I had never met him. Because of him, I felt marked for life. "You'll never want a 'real' man...again" is more than just advertising copy. and now he would never return. Served me right if he avoided me from then on.
I avoided Joe out of embarassment after that. To anyone who asked me if I was still seeing "that Mecha", I claimed I had finally come to my senses and I was turning over a new leaf. But I was fooling everybody including myself. Joe might not be real, but man, he left an awful hole now that I'd turned him out of my life.
I moved on to another guy, an Orga, a 1930s era reporter and news photographer thirteen years my senior, a cold-eyed, icy-hearted cuss with bad teeth and untrimmed nails stained from working with photographic developing chemicals (translation: I saw the film *Road to Perdition* and the perverse part of me devleoped a strange crush on Jude's sinister character in it. Just to let you know, I don't always develop crushes on his characters: I actually detested the whiny, self-pitying albeit genetically perfect character he plyed in the sci-fi drama *Gattaca*: it was like listening to myself.). The one wild dream I had involving him bordered on the nightmarish. All I'm gonna say about the marginally romantic interlude with "The Reporter", in the back seat of his Model a Ford, is thatr when I woke up from that dream, I got up immediately to check and see if I really had the marks of his nails on the small of my back and a dent in the back of my head where I'd half-brained myself on a door handle.
If I ever needed Joe, if only to dispell that goon from the shadows of my mind and get me back to my senses, I needed hims like a plant needs water.
I spotted Joe one evening outside the coffee shop where we used to meet. He looked my way with a smile, but he seemed reticent, as if he were deliberately holding back, teasing me even.
I approached him. "Hey, Joe, whaddya know?" I asked.
His smiled grew warmer. "So the prodigal returns. Did you ever find the 'real' man whom you could love properly?" he asked, part gently, part teasingly, even a little cynically.
"Well, I found an Orga, but he wasn't half as good to me as you've been," I said. "He was more machine-like than you."
"So you came back to me, seeking for a soothing hand?" he asked.
"Yes...if you'll have me back," I said.
He took my hands in both of his, pulling me close to him. "You know I can never refuse you: They made me only too willing to soothe you."
I lifted my face up to his. "Just kiss me."
He pressed his face to mine, kissing me lightly, almost tentatively even teasingly, testing the waters and witholding the full glory. He released my lips; inhibitions shorted out, I moved in, lips parted, letting him probe in deeper, despite the sniffs and harrumphs of the passersby. I was in my right mind again. Joe had charmed me, I had reached out to him; and all was right with the world.
More, someday....