Myrrh
Filmstrip
Einstein's Theory of Relativity
Tiffany's
Aviary

HER boudoir smelled of myrrh. And jasmine. And distantly of something else. Saffron maybe? He was nervous. He had never visited one of the great courtesans, had never been with a woman who had trained her lifelong in the courtly arts. In fact, he had never really been with a woman before at all, save for frantic gropings in various cars, movie theaters, none of which ever led to an act that could be called consummation. Simply put, he was nervous about his performance. This was akin to dropping by to show a coloring book to Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn. He looked around the room. Tapestries softened the walls and the light was a gentle amber pool spilt from a tasselled lamp. HER bed invited with great thick bedrobes of silk and down. Pillows were piled high. He imagined for a moment that SHE must use them as support for exotic sexual positions, then thought of body fluids, blushed and tried to think of something else. He studied HER cosmetics table. Bottles of all sorts of sizes and shapes were grouped in interesting tableaus, and a partly opened baby blue box from Tiffany's seemed to call him over for a peek, but he was paralyzed. Nervous. Inside, his heart beat like a gazillion canary wings. He envisioned his chest as an aviary, suddenly bursting open, red songbirds flying out to the four winds leaving his spasming carcass behind. Outside the door, he heard a rustling, and thought perhaps that SHE was coming in, his nervousness heightening but for a moment, until the rustling passed on down the hall. His mind was all over the place. He remembered in this order: a Playboy he had found under his father's bed, a book of anatomical drawings in the school library, a filmstrip shown in middle school that extolled the virtues of abstinence. None of that helped. He was a mess. Let's face it - he was an accountant, not a lover. Accountants were smart, not suave, or debonair, and certainly not sexy. He thought of a quote having to do with Einstein's Theory of Relativity, a quote from old Albert himself - "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." Relatively speaking, he had been in the boudoir for 165 days. That was his last coherent thought before the door opened.