Alicia sat back and sipped her eggnog caramel cappuccino, which tasted like heaven. She didn’t have much of a sweet tooth but during the holidays, she liked to spoil herself with a cheerful drink. She hadn’t seen her friend Annie in nearly two months, so she met her at this quaint little coffee shop that looked so beautiful with the snow, and the Christmas lights on the window. The small fireplace gave a warm glow, and the jingles from the speaker sounded lovely. Alicia smiled as she listened to her friend tell the tale of her latest romantic adventures, or misadventures as the case may be.
“Danny and I were supposed to go for a week up north and stay in a log cabin,” Annie said sipping on her chai latte, "I told him that if we were going to spend the week together alone in the woods, we had to set up certain rules and safe phrases. You know, in case things got too steamy.”
Alicia laughed. “You’re such a dork. What did he say?”
Annie reached into her bag and lay a folder on the small oak table.
"He gave me this," she said.
“What is that?” Alicia said picking up the folder.
“Read it.”
Opening the folder, she saw it contained a document with several pages and a title cover: A Framework for Increasing Hedonic Experiences Between Two Consenting Adults.
“That document, my dear, contains an exquisitely detailed manual and guide on how to spend the week in ‘self-directed erotic bliss’.”
Alicia laughed.
“It’s full of explicit language along with technical and scientific jargon,” said Annie.
“Oh my god!” exclaimed Alicia looking at the following pages. “It has a table of contents. Let's see... The history of Eros, Technologies of hedonic manipulation, Sensory systems of pleasure. On the three stages of bliss. This is madness!”
“Look at page thirty-seven,” Annie said raising her eyebrow suggestively.
“Tables and diagrams? Oh my...”
“Our energy and compatibility profiles. He plotted our personalities on circular grids based on our conversations and information he scoured from my social media. He was quite open about his methods too.”
“Unbelievable,” said Alicia, sitting back and looking at the manuscript like it was a live creature.
“The spooky thing is," said Annie, "he is right. I am exactly as he plotted me. That's me in a nutshell... bubbling with somatic energy that is always directed towards the center. See?"
Alicia leaned forward and perused the diagrams shaking her head. She put her finger on a passage, “stimulation of the erogenous zones (including mammary glands) should elicit feelings of excitation that can be explicitly observed through the rapid increase of breath, pupil dilation, and soft swooning vocalizations.”
Giggling, Alicia said, “I have to give it to him, he has a way with words.”
Her cheeks flushed with curiosity, she kept on reading. “The correct behavioral amorous sequences can lead to feelings of increase bonding and ecstasy to the extent that the two bodies become a single entity aware of its unique loving singularity.”
She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. “It’s very technical, but it kind of makes sense in a weird way. I mean what’s not to like about libations, simple foods, massages, hot yoga, steam baths, and other technologies designed to arouse the senses?”
“You say that because you haven’t read the part on aphrodisiacs,” Alicia told her.
“Do tell!”
“He wrote a whole section on the historical use of ‘the flowers of pleasures’, their pharmacological structure, effect on the senses, and the exact quantities we were to consume during our log-cabin sessions.”
“Flowers of pleasure? As in weed?”
“Oh there’s much more: UFOs, cosmic consciousness, Big Foot. There’s a questionnaire on sexual preferences, and a full set of references in case I wanted to check his work.”
Alicia couldn’t hold back. Thankfully the Christmas music was loud enough to mask her peels of laughter.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked Annie.
“What I already did. I told him it wasn’t going to work out between us.”
“You weren’t even a little curious?”
Annie shook her head and finished her chai latte. “I’m more of the Knight-in-Shiny-Armor type not the Mad-Psychedelic-Wizard type.”
In the warm glow of the fire, they laughed in that conspiratorial way of friends. They chatted about other things besides boys, fashion, work drama, plans for the future, and so on in that inscrutable feminine bond of love and friendship.
The minutes ticked in the ether of time and soon enough, sadly, it came time to part and go separate ways.
“Can I borrow this?” Alicia said holding up the folder with the document. “I’m writing a new story for my blog, and this looks like it has a lot of fodder for the plot.”
“Have at it," Annie said, "your brain, not mine.”
Outside, the snow had started to fall in gently swirling clouds of fluffy ice. The two friends kissed and bade each other farewell.
Alicia got in her car and threw her purse along with the folder on the passenger seat. She inserted the key in the ignition but didn't turn it right away. Instead, she looked at the brown folder on the seat. Opening it, she saw that the second page had Danny's full name along with some personal information, including his phone and email.
Alicia bit her lower lip, her eyes softened, and a sly smile appeared on her lips.
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