Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire

Tales of Irresistible Desire

Edited by Paula Guran

Obsessional does not necessarily mean sexual obsession, not even obsession for this, or for that in particular; to be an obsessional means to find oneself caught in a mechanism, in a trap increasingly demanding and endless.

Lacan was referring to a neurosis—but we all have experienced obsession, at least in its milder form: having a compulsive, even unreasonable (at least in the view of others) idea or emotion. You are totally fixated on something or someone—a sport, video games, junk food, a pop singer or film star, collecting certain things, a potential or actual lover, even work—at least temporarily.

Extreme passion can be a positive, driving force, especially for the creative. Claude Monet called color his “day-long obsession, joy, and torment.” Barbara Streisand is quoted as saying, “I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.” Mikhail Baryshnikov saw dancing as his obsession, his life. For Brooks Robinson, “baseball was a passion to the point of obsession.” According to Anne Rice, “Obsession led me to write . . . with every book I’ve ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.”

But obsession is, by its very nature, often dark, disturbing, and destructive, especially when one is compelled by forces beyond one’s control or can no longer control what was, initially, a choice. This anthology’s stories explore many variations of irresistible desire.

Stewart O’Nan’s story, “Land of the Lost,” is a slice of a quiet, normal life into which an all-consuming obsession creeps. Is the overwhelming need to do something positive also a negative?

Caring for children is necessary for humankind’s very existence. In the war-torn near-future dystopia of Joe R. Lansdale’s “In the Cold, Dark Time,” children run in hungry, naked packs, and one man’s need to not see them suffer becomes both his duty and obsession, his reason to live. Maternity and protecting one’s children are basic human instinct. But as Nancy Holder shows in “Lady Madonna,” instinct can become a devastating, horrific compulsion.

The girl in Pat Cadigan’s story, “She’s Not There,” wants something so much that . . . well, desperate need drives people in strange directions.

In Michael Blumlein’s “Hymenoptera,” a famed fashion designer whose life had been dedicated to dressing women finds a new nonhuman muse to inspire and obsess him.

A man’s obsession with a mysterious liquor—in “An Apiary of White Bees” by Lee Thomas—opens doors to dark human desires from the past and provides a transformative commitment to something not at all human.

Tanith Lee reminds us that true love is also true devotion in her unforgettable “Nunc Dimittis.” After a century and a half of service, a vampire’s companion faces death, but his obsessive desire to serve his mistress compels him to fulfill one final responsibility.

In his concise masterpiece “The Oval Portrait,” Edgar Allan Poe—a writer who dealt with obsession more than once—portrays an artist so overwhelmed by his passion for art, he cannot see his lovely wife—who is so obsessed by her love for him, she meekly accepts the situation—except though his painting of her. The story of the painting itself is framed within a mysterious tale by a narrator who is, himself, captivated by the painting when he first discovers it. Compared to most of Poe’s fiction, this work is relatively obscure.

Of course, obsession is often sexual. Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Close To You,” for instance, shows a couple consumed by mutual passion.

More often, the obsessional relationship is, however, not as egalitarian.

In “The Hound Lover” by Laura Resnick, a modern-day writer-heroine encounters a supernatural lover who gives her something she would never have refused, even if she had realized the consequences of the “gift.” Tales of such “demon lovers,” incubi/ succubi, and other nocturnal sexual assailants/partners can be found in the earliest stories recorded.

The concept of the siren—in modern context, a woman who lures men to their destruction—is based in Greek mythology. Partbird and part-woman, the sirens lived on an island and lured sailors to their doom on its rocks with their fatally enchanting songs. But song is rarely the enchantment used these days and dry land is a more usual locale for seduction than the sea.

The femme fatale — “deadly woman” in French — is a close sister to the siren. She ensnares a lover and beguiles him with lust. Her charms can be literally or figuratively fatal. The femme fatale is almost always a woman of decisive, often supernatural, power. Though in Conrad Williams’ story, “The Light that Passes Through You,” his character Louise is so fragile she is in danger of fading away, winking out completely. . . until she receives a letter she sees as an irresistible invitation.

“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes,” Fritz Leiber’s classic story of dangerous beauty, recognizes the primal urge that turns “image” into an inescapable worldwide cultural icon that devours even while providing satisfaction and escape from the mundane. Kim Antieau provides a twist on the siren theme with a model/muse who preys on artistic creativity in “Medusa’s Child.”

The deadly and delusional Barbara, in John Shirley’s story of the same name, wreaks havoc when her all-consuming “love” is thwarted. Lawrence Block’s siren in “Hot Eyes, Cold Eyes” scorns obsessive adulation and makes those who desire her pay dearly.

In Charles de Lint’s “Tallulah,” the titular namesake is not as deadly a seductress, but is no less compulsively mesmerizing. Tally’s love haunts a young writer, but she herself seems as bound to the city as the mythic sirens were constrained to live on their rocky island.

The Calypso of Elizabeth Hand’s story, “Calypso In Berlin,” is a character straight out of Homer’s Odyssey, but she lives in the twenty-first century. A sea nymph lovelier than any woman; wilder, stranger, more passionate than mortal females, she usually tires of her mortal lovers, but she is as obsessed with Phillip as she once was with Odysseus.

Catherine Lundoff also calls on old legends as the basis for “The Snake Woman’s Lover” and portrays the dark forces of supernatural love. The power of love and sexual magic brings a very special lover to the protagonist in Storm Constantine’s bittersweet story, “My Lady of the Hearth.”

Although I would never wish an obsession on anyone— especially after compiling this anthology—I do hope you find these stories to be compulsive reading.

I found her on the steps of my apartment building. She was shivering, though the day was warm. Her light brown hair hung in strands about her face. Her cheekbones stretched her pale skin. I almost walked by her. I thought she was just another of the bag ladies who frequented my area. Then she looked up at me.

She had extraordinary eyes. They were black—two black lightless pupils. I had to paint those eyes. I had to paint her.

I am not certain how I got her to come up to my apartment. I know I promised food. Whatever I said, she followed me into the building and to my apartment.

Once inside, I asked her her name. She did not answer. I told her to make herself at home while I started dinner. I had spaghetti sauce from the day before, so I put it on the stove and started water to boil for noodles.

She stood in the middle of my living room which doubled as my studio because of the huge picture windows. I had several paintings on easels and two leaned against the wall. She walked over to them and touched the edges of each one with the tips of her fingers. She did it almost reverently.

“An artist,” she whispered.

“Yes,” I said. I glanced at her. Although her body was bent and her face lined, I guessed she was not even thirty years old.

She turned and looked at me with those huge black eyes.

“An artist,” she said again.

I wondered then if I had latched on to some very strange person. She could utter only two words: An artist. Maybe she had been in love with a painter once and he had killed himself because she left him—or something equally as dramatic.

She came and stood close to me while I cooked and watched me stir sauce and break noodles into the boiling water. Once she reached out tentatively and touched my arm with one finger. Poor girl, I thought, she hasn’t eaten in days and she’s grateful to me.

“Leila,” she said.

At first I did not know what she was saying, and then I realized she was answering my first question.

“I’m Matthew McClean. Matthew means ‘Gift of God,’” I said, as I pulled two plates from the cupboard. “I was the sixth child after five girls. You can see why they thought I was a godsend.” I laughed. She did not even smile.

“Leila means ‘dark as night.’ ”

That was all she said. No story behind it. Was she born on a stormy night? Was her grandmother’s name Leila? She’s not much of a conversationalist, I thought, but that was all right. I hated chatterbox models.

I told her to sit down, and we ate our first meal together. Neither of us said much. I was curious about her, but I did not want to pry and scare her away. I was getting more and more excited about the prospect of painting her: the mysterious woman lost in strands of greasy hair and ragged clothes.

She was more animated by the end of the meal. Color returned to her cheeks. She pushed her hair behind her ears, and I saw she was not unattractive. When she had finished her meal (she didn’t eat much), she looked over at me. She smiled and said, “Well, Matthew, you want to paint me, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“What will I get in return?” she asked.

I impulsively looked toward the door, wondering where the cowering waif was who had walked into the room a mere hour ago.

“I can pay you my standard rate for models.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want money. I need other things.” She gazed at me. “How long have you been an artist?”

I was a little annoyed by her tone. First I had practically scraped her off my steps and put food into her starving body and now she was asking for my qualifications.

“I have been an artist all of my life,” I said. “I have been commercially successful the last five.” I was proud of that. Pretty good for only being thirty years old.

She nodded. “Young,” she said. She sat quietly for a moment, looking around the room, and then she rested her fingers lightly on my arm. The hair on my arms stood up, as if drawn to her fingertips. Her touch was cool and pleasant.

“I want to stay here.”

“Here? Don’t you have a place to stay?”

“No.”

Normally I would have tossed her out then and there. Several women had wanted to move in with me at different times and I had always said no, except once, and that had been a terrible mistake. I hardly painted at all until she moved out.

“Please, Matthew, I won’t be any trouble. Just for a while, until you finish painting me.” Suddenly she was the waif again.

I smiled and said, “Okay.”

I made a sketch of her that night. She sat on my couch with her hands folded demurely in her lap. The sun was setting. The walls of the room turned gold and red. The gold touched Leila’s head. For a moment her hair was flaxen, Rapunzel reincarnate. And then the red tinged her skin and she was like some fiery goddess, her hair gold snakes snapping at dust particles in the air.

The next morning I found her padding around the kitchen in a pair of my jeans and a T-shirt.

“I lifted them while you slept,” she said. “I took a shower and washed my clothes. I’m making an omelet for us.”

She appeared taller than she had the night before, probably because she had bathed, eaten, and had a good night’s sleep. My sofa bed was more comfortable than my own bed. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks rosy. She looked like a well-scrubbed college kid.

“Thanks,” I said. “I am hungry.”

I sat at the table and rubbed my eyes sleepily. What had possessed me to let this woman stay with me? I glanced up at her as she put the omelet in front of me. It’s those damn eyes, I reminded myself.

She was a good model. She sat very still and looked off into some place within herself. The natural light from the overhead windows flattered her. Work went slowly. It was hard to capture the quality in her that had first attracted me. I could not get the eyes. They were too black. On canvas, they looked like huge holes in her face: she looked like a zombie, or as if she did not have a soul, something queer like that.

“What do you do when you aren’t hanging around apartment buildings?” I asked while we ate lunch.

“I do things.”

She continued eating, apparently not interested in answering my questions. I glanced out the window. Clouds had covered the sun and it looked like a summer storm was approaching.

“There goes the day’s painting,” I said.

“That’s all right,” she said. “We can spend the day getting to know each other.”

I was surprised she wanted to talk, but when she got up and went to the couch, I followed and sat beside her. I began talking about myself. She held my hand loosely in hers and listened while I told her about my life, my crowded but happy childhood filled with dreams of becoming a famous artist, my time spent traveling before college, my successful years as an artist. For some reason I poured out my life to her as if it were some kind of liquid she could drink. It frightened me a little, letting someone know so much about me. She probed me for details—gently squeezing my hand when I was not sure what I wanted to say. As the storm washed against the windows, Leila seemed to grow more beautiful. Her voice became stronger, more assured. She was no longer the trembling bag lady I had met yesterday. I was amazed at the difference and chalked it up to my company and good food.

We talked the afternoon away (or rather I talked; she mostly listened). When we got hungry, she suggested a pizza. We ran outside into the rain, laughing and splashing in puddles as we made our way to the neighborhood pizza joint. I forgot she was a bit strange, forgot she was a hobo, and realized I had found a new friend: someone who liked to listen. My artist friends were not big on listening; they liked to talk and talk, mostly about their own work. Leila wanted to know more about me and I loved it. I sat with her in the pizza place, sipping a malt and pushing strings of cheese into my mouth, and I wondered why I had not found someone like her before.

When we got back to my apartment, Leila stood in the middle of the living room and began undressing. I sat on the couch and watched her. My stomach tingled. Soon she stood before me naked. She was beautiful. How could I have thought she was ugly? She came to me and I put my arms around her and pulled her toward me. My clothes slipped away and we were side by side on the couch.

“Imagine anything you like,” she whispered. “I can be anyone or anything you want. Let yourself go.”

For that moment, Leila was all I wanted. Her movements were gentle at first and then she was astride me, pushing herself down hard on me. She bent to bite my chest. She kissed my ear, her tongue darting in and out. “Imagine,” she whispered, and she loomed up before me, her golden hair clinging to her breasts like hundreds of tiny fingers.

The next day I tried the portrait again. The work was frustratingly poor. I finally threw my paintbrushes down in a mock fit and cried, “You are impossible to paint!”

She laughed and put her arms around me and kissed the top of my head.

“Why don’t you try something else?” she suggested.

“You don’t want me to finish your portrait because you think I’ll make you leave,” I said, turning around to hug her.

“I hope you won’t make me leave,” she said quietly. I glanced up at her. She was staring at something I could not see, somewhere in her mind, and it made me uncomfortable. I knew so little about her.

In the days and weeks to follow I came to love Leila with an intensity I had never known. We did everything together. I wanted her with me all of the time. Nights we made love and then sat up for hours, talking about my current project. During the day, I often looked up from a difficult piece to see Leila dancing around the living room, swirling her skirts like some exotic dancer.

I learned little about her past. Sometimes she gazed out the window toward the heart of the city. She looked frightened. Her eyes paled, as if the life were slipping from them. When I went to her, she clung to me, seeming to draw life from my presence.

“What’s out there?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she answered, turning to me. “All those people who don’t know or care about me.”

We stayed to ourselves most of the time. Leila wanted to meet my friends, but I always found an excuse not to call anyone. I liked having her all to myself.

A few weeks after I first met Leila, I went into a painting slump. And then Leila began to wane. That is the only word I can use. As my paintings grew worse, she changed. I urged her to go out while I tried to paint, but she would not. She stayed on the couch, sometimes biting her fingernails, sometimes looking out the window. When I asked her what was wrong, she just shook her head.

One day she said, “Leave me alone, Matthew. It’s you, don’t you understand? You’ve changed.” She went to the bedroom and closed the door.

I stared at her unfinished portrait and wondered what I could have done. What was happening to us—to her? She had been such a vivacious person. Now she was withering away.

I stopped dreaming.

Leila and I grew further apart. Though we still slept together, she spent most nights hugging her side of the bed and would not let me near her. Those were the worst times. I felt so alone. Other nights she turned and made love to me furiously. No longer the golden goddess. A fury. Or a gorgon. Medusa’s child.

Things worsened, and I was afraid she would leave me. I still loved her. I sat down and tried to figure out why. We never talked; she only listened. I never learned anything new from her. She was beautiful. Or was she? Had she ever stood tall? Was her hair golden? Had she danced for me?

“I need to meet new people,” she told me one afternoon. “I feel like a prisoner here.”

I sat at my easel turning one of my dark blobs of paint into a spider. Tracing a line here. Putting meat on it there.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll have a party Sunday.”

She chewed her fingernails. How tired she looked. Was it really my fault? Was I somehow draining her of energy?

For the party, Leila wore a black floor-length, V-neck gown. I had bought it for her weeks earlier. I remembered the pleasure I had gotten seeing it on her then—and later off her. The silk had clung to her body, moving as she moved. Now the black dress hung unattractively on her, barely touching her skin anywhere.

Poets, artists, writers, and dilettantes filled the apartment. Ice hit the sides of glasses and twirled madly in baths of gin, vodka, or rum. I passed around hors d’oeuvres, shrugging when anyone asked how the work went.

Leila was everywhere. Touching. Listening. The color returned to her face. She was animated, laughing, touching, listening.

Something was not right.

“I’ve met her before.” A fellow artist, Pete Dobson, was tapping my arm.

“Really?” I turned to him.

“She looks a bit different, but it’s her.”

Leila was striding to another group. Tall and lithesome. Her golden hair shone and caught the light . . .

“Do you remember Franc de Winter?” Pete was talking to me again.

“Yeah, I think so. Isn’t he in California?”

“He was.” He sipped his drink and watched Leila. Her fingers lightly stroked the bare skin in the V of her dress.

“Leila used to live with him,” Pete said. “Saw her at a party there. I’m pretty sure it was her.”