Topping From Below (49 page)

I reread the first few pages of this story—written, it seems, half a lifetime ago. My tone has softened, I know. Now that I’ve walked the fine line between eroticism and sadomasochism, I’ve discovered that, for me, the demarcation blurs: they are the same. But I know the dangers of standing too close to the edge, of giving yourself to a man lacking a moral code, and only the sight of Franny in the video pulled me back. Her humiliation forced me to consider the requisite of restraint, forced me to realize that M. is not the person with whom to surrender control. He is without morals, and that makes him dangerous.

A year ago, I would’ve said there was a clear line separating the good from the evil. I would’ve said that evilness belonged in the netherworld, and that evil men existed beyond the peripheries of decency. Now I’m not so sure. I believe there is a dark side that belongs to us all, lying beneath the surface of our humanity, twisted and extreme and savage in some of us, less severe in others, but always present and always at struggle with the civilized soul. I saw it in myself on the day of the fire. I felt the influence of M.

Nietzsche wrote: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” Only now, after M. is out of my life and with the perspective of distance, do I see that I succumbed to M.’s darker side. How rash I was when I began my pursuit of him! I thought I could get close to him and not be harmed. My sense of probity and justice would exempt me from his influence, I foolishly thought, but I did not come away from him unscathed. I have the scars, physical and emotional, to prove it.

My journey with M. began as a quest for truth, and although the costs may have been too great, I found the answers for which I searched. Franny’s journey was much worse. Unintentionally, she walked into the heart of an evil man from which there was no return. I will regret, always, that I hadn’t been there for her, to pull her back when she herself stood, alone and frightened, on the edge of the abyss.

Nora C. Tibbs
Davis, California

TOPPING FROM BELOW. Copyright © 1995 by Laura Reese. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Design by Junie Lee.

eISBN 9781429941921

First eBook Edition : June 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reese, Laura.

Topping from below / Laura Reese.

p. cm.

I. Title.

PS3568.E4314T67 1995

813’.54—dc20

95-5798
CIP