by Scott J. Ecksel
(05/08/02)
I have a little statue of a Venus on my desk here. It's the Venus of Willendorf, which ancient women and men used to worship for luck in the harvest and luck in having healthy babies. People come into my office and comment on it all the time. Some of them know what it is, and some of them are surprised by it, with its big hanging breasts and its big belly and its cornrow head without eyes and without a mouth. Men, especially, never know what to make of it.
One day one of the interns came in here and told me exactly what it was. He knew it was a Venus of Willendorf, and he started telling me the history of it -- how such statues were found all over Europe, scattered about with kitchen pottery and weapons in archeological sites. He said he had been over to Europe on a few expeditions, in Spain and in Hungary and in Albania, and had seen some of these statues for himself -- the real ones, not the duplicate tourist things like I have on my desk. I told him that I knew mine was merely a duplicate, but then he told me about sympathetic magic, how I could make mine a real icon simply by believing in it. I'm sure he wanted to tell me "by worshipping it," but was inhibited because we were at work. It's a strange thing to say to a coworker. He didn't really tell me anything I didn't know, but I was envious that he had been able to go to all those places, and the funny thing was that he's my age, which made me feel even worse.
So I asked him if he had any of his own little statues that he might believe in and "make real," and he said that he did, that he had a small Priapus figurine he kept in his bathroom, for luck in love. I almost fell out of my chair when he said that, because it was so completely unexpected and such a very strange thing for a guy to tell someone, especially a coworker who he hardly knew. I didn't know what to say, so I just stayed silent for a moment. It was a very awkward moment.
Even so, I felt excited by the idea of him having a Priapus figurine, with its long cock sticking out in front of it like an elephant's trunk, and it kind of made me hot inside. I thought about him in his bathroom, how he would walk in and unzip his pants and stand against the toilet, holding onto the wall with one hand and his cock in the other, and how he would see the Priapus figurine there and start to stroke himself, making himself hard and thick like the god standing next to the sink. I wondered what his cock was like, and I took the risk and glanced at his pants, trying to see what kind of bulge was there. He must have noticed me, because right when I looked there was a little movement there, as if he were getting a little bit hard thinking about the awkwardness and tension in the situation. So I looked away and shifted the subject a little, asking him about his trips to Europe -- when he had gone, where he had gone, what was it like being in strange countries living in the deserts and digging around in the heat.
He told me all about it, but while he was talking, I could hardly pay attention to him. I was imagining his hands on his cock, the way he would lean forward and close his eyes, standing there at the toilet stroking himself. I could see the head of his cock, in my mind, of course, getting a little red as he squeezed it, and I thought about how he might touch the little bit of fluid that was collecting there and spread it around on the sensitive part of the head, and how he might touch his fingertip to his tongue, tasting the salt of himself as he closed his eyes and imagined that it was another person's tongue tasting him. I wondered if he might be gay, and I imagined another man going down on him, and how his face would radiate with his pleasure as he came in the other guy's mouth.
He was telling me something about Albania and the violence there when I did something I probably shouldn't have done. I reached over to my Venus and took her in my hand, and then I put my hand under the desk, just resting it in my lap, but he saw what I did, and I know that he was thinking of what might be happening, because I saw his face redden a little, and he stuttered a bit, losing his train of thought. I just held my beautiful Venus in my lap for a while, listening to him speak, paying attention for a moment, but then losing his words because I suddenly realized how wet I was. I could feel a sticky moisture on my inner thighs, and I shifted in my seat to pull my panties away from my pussy lips, where I could tell they had slipped in a little. At the same time, I kept my eyes on the intern's face, watching him speak, and suddenly I imagined that his lips weren't moving with words but were instead surrounding my vulva and sucking it into his mouth, and that made me very wet, wetter than before, and so I pushed my little Venus down between my legs so that I could feel her cornrow head pressing against my clit through the thick fabric of my jeans. I leaned back in my chair and gently swayed my hand back and forth, making sure to keep eye contact with the intern, pretending that nothing unusual was happening.
He knew something unusual was happening. I saw him glancing down, sneaking a look at my arms. I asked him to tell me more about his Priapus. He blushed deeply and opened his mouth several times, trying to speak, and then suddenly he said he had to leave. So I stood up and walked around my desk to him and leaned close, taking his hand and shaking it, as if we had just finished a business meeting. I showed him my Venus and waved it near his face, thinking that maybe he could smell the scent of my pussy on it, even though I knew that was impossible, for the Venus hadn't touched anything but my jeans. I said something about how the Priapus and Venus belonged together, and how when he was looking at his Priapus later he must be sure to imagine my Venus atop it, for surely they did belong together.
He seemed to calm down as he was walking out the door, and he turned and thanked me for taking the time to speak with him. I told him he was doing a good job at the company, that several of my colleagues had mentioned his name to me as someone to watch, and he smiled and thanked me again.
When he left, I took a quick sniff of my Venus, but I couldn't smell anything at all. That night, I took it home with me, and in the morning, when I set it back on my desk, I sniffed it again. The cornrows gleamed in the light, and they smelled of ritual and sacrifice, the phallic god swallowed by the fertility goddess, warmed in her earth, salted by her sweat, birthing a neverending desire.
I have my own magic.
