Of Rome, lately.

What can I say? How cold her arse must have felt on the Spanish steps. And pregnant, too. Of course, I took to the skies with redemption in mind and did not expect to have my intentions so thwarted, so quickly. And yet what are plans for, if not subversion? I came to banish shame and found, instead, a smiley blonde from Texas.

I sat with her, smiled, and offered the sense that I, too, were far too weary to work out how or why I landed here, on these steps in the furious cold of a February morning. Of course, I knew exactly why, and yet, as my befuddlement began to amuse her, I could sense we were only minutes away from undressing and so, like a proper Englishman, I took her for tea, to gather myself. I should have been in the Galleria in the park behind us, groping my Pauline, my marbled mistress, but, in fact, I was captivated and later, as we drank and our knees touched, I felt the arousal of my long dormant desire, and fetish, maiesiophilia. Was I not done with all that? I wanted my hands on her belly and to follow the long curve into her thighs. I wanted the honey scent of her hormone. If I had her, I would never want of anything, nor have any need of justifying, or articulating, redeeming or even listening, ever again. And if could hear, in the singsong of her accent, the insincerity of my own mother then, so be it, so what. It was all I ever wanted then, and forever. And so, I did.

She was twenty one.