Endless Longing

An aspiring writer, he read and reread every one of Humberto de Campos’ works. He made a point of bringing up in conversations the dozens of books published by “Brazil’s greatest columnist.” He intended to imitate him in the long run.

The young author wrote dozens of erotic columns with the same care that the great columnist was famous for; to always use suave and delicate words, implying, while only hinting at, sex and sensuality.

As time went on, he created a character which he fell in love with. An engaging woman. A model of perfection. Virtually a sculpture. He attributed her with the finest strokes of beauty and incremented his fondest memories to her existence. He invented realistic situations involving her and told his friends and colleagues about his “new love.”

He zealed over the columns about his beloved woman as if they were erotic dreams, and they were! –especially because the woman was married, happily married, as a matter of fact. Details he imagined with great care.

Some events were highly provocative, like the trip she made with her husband to her hometown and, on the way back, she took photos as beautiful as a sunset which she forwarded to her happy lover via iPhone. His mind weaved many romantic liaisons and almost all of them turned into columns.

One describes the day when, on her lunch hour, the lover went to “lunch” at her house, which is located right down the street from the “Red Pencil Factory” where she works in “couching” services. After “lunch” when it was time to leave, where were the “hearty fellow’s” keys? After searching the house top to bottom, especially under the bed, they found the keys left in the ignition of the absurdly expensive vehicle parked in front of the building.

The columns disclosed some of their secret meetings and how once after a little love doze and losing track of time—night already approaching—her husband awakens her by telephone before she hurriedly rushes out the door. After that tight corner, they made some pre-arranged excuses for the husband in various different emergencies.

The affair became so real that the aficionado writer didn’t go out anymore. He stayed at home waiting for his dreamed rendezvous, or he’d rush back home to sit around and wait for messages from his sweet heart.

He answered phone calls where they both pledged their love to each other. He put them all into columns. There was never any reference to age. They were like two lovebirds in one of those romance novels we read as teenagers.

He created a special email account just as “she” suggested for exchanging their short little love notes. To give more authenticity to his columns, he created an e-mail with initials of the beloved woman, [email protected], through which they exchanged vows of love, spicing it up even further by agreeing that everything “said” between each other had to be deleted that at the end of the day. He took this passion increasingly serious. Every day he wrote a column about a new occasion or just reheated the last one with more recollections. Sometimes the material spiced up and the dialog would get sensual and erotic.

He wanted to send the columns to his friends, but in order to keep the first readings secret, he kept everything in a folder labeled “confidential.” Stashed away, dozens of columns retold daring love scenes of a highly forbidden romance.

He wanted to sleep with his beloved, but the existence of the husband made it impossible. He was a jealous engineer and hardly ever traveled on business anymore lately. They would go on a trip together in the coming months, a memorial trip to Cuba, where they had been before, on honeymoon I think. Then they would go upon the woman’s request to see Portugal again where she and her lover had spent beautiful nights at the Hotel Continental in December 1976. Something she would never reveal to her hubby, of course.

“If my husband dreams, even dreams that I’m cheating on him, he’ll literally kill me” she said with a nervous laugh.

Her lover complimented her on the correct use of “literally” in this case. His imagination became so real now that the woman decided to abandon him. She was terrified at the thought that her husband might suspect something.

Soon he couldn’t sleep at night. He went online and pathetically awaited a real e-mail from the adored woman. But the e-mail never came and his conditioned mind “was sure” that the woman was real. Shakespeare said that we are such stuff that dreams are made on. The madness reached the point that whenever the phone rang unexpectedly he happily proclaimed that it was surely his beloved calling just to hear his voice.

Then he began to suffer and languish over the “loss” of his mistress. The “writer” has not been able to write any more columns since and is experiencing the immense pain of this endless longing.