Fiction
The Naked Woman
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What was missing?
If only I could love the world as much as I love her.
That is the question Gerard had been asking himself for weeks. He loved her with every fiber of his being. When he was with her he was in heaven. He felt complete. He felt like he was his true self; the expression of his divine being. She was his goddess and when he was with her he felt like a god. But when he was away from her he felt like some meaningless character in a meaningless game.
Gerard was successful. He was wealthy. He had accomplished most of his goals. He had made a name for himself. When he showed up at a restaurant or event there was always a retinue of fans and reporters and cameras waiting to herald his appearance. Privacy had evaporated from his life.
Except when he was with her.
When he was a child he wanted nothing more than to impress his mother and receive her love. Everything he did was for her. As he grew up he sought out females who would be impressed by him and shower him with love. Everything he did — and he did a lot — was to impress a woman. His need for female approval drove him to accomplish great things.
But he remained unfulfilled, empty. While he lived with great adoration from the women in his life there was something missing. There was a glaring lack of adoration from within his own self. It was a gaping hole in his chest. It was a bottomless pit he could not seem to cross.
She was in the shower as he waited for her. He was drinking cognac and smoking a cigar. There were minutes separating him from euphoria. Those minutes seemed like a Grand Canyon he was not sure he could fly across.
Gerard imagined a life without women to impress. It was very difficult to imagine such a thing. How empty and meaningless that would be.
Gerard kept thinking about something a buddy of his recently told him. The friend said, “We look outside of ourselves for that which we are too afraid to look for within ourselves.”
What the hell did that mean? There was no mother inside of him. There were no girlfriends, no women. There was no unconditional love, no adoration, no complement to his unyielding ambition for power and domination and need for…
