Psyche -The Problem of Eros

By Myra Westcott

A romance of a stewardess and an author who meet again six years after they originally met in high school. The mechanizations of a group of immortals who live the same time frame over and over is slowly revealed as the force that brought them together to join their group. Corinthus, Apocryphon One explores the concept of Ouroboros or repetition. This, Apocryphon Two explores erotic unity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sangraal Inc.
• Release date: Sep 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452346991

Myra Westcott

I met Myra when I was working on PIstis Sophia for Garber Communications as an editor in 1983. I interviewed her as a Gnostic expert. Her novels work out the tenets of Gnosticism as far as we know them in the modern world.

Book preview

Chapter One

Everyone has a secret lover. You know, the one that you lay awake at night thinking about when things are not going right. The one who is supposed to find you again and take you away. Mine was Peter.

He wasn't imaginary, oh no, I schemed to get him once. We were in high school. I saw him my first day. He was, well, beautiful. But I was just a little freshman and I just couldn't get up the courage to talk to him. And besides, he had a girlfriend, and both of them were sophomores. I couldn't quite forget about it. I just kind of waited, went out with his friends. You know how you do. It wasn't until a football game the beginning of my junior year that I got a chance. He'd come with two other guys and one of the girls I come with had the hots for one of them. Between us we got another girl to join in and moved down behind them. You could say that I picked him up, but actually it was the other girls that picked up his friends and left him alone with me.

I guess, had I been older I'd have done a bit better. I was only 16, and it was 1964. French kissing was, well pretty adventurous. I tried, and I guess, if he had wanted I wouldn't have been a virgin anymore, I'd have done just about anything. But he was a perfect gentleman, and, at 16, even though I wasn't much of a lady, there wasn't really a whole lot I knew how to do. Four, five years later, well, that's the story I guess and I don't want to get ahead of it.

Peter broke up with his girlfriend, and I made myself handy. We dated three times. I was in heaven, but I didn't really think I reached him, ever. He was that quiet type. Even when he went with that one girl, Jan was her name, and I tried for centuries to forget that, he didn't walk around holding hands with her. He was sort of enclosed, you couldn't get inside. I tried everything, believe me. He was going away to college and he didn't want, as he said, entanglements.

June came and he went away, and that June began one of the worst years of my life. My father was in the service, and the U. S. Navy, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to transfer him that year. So that summer we picked up and moved from California to Texas. My little sister was a sophomore, so she made out fine, but I was a senior, and that didn't work out well at all. I didn't know anyone, and you know how it is in high school. If you're not part of a group, it's a pretty lonely place. So remembering Peter, actually, hoping he'd find me and rescue me, became a bit of an obsession all through that year. And then, I guess, it became a habit.

Of course, such things fade with time, or become a bit unreal. Peter got more handsome and more and more like a mythical figure. Still, it was Peter I imagined holding me, taking me places, loving me. He was all I had on most Saturday nights in that crumby little West Texas town. I'd lay on my bed and listen to music and imagine I was out with Peter. Okay, it was silly, but at seventeen, everyone's entitled to be silly.

Now I'm not exactly a mental giant, not that I'm stupid or anything, but when I graduated from that broken down high school that smelled of oil from the refineries and fields around it, I wasn't exactly at the head of the class, if you know what I mean. Sure, I could have gone to the local community college, like just about everyone else did, but I wanted out. Out of West Texas, away from the Navy, away from the loneliness. The end of my senior year, there'd been a job fair. You know, they come around and try to sign you up to be a nurse or something. I went for the stewardess bit. My Dad hit the roof. Said they were nothing but flying prostitutes. If my Mom hadn't supported me, I might not have gone. Or maybe I would have. I think I'd have done nearly anything to escape Midlands, Texas.

The training was in Dallas. Big city and all, but it was just as lonely. I knew absolutely no one within about five hundred miles, and dreaming about being out with Peter was becoming a nightly thing, not to mention the daydreams. It's not like training to be a stewardess is hard, but they never teach you what you really need to know. I mean things like how you are supposed to react when you're standing in the aisle and a man rubs his hand down your thigh, or when you bend over to serve something and they grab a feel of your breast.

When I finished training, I put in for a base in San Francisco and got it. Then I started to learn. I really learned that my Dad wasn't all that far wrong and I learned that fairly quickly. The men were always available. Every time you got on a plane, every time you had a day off in a strange city you could always have your pick. We switched off in the first class cabin, that was always were the best men were, the richest anyway. Not that you charged, you didn't have to. You were the perfect companion for a businessman on the road, especially the married ones. Here, for the night, gone the next day, guaranteed, your job guaranteed it. The best meals in the best restaurants, nice hotel rooms, and always a gift, like a piece of jewelry or a fancy handbag or something. I didn't like myself very much. I didn't have friends, never around anywhere long enough. I'd always imagine, when I was down and got on a plane that Peter would be there, waiting to take me away from it all.

Sometimes, if you think about it, it gets scary how fast time goes by. I graduated from High School in 1966, and before I knew it, it was 1970. It was a rainy morning in Millbrae, where the San Francisco Airport really is. I was really down. My sister was getting married in a month, my little sister. And here I was, with nobody and nothing. Just a flying whore, like my Dad said. It was a Tuesday morning. I drew the first class cabin, with only one passenger, on the New York non-stop. The transcontinental run is usually the best because you get almost two days in New York before you have to come back, longer, if you want to make a few trades with the other girls. I was thinking about pretty much the opposite, trading to come home a couple hours after we landed. We could work it that way, even though it was against federal regulations. Pilots and co-pilots couldn't, but we were just flying whores, so no one took a lot of notice. In the middle of the week first class is usually empty. It cost a lot then, only rich people could afford it. I just hoped my passenger wasn't an old lech or something. Five hours of getting grabbed and felt up really wasn't what I needed. My mind was on Peter; wishing and hoping and dreaming all at once.

My passenger was late. So late that I had begun to help the girls in the main cabin with breakfast, so I didn't see him come in and sit down. Another girl told me he was there, and I ran back to my station to take off my apron and ask him if he wanted a drink. You'd be surprised at how many people have a drink at seven in the morning, a screwdriver or a bloody mary, usually, but I've seen them drink straight whiskey so early that I wanted to upchuck from the smell of pouring it. I didn't need a pad with only one passenger so I went out to ask and, my passenger was Peter.

Chapter Two

I just stared. I couldn't say a thing. I was making a total fool of myself and couldn't do one damn thing about it; I was just totally speechless. I could feel the tears come in behind my eyes, and one that leaked out down my cheek. I was just standing there, hating myself more and more every second. To be fair, it isn't everyday that the thing you've been dreaming about happens to you. I don't suppose it ever happens to most people. I just couldn't take it. I turned around and almost ran back into the stewardess' station and looked out of the window in the emergency door while the tears poured out for no good reason at all.

I didn't hear him come in behind me, but he did. The first clue I had was when he spoke: It always makes me feel so damned inadequate when I make a pretty girl cry.

Along with the tears I was turning red, something else I couldn't help. I concentrated on looking at the baggage handlers load the plane's belly and said; I'm sorry, sir.

Sir? Sir is hardly a way to greet old friends Melanie.

You...you remember?

The prettiest girl I ever knew? No man ever forgets that.

That's a line.

It most definitely is not a line, at least not to me. I've never said it to anyone else, because no one else qualifies.

You thought I was pretty?

I thought you were beautiful. If you'd have worn shorter skirts, every guy at Creighton would have agreed with that.

Just then the damned pilot came on and told us to do the crosscheck. I had to tell Peter to go back to his seat, run through the sequence and punch the button that told the pilot no one was going to fall out of the front doors in my section during take-off. Then I had to unfold the jump seat and belt myself in for take-off. I took the compact out of my purse and looked. I was a mess. Here my dreams walked in, and I looked like Margaret Hamilton in the middle of the melting scene from the Wizard of OZ. Let me tell you, getting your eye-liner straight without poking your eye out while a plane's taking off isn't the easiest thing in the world. That's something else they didn't teach us in Dallas.

I was almost frozen to the seat. I had to get up and get him breakfast. Get him breakfast. Just how many times had I imagined doing that? Doing it every morning. It was nuts. Things like this don't really happen. But it was happening, and I was just blowing it. I couldn't get myself together and my stomach was doing flip flops.

I finally got the guts to get up and walk into the cabin before the pilot came on with the get up and walk around if you want to speech, along with the time of the flight and all the places we were flying over.

"Are you ready for breakfast?'

Already had it before I left home. How about you get us two cups of coffee and sit down next to me. We can catch up a bit.

We're not supposed to.

Supposed to what.

Sit down with the passengers.

At what I'm paying for this seat, there ought to be a floor show. Dancing girls and a band.

Just a minute.

I walked back into the station and found that pouring coffee isn't the easiest thing in the world while your hands are shaking. I don't know whether I was just shell shocked or going nuts. I mean this was something that just couldn't happen. Like a really bad romance novel. I broke a cup and burned my fingers before I got two cups of coffee.

I finally got the coffee together and walked out. I sat down. Of course it was against the rules, but no one ever said anything about it and it happened all the time.

So what did you mean about the skirt? I said, telling myself I was really being inane.

Remember your sophomore year when you had gym just before lunch?

Didn't I ever. He had gym the same time and he hardly ever wore a shirt. Yeah, I remembered real well.

Well all you girls wore that jumper thing with the shorts and we'd all discuss which girl had the best legs. You always came out on top. So if you'd have worn shorter skirts, more guys would have known that.

I was turning red again.

That was my mother. She always made sure our dresses came below our knees.

So what happened to you after I left for college?

We moved to Texas. My Dad got stationed in Midlands.

I know it. Midlands and Odessa, you're afraid to light a cigarette on the street because it smells like the whole town would go up. Quite a change from Sunnyvale.

Yeah, it was pretty ugly. I got out as soon as I could. Took training to be a stewardess and here I am.

Since High School?

Yeah, how about you, what happened?

Went to college in Tucson, U of A. My sophomore year I wrote a book and it got published. I have six in print now.

Would I know them?

I rather doubt it. They're what is called 'men's fiction', cheap paperbacks you buy at the drugstore. But mine do rather well. That's why I'm going to New York, to meet with my agent. I turned in two more and I'm going to sign the contract for them.

You don't live in New York?

No, I have a house in Montgomery Creek, between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. Where do you live?

"I share an apartment in Los Altos with three other stews. Four of us get two bedroom places and then we match up runs so only two of us are there at a time. On the intercontinental runs we get hotel rooms at Kennedy, so the Hyatt's like a separate home. Where do you stay in New York?'

I have a kind of suite in a welfare type hotel in Murray Hill. Two rooms with a bath between them. It works out because I've been spending about as much time in New York as in California.

You must be pretty rich.

That's kind of a funny thing. Just after my book got published my family was killed in an auto accident. Hit by a drunk driver. Between my Dad's property and the insurance settlement and my books, well...

He looked so sad right then that I couldn't stop myself from reaching out and touching his face. He put his hand on my leg, just above my knee on the inside of my thigh. It was like an electric shock. I could feel I was getting wet and I wanted his hand higher up my leg. God, I was getting turned on. I looked at him for a moment and kissed him. He responded and moved his hand up and down my leg, I could feel it through the nylon and I was getting so turned on my hands were shaking again.

I didn't mean to say it out loud. I don't know what I was thinking. Years of dreaming about this and well, it came out in kind of a whisper. I love you.

I blew it. I just knew it. I mean we were practically strangers. He stopped moving his hand on my leg and I knew I shouldn't have said anything. I got up and ran back into the stewardess' station. The tears were starting again. He wasn't too far behind me. When I turned around he was there.

I'm sorry ..I

He put his hand in the middle of my back and another on my cheek. He said why? and pulled me close pressing my breasts up against his chest as my nipples hardened. He held my cheek and kissed me. He had a way of pressing me close with his hand on my back that was so sensual I was melting.

You know if you are going to cry every time you get embarrassed you're going to cost me a fortune in handkerchiefs, he said as he released me and wiped my face. You think you're the only person who has dreams? You think maybe your memory hasn't kept me up a night or two along the way? So you said 'I love you.' I was thinking it Mel. How about I say it?

He put his hand under my chin and tilted my head up to look in my eyes. I love you, Melanie. I've spent the last six years, hoping against hope that I'd find you again so I could tell you that.

I was coming totally apart. I wanted to get closer to him. I wanted just to hold on and get closer and closer, to feel him inside of me. The tears were pouring down my face; I couldn't believe it was happening. I buried my face against his shoulder and composed myself, as much as I could, anyway.

Go back and sit down, I said. He let me go, reluctantly. I ducked into the rest room and did some damage control.

I hadn't had time to close off first class. There were two sliding doors that blocked first class from the coach cabin. We were supposed to shut them once the plane leveled off, and I was a bit late. I shut the first one and maneuvered my way to the second. I called over Janet, who was in charge of the main cabin. I whispered mile high in her ear, and closed the second door.

Then I went up to the cockpit door, and in. The navigator, Dick, and I once pulled this trick and I wanted privacy so it went over to him. I smiled, I've got a new initiate, Dick. I said.

Anybody need a head call? Dick announced to the pilot and co-pilot. They both looked around, smiled and gave me thumbs up. They wouldn't come in and Janet would make sure the turkeys from the main cabin would stay where they belonged. I would be alone with Peter.

I grabbed a blanket and walked back out to Peter. I reclined both seats and folded the arm rest. On the big planes, that was almost a bed, in fact they called them sleeper seats. I took off my jacket and lay down next to him.

Show me, I said.

He started slowly, almost like he was half embarrassed. My bra had a catch in front and he spent some time feeling for it around my back. He very slowly took down my hose and panties. He started kissing me, my mouth, my neck, my breasts. He ran his hand up and down the inside of my thigh, but he wasn't in a hurry, like so many of the businessmen who took me to their hotel rooms. It was like he was exploring my body to find the places to touch, the ones to kiss. And he had that way of putting his hand in the middle if my back pressing my breasts against his bare chest that just destroyed me. He took off his own pants and shirt and we lay together almost naked. By the time he actually touched me, really, I was so turned on that I almost forgot where I was and had to stifle a moan I was just so hot. He brought his hand up into my vagina and was gently massaging and manipulating me. I