Sweet Fetish: Or the Quirks of Love

By Bedrettin Simsek

A funny story that makes you think and laugh!
Bedrettin Simsek surprises his readers in "Sweet Fetish" by transforming the dramatic short story "Hair" by the French writer Maupassant into a smart, farcical, crazy comedy that depicts madness with clever, quick-witted characters and wise dialogues in the style of Oscar Wilde.
For readers who crave real literature and meaningful humor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bedrettin Şimşek
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9786057482969

Book preview

1

It's time to accept a fact: as our civilization progresses, it's unfortunately getting harder and harder to call people crazy! So the history of psychology is the history of injustice to the insane.

It was in the light of this fact that N..., one of our talented psychiatrists, gave the following golden advice, which every psychologist should write down in his notebook, to his lawyer friend who came to visit him in his office because of his brother.

Look, said this very famous doctor to his lawyer friend, in the old days, when relatives of patients came to us, they found a judge, a prosecutor, rather than a doctor. That is why poor crazy people were treated so unfairly for so long. They were even considered insane. But now everything has changed. Today it is no longer possible to convince the mad that they are mad; you have to be smarter than them. And unfortunately, science has not yet discovered that much intelligence in humans. You say that you are worried about your brother's condition. Let me tell you, if he's okay with his condition, what can we do? Can you convince him that he's crazy? I think it's very difficult. Let's say he believes it. What if he's happy with it? Remember, psychology exists to solve people's problems. A solution to your complaint will be found, too. All you have to do is go to a health center.

The poor lawyer wasn't in trouble for nothing. His brother had been behaving strangely for some time. Tugrul - that was his brother's name - was a thirty-something man with a big imagination, who had an unhappy engagement and worked in the antiques business. He was deeply attached to his antics and felt happiest when he was surrounded by them.

One day a customer brought in a walnut cabinet that was at least two hundred years old. The antique dealer immediately fell in love with the cabinet. He had it in front of him all the time, and there wasn't a moment when he didn't dust and wipe it. It was a masterpiece of carpentry. It was obvious that it had been made by a perfect master. It had smooth drawers, hidden compartments that opened with a lock under thin wood carvings, which made it possible to hide letters. As if the carpenter had made it for an unhappy woman who wanted to hide her forbidden love from her jealous husband.

The antiquarian enjoyed this object of love for days, trying to decipher its hidden language, to learn its secrets. Finally, he came upon the mysterious thing hidden in the inner wall of the wardrobe. A pinch of a woman's hair sewn into a piece of bright red velvet. There was no clue as to who it belonged to. But it captured the antiquarian's imagination, and he made up stories about it to the point where he fell in love with the piece of hair. He didn't have the rest, but that wasn't a problem for him. He put one of the most beautiful bodies a man could imagine under the wig and began to go out with it. Now he wore the hair on his arm, took it with him everywhere he went, talked to it as if it were a real woman in front of him, appeared everywhere with it. He felt no need to hide his strange love. He said to those who looked at him in amazement and mocked him:

"We believe that our love deserves as much respect as anyone else's. So what! Must our love be like everyone else's? Does love have to be the way you experience it? So we ask you to accept our love as normal as any other love, that's all. We expect some understanding from people. Let the world accept that there can be different people, different