A Long Distance Love Affair

by Mary-Ellen McLean

  Writing to you like this is such a special experience for me. It brings things out and helps me to understand and feel things that I haven’t understood or felt before. Things come out that even I don’t expect. I thank you for being willing to be on the receiving end of all this.

  I hope you’ve been having a good week and that there wasn’t too much for you to catch up on after your break last week.

  I booked my Paris hotel today. It’s got cast iron balconies and French doors you can open out to the balconies and it’s next to the Picasso Museum and 15 minutes walk from the Latin Quarter. I’m getting very excited!!

  Thinking of you....you fill me so completely

  Chariette

  Oh My Divine One!

  I just received your text message. What a lovely thing to say to me. I am really moved....

  Oh you give me such pleasure!! I treasure your body too and all that you do with it - especially all that you do with it that also involves me!

  Oh how you lift me. I just have to think of you and my spirits soar. What I find so appealing about you (apart from all you physical attributes which I have listed and praised a million times before but still wish to do so...) is your fresh naturalness. There's nothing dark and brooding about you. You are lightness itself. And you are filled with such eagerness which is just lovely to behold and lovely to be around. It makes me feel very eager for you, not just for your body but also to be in your uplifting presence.

  I just adore you

  "And I will make thee beds of roses

  And a thousand fragrant posies;

  If these delights thy mind may move,

  Come lie with me and be my love."

  Thank you for your lovely message

  Chariette

  My beautiful Chariot

  I’m still full of wonderful feelings after your call last night. You please me so very much. I think what I find so thrilling is the wonderful experience of coming across someone who I really like from every possible aspect (and I mean REALLY like) and that doesn’t happen very often in life but it’s happened to me with you. I’m just so thrilled that it has. There’s such a lovely sense of connection there with a fellow life traveller and it makes me feel so much less alone.

  This is what I like about you...(and these are presented not in any particular order – they all contribute to making the complete package divine - )

  · Every aspect of your beautiful physical form (you really are an Adonis to me)

  · Your vigour and eagerness for life and experience

  · Your driven-ness

  · Your ego

  · Your intelligence

  · Your desire for intimacy (this pleases me immensely)

  · Your boyish charm (this is a really lovely aspect of you)

  · Your sense of humour

  · Your joyful eager sexuality

  · Your thoughtfulness

  · The way you apologise when you think you’ve done something wrong

  · That you also give and don’t just take (and that you are generous in your giving)

  · Your directness

  · Your honest dealings with me.

  There’s more – much more- but I fear I’ll exhaust the system if I go on.

  And I just love what I see in your soul....

  It was a truly lovely night. I had a bowl of freesias on my bedside table and the whole room smelt beautiful and you called and said very intimate things to me. I have been truly blessed with you!

  Your as ever adoring one

  Chapter 3:

  Sharing Experiences Apart

  "For where thou art,

  There is the world itself.

  And where thou are not -

  Desolation."

  Beautiful Dear Heart

  I got the job!! Just had the phone call come through!! Thank you so much for all your help with this. I am SO excited. (Almost as excited as I would be if I were in the same room as you....) Oh I'm so grateful for your help with this and just over the moon with delight at coming back to beautiful Queensland. My family is ecstatic.

  Thank you for your lovely emails and your text message last night. I think you are so lovely and to know that you think of me - well - it just warms my heart!

  Glad to hear that things are going well for you up there with your meetings. I hope KL goes just as well given that you're not too keen on the place. Hope it's not too hot and sweaty for you (it can't possibly be as hot and sweaty as I am for you and you seem to cope with that in your stride...)

  I'm very much looking forward to repaying you with numerous pounds of flesh....

  Your adoring Chariette

  My beautiful Heart's Delight

  Thank you for your lovely call this morning and for remembering my birthday - it meant a lot to me.

  Still haven't packed...but I've located my passport and my ticket so all should be well. I'm getting quite excited now. Won't be back from overseas until the 12th and then I'll be into the hurly burly of packing up here at home (as well as putting in an appearance at work). Final date in there is 22nd and I feel 2 feet taller with the weight of the job lifted off my shoulders.

  So it's "Fare thee well awhile" my dear heart (this is taken from the most beautiful love poem ever written, one by Robert Burns, and I may just send you more of it some time..you got this bit because you remembered me today...)

  You just enchant me.

  Chariette

  My beautiful Chariot

  I'm all packed and ready to go. Thought I'd put in one last message not knowing when I might get another chance. My suitcase is too heavy, but being the female I am, I can't decide what to take out again. I am going to take the laptop on board with me just in case something happens and I can also amuse myself with it while I'm at airport stopovers. I am taking your boldly given advice and will try to merge with the experience of travel and make the most of it. You were very bold and vigorous last night...you would have been wonderful in the flesh.

  With regard to French men, the only French men I am in love with (or likely to be in love with) are dead ones...Hugo, Pascal, Maupassant, Racine, Renoir, Monet, Manet...so you're safe. And besides there is a certain Brisbane man who is so stunning he eclipses all else in my life.

  I am looking very beautiful today. My hair is washed and bouncy with curls and my face is lit up with excitement. No doubt I will look in a more wilted state by the time I get to Zurich, but I feel wonderful just now.

  I'm wishing I could be with you just now. My hands are eager to caress you. My nose is greedy for the smell of you - the sweat of desire...the scent of sexual culmination....my ears are attuned to every mellow tone of your voice. Oh I want you so much...

  I will be looking at all sorts of wonderful things over there, but underneath everything I will be wishing that I could see your beautiful face and smile appear out of the crowd.

  “Mine eyes desire you above all things.”

  Au revoir mon amour. Longing for you..

  Chariette

  Mon Coeur

  I’m in Fribourg and had a day away from the conference today and walked all over the place. I am in a courtyard writing to you. It has to be one of the most peaceful places I have ever been in...ancient stone steps covered in lichen and mosses leading down to a renaissance rose garden hedged in geometrical patterns with pebble pathways for wandering in. I feel the most relaxed I have all year. There are the most magnificent buildings everywhere - mostly

  churches and monasteries and convents. Priests walk around everywhere in their flowing robes with rope belts. You know my thoughts on religion - I need your wise and steady view of the world to lessen my negative reactions here - but I am appreciating the ancient architecture very much despite the religious overtones. And I love to hear the bells of the cathedrals - they strike every quarter hour. I suppose this is all automated now but there must have been a time when some poor bastards were on all night bell shifts. I have not seen a single gendarme in the city since I've been here
nor a gendarme car. I feel very safe here as well.

  I went last night to a very French restaurant determined to try something different. The name of the restaurant was 'Pig's Foot' and there were dead animals in the window and guns... I know all the words for beef, lamb, pork, fish, rabbit, but there was one word there I didn't know and can't remember now - 'crevaille' I think - so I ordered that just to see what would happen. I have no idea what it was..maybe deer because it was very dark meat. It was very tasty but the side dishes were very strange... a mixture of hot grapes, red cabbage with juniper berries and some substance akin to tasteless clag that I couldn't place at all. The chef hovered around me asking if 'C'ést bon?' and I said it was 'merveilleuse' not knowing the word for - really weird-. But the wine they served up with it was divine.

  I spent a few hours at the Museé d'Art et Histoire, and although it was quite small, I really loved it (apart from all the religious iconography). They featured the works of Fribourg artists from the last two centuries and there was a female called Marcello who was a completely gifted sculptor and painter. They didn't have any posters or postcards of her work unfortunately or I would have bought some. I also bought myself three old blue and white Villeroy and Boch saucers from a second hand store for 8 francs..it was a steal! (I collect blue and white China). And I saw some shoes I want...well lots really, but I have to leave room for things for the family.

  I hope you have had a bonne journée. I am thinking of you and wishing I could baise toi.

  Je t'embrace et je t'adore completement.

  Mon Dauphin Délicieux

  I am finding the Swiss to be a very civilized people - they are all extremely polite and helpful but I am missing the mercurial wit of the Celts and the wry humour of the Australians - maybe it’s just a language difference, but I find I have to rein in my wit because they just don't get things. It's a bit like talking to Americans - there's a woodenness and you have to explain things...

  I am leaving Fribourg a day earlier than I thought ie tomorrow morning - Friday - and will spend a day and night in Zurich rather than here as I've explored all I want to and the devil keeps tempting me too much in the stores. Saturday is the train trip to from Zurich to Cologne which is about 6 hours. I'm really looking forward to that.

  I am reading a crime novel about murders in the Vatican City and last night there was a passage about a saint called Teresa who says an angel paid her a visit in her sleep - she is said to have described it thus:

  "...his great golden spear filled with fire plunged into me several times - penetrated to my entrails - a sweetness so extreme that one could not possibly wish it to stop...."

  She, poor thing, (like me) was obviously dreaming of you!

  Je t'embrace partout (especially on your golden spear).

  Chariette

  Mein Klein (it's all German here)

  My senses are just overwhelmed with the beauty of Switzerland. Zurich is just wonderful. I walked all over the town centre yesterday and passed houses that Wagner lived in and Goethe stayed at and I even came across James Joyce corner which was just stunning (I took a photo of that like a complete tourist dork). But the plaques are all in German so it's a bit difficult to understand what they are commemorating.

  This is my kind of place! The old buildings full of history and dead souls, cobblestones, greenery that's so intense you can feel the vitality of it and I even like the shape of the leaves on the trees. Oh I wish you were here so I could kiss you on the cheek to share my happiness. It would be the warmest, loveliest most heartfelt kiss you ever had!

  My wallet and I are in constant battle. It's trying to stay shut. Bought the princeling the loveliest little hat and could spend a fortune on him if I let myself go. The clothing here is really top quality. But so expensive it's beyond belief. I have seen so many shoes but am holding off for Paris. I've noticed the people here are more good looking than in Fribourg and fatter. Maybe Fribourg was just full of ugly tourists...but I think here it's more the German influence. Makes me think of you...

  I can't seem to stop thinking of you. Oh God when am I ever going to be released from this torture??? Here I am surrounded by sights to swamp my senses and you're still there inside me dominating everything despite it all.

  The hotel I'm staying at here in Zurich is absolutely lovely and romantic and we would have had a lovely time together in it... Had a wonderful bath last night in the deepest bath I've ever seen.

  I'm off to Cologne this afternoon...

  Missing your beautiful voice and your text messages.

  Chariette

  Mein Klein Spent yesterday (Sunday) in Cologne. It´s very ugly after the beauty of Zurich. The place must have been significantly bombed during the war because it´s full of ugly post war

  architecture and there has been no planning at all. The beautiful cathedral which is the centre piece of the place has been built around with the ugliest modern buildings. But I spent yesterday in the cathedral square listening to buskers all day. There was a brass quintet there that were so good they sounded as though they were from the philharmonic. And a woman playing solo violin that was just heart wrenching. The music was so beautiful that even teenagers on rollerblades stopped to listen.

  I don´t like the physical surroundings here at all. I’m finding it quite depressing. I´m off today to visit an institution in Aachen then the same thing tomorrow at Dortmund. I´m travelling around on the trains very well. I´m always a bit nervous about the unknown, but once I know what to do I can quickly adapt, and this is happening to me with the train system despite everything being in German. (Reminds me of my first visit to you in Sydney - I was VERY nervous about that, but now.....)

  I´ve lost track of where you are. I imagine you´re off to Europe soon or on the way there now. I´m disappointed you haven´t been able to get into the email. Missing you very much....

  "For where thou art,

  There is the world itself.

  And where thou are not -

  Desolation."

  Chariette

  Le coeur (heart) de ma vie (life)

  So wonderful to hear from you now that I’m in Paris and very glad you are also keen to take me up on the Rodin poses. One of them was called "Transport et ravissement" and I would very much like you to transport and ravish me in a similar manner. Oh how I would love to be coupling with you again and again just now. Would also love to be simply walking with you through the streets of Paris and along the Seine.

  I passed the Sorbonne yesterday and today I saw Montmartre (from a distance). I'm heading off now to the Musée D'Orsay and will look out for the bus you mentioned as I'm still nervous of the metro and gangs of Africans hang around the entrances and shout things at the people coming up the stairs from there.

  This is truly the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I love the over the top architecture of all the monuments. I was in Rue de Lafayette today and suddenly there was this grand arch in the middle of the street commemorating some battle or victory but it was just so grand!! And proud!! And I saw the French Opera and some building nearby that had something to do with de Gaulle and it had a magnificent golden eagle on the top which looked to be real gold because it was glowing.

  I am full of feeling for you all the time I'm here. It doesn't go away....

  "I would not wish any companion in the world

  But you."

  I hope you like my new shoes and like taking them off me. They are truly lovely and make me very happy (simpleton that I am..) I hope you've managed to buy yourself a new shirt because I will love to be taking it off you....

  My French is working perfectly here. I can understand a lot that I hear, can read Le Monde no problem (there was even an article about the Australian election in it) and can get by asking for the things I need.

  Je te baise (kiss), je te caresse, je t'adore

  Chariette

  Mon très cher Chariot

  Oh the Musée D'Orsay! What a wonderful experience. To see so many Reno
irs in the same room and in their original form was just magnificent. (Renoir, by the way, obviously would have LOVED my body..) And I found Van Gogh growing on me too. There was one of his city scenes where the blues he used were just pulsating with vitality. I was standing in front of a Manet portrait of Berthe Morisot (who was holding a bunch of violets...) when an oldish couple came up beside me and starting speaking - they had Australian accents so I spoke to them and we discovered we were all from Melbourne. We almost fell upon each other with joy at discovering this! It was a lovely moment.