Looks are...

   I couldn’t help but feel tremendous pleasure the first time we had sex. He was one of those guys that you see around a lot, in advertisements, in television and in movies. He was very handsome and his body was almost genetically manipulated to please any living human. His pectorals were round and covered in short hairs and his abdomen was not heavily ripped but enough for anyone to look at him instantly, if he happened to be wearing no clothes on his upper body. He was that guy, the guy most of us would like to be like.

 Or be with. I had never really had a type. I had always like a variety of things and traits in men that would please me in many ways. That’s why I found the question “Is size important?” such a difficult one to actually respond. For me, it was all about the person. If the big penis was attached to a person who knew how to use it and who enjoyed having one, it would most likely end up becoming a very satisfying sexual relationship. If not, disappointment was not impossible nor very far away in time.

 And yeah, I would maybe call myself promiscuous. After a long relationship with one person, who ended up being a lying cheat, I decided that I didn’t really want to commit again, unless I felt something truly special. That has not happened since then, so until very recently I happened to use a lot of dating apps on the phones and websites in order to get dates and casual sex. I would even frequent themed parties and enjoy myself truly in them, no shame or guilt the next day. That’s who I am.

 When I met Henry, the perfect guy I mentioned earlier, I was working as an assistant photographer in a very popular magazine. The place and its people were truly unbearable but I liked the job and the amount of opportunities it could give me in the future. My goal was to become an actual photographer and to be able to have my own studio and work with important people, no matter if they were famous individuals or maybe prestigious magazines. I just wanted to be the one to make them famous, in a way at least.

 So I was the one to get coffee and also the one that practically built the set before the actual photographer came every morning into the studio. Well, it wasn’t exactly morning anymore when he came in, but you get the idea. I would prepare everything and he would just change a couple of things before shooting the actual pictures with the model of the day. It was frequently a female model or some new singer or actress. The magazine focused its attention on that area, thinking women wanted to be them and men wanted to be with them. Just like what I thought of Henry when I saw him.

 He came in one morning. He seemed lost and I actually thought, for a split second, that he was some guy looking for the employment office. But he wasn’t. Once I was closer, I realized how tall he was and how big his hands and feet were. Besides that, his eyes were beautiful and bright and his skin was obviously well taken care of. So he was a model and I had to apologize for my behavior and then made him come into the studio. It was very uncommon for a model to come in so early.

 I told Henry that Marco, the photographer, would take a couple more hours to get there. I pretended to look for a message from him, but I was actually sending texts to Marco telling him to come at once to the studio. I imagined him sleeping in his nice loft, with one or even two of the gorgeous models he had met throughout the years. He was a ladies man and everyone knew that. So I wasn’t surprised when Henry himself suggested for us to have something to drink, as Marco would take a while.

 He waited until I finished with the set, which took about fifteen minutes, and then I invited him to a coffee shop just next door. It was very strange because I felt every single person was looking our way, to Henry to be more precise. And it was true. The girl that took our order was almost to enthralled to even pay attention to what I was saying. I remember hoping that she had noted my almond milk but Henry wanted to sit down as we waited, so we did just that. And it amazed me to realize how little I actually talk to models.

 They were always there for Marco, so I would only do what he asked and then stay very quiet until the photography session was over and he left with the models laughing and talking about some party they had all been together. I would then have to clean everything up and go home. In the nights I wasn’t so tired, I would contact someone and relax with them, in a way, with a drink and a night of sex. When the woman called us to pick up the coffee, Henry laughed because my expression seemed to mark my minds whereabouts.

 He asked about my job and was very kind about it. I asked about his modeling career and I wasn’t surprised to know he was very young and had already worked for a lot of big brands. He was even the image for a perfume! It was then when I remembered his face from a bus stop and our conversation went on from there, talking about life experiences and how we each loved our work and how they were both very connected. I have to say I had a blast talking to him, probably because I would rarely speak with anyone at work. I needed someone that I could exchange at least some words with.

 Later that day, I learned from hearing Marco and Henry, that he had signed a modeling contract that would bring him a big check but would also make him an usual in our studio, as Marco would become something like his official photographer. He took a lot of headshots of Henry that first day and I noticed he would look for my gaze in order to lock his eyes with mine and share a short moment, sometimes with a smile in between it all. It was nice but, by the next day, I thought it was all in my head.

 That was until he stayed after a photo-shoot, telling Marco he needed our Wi-Fi to talk to his agent on the phone. What he really wanted to do was something much more direct and that worked too well for him: he approached me from the back and started touching me all over. His hands felt like tentacles, not stopping for a single second. Somehow, I knew that kind of behavior was not appropriate but I have to confess I decided to go along with it when I realize whom I was about to have sex with.

 And we did. It all happened on the hardwood floor of the studio and when we finished, I had no idea how to feel. It wasn’t like he did something awful during sex or that he left immediately. Henry actually stayed for a while, helping me put everything in order. He joined me in a cab and left me in front of my building. But that night, when I went to bed, I felt something was not completely right with the whole picture. I had liked it but maybe not all of it and I was simply too confused to think about it anymore.

 However, it kept happening and its still happening to this day. He has so many fans and there are even rumors that he’s dating some girl model that looks like a female version of him. It’s insane! And I haven’t asked anything about it because I don’t feel I have any permission to ask him anything about his life. After all, I’m not really part of it. I’m just the guy he decided to fuck this once and I feel this will end soon. I even think that it has happened before and I tell myself I cannot care at all about that.

 I have been living in somewhat of a safe ground for so long. I have fucked whomever I wanted and wherever I wanted. I called the shots in my life, deciding everything about it, especial how I decide to live it. I don’t let anyone else take any action in my life. Or so I thought at least…

 Every single time I’m close to him, I let go of my will to fight back. I know, somehow, that he’s not the right person for me. He’s simply not, in any way, shape or form. However, I keep going back. I keep falling and I have to ask myself if when I fall again, is the ground going to be there to stop me again?

Her

   The explosion was strong enough to blow away every single glass of the magnificent apartment. It occupied the whole 35^th floor of one of the tallest residential buildings in the city and it had been featured in several magazines as one of those grand and amazing apartment that people should be looking at if they wanted to have one ever in their life. Not that that goal was any realistic, as Wilbur Wright, owner of the apartment, had inherited the millions of dollars that had paid the apartment and everything on it.

 The destruction of the apartment was shrouded in mystery as, two days later when the fire had finally been put out by firemen, there was no real clue as to what or whom could have cause the explosion. It was clear that nothing ordinary had been the culprit: there were no gas leaks of any kind, not a faulty wire in the whole premises and not even a problem with any of the many gadgets and electronics that made the apartment an automated environment that worked on its own, with no help from any human.

 Wilbur Wright had been on a plane on his way home when the incident happened and he was taken in a rush to a gran hotel room in order to protect his life, as many thought he was still in danger. But he had no idea about what they were all talking about, as most people loved him. Yes, he had inherited all of his money and didn’t really work at all, but he was the charitable face of his family’s organization and had been a patron of the arts for quite a while. Who would attack such a person?

 From his hotel room, he was able to watch the flames consuming his apartment, as the buildings were not very far apart. He had bought so many collectible items for his private quarters, many objects and art pieces that were one of a kind. Many museums had tried to buy them from him but he had always refused stating that there was no better person than him to take care of a precious item and that there was no safer place in the world than his apartment for such things. Clearly, that had not been the case.

 The morning the fire was extinguished, he got permission to enter the premises and check for himself what remained of his beloved apartment. Every single piece of furniture had been consumed, even the expensive food he kept on the kitchen. Every piece of granite, marble and titanium was now tainted forever with a black stain, with yellowish tones that indicated the temperature of the flames. He went to what used to be his room. He opened the closet and typed a few numbers on a keyboard the firemen had missed. It was a large vault, embedded into the wall.

 The vault’s door opened and it revealed a small room that had resisted the fire and the smoke. However, Mr. Wright collapsed once he entered the small space and started yelling and pulling his hair. For a moment, the men and women around thought of giving him some space to process whatever he was dealing with. But then they realized he was pulling his hair a little bit too much, actually pulling some of it from his skull, getting it on his hands and then on the floor. He had to be taken away to a hospital.

 The news of his breakdown went viral in hours. It was assumed that one of the firemen, or maybe one of the police officers, had recorded everything on a cellphone, as everyone watched Mr. Wright pulling out his hairs. The video had been uploaded to the Internet and now thousands of pulling were looking at him going crazy. Some of them laughed and some others even shed a tear. The common part of the response was that everyone wondered what had cause him to have the breakdown then and not before.

 Wilbur was released after a whole week in the hospital. His family came to take him home, which was a very rare sight on the part of their family, as they had never seemed to be close at all. The parents had decided to live a life of leisure since they had given their children control of all the businesses, and no pictures of the kids’ younger days had ever been released to the public, something that seemed odd at the beginning but they told every news outlet it was because they respected they children.

 The truth was the family was as cold as some of people thought it was. Wilbur rarely ever spoke to his father or mother, not even when he had been for a brief moment in charge of the shipping company his father had created when he was younger. Wilbur had done such an awful job running it, that the family had decided to fire everyone and dissolve the company altogether. Of course, it had been awful for the workers but the family thought it had been a disaster because they realized that Wilbur didn’t really now anything.

 They took him to their summerhouse, far from the city, in order to ask him about his mental state. They wanted to know if they had to be worried about it since it would be something more to add to the shame they felt for having him as a child. That’s what they told him, word by word. They didn’t care if he felt bad because of their words; they just wanted answers and the faster the better. Wilbur only said they didn’t have to worry about anything as his problems were his alone. The way he said it stopped them in their tracks and they decided not to speak again of the matter.

 The truth was that Wilbur didn’t want anyone to know about what had happened with his house. He wanted to ask the fire department for another tour of the ruins, but it had been decided that the building should be evacuated completely in order to check for any issues that the fire could have caused to the structure of the tower. No one was allowed in, except for law enforcement and the investigators that the city had working to know if everything was ok after the destruction.

 Wilbur was so desperate about his secrets that he decided to use his money to bribe a policeman in order to let him into the tower one night, after everyone had gone home. He was able to do it quietly and without any cameras or people looking at him. He went straight for his vault again and when he opened the door, his fists tightened, as well as his jaw. He even repressed the need to punch a wall or destroy the few things that had been left inside that place. Not that there was a lot there.

 Only a few papers and a little safe with some cash. It was all just for security but his biggest secret, his biggest creation if you will, and the only proof he was much more than what his family thought he was, was not there anymore. Every part of his creation had been destroyed by the fire and the only way to bring it back had been clearly stolen, probably minutes before the explosion. That was the proof that someone had gotten in and knew exactly what to look for, someone had known something he had told no one.

 He wasn’t really scared about that person using his creation against him or even playing the people into thinking he or she had created such a thing. Nothing like that bothered him. It was the relationship he had created, the fact that now he felt as if his only child had been yanked away from his hands. He felt hollow, alone and very sad. That was the reason he had collapsed when opening the vault, the reason his brain had not been able to cope with what had happened.

 He had named it Pamela, after one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He had created Pamela when younger, after reading a lot about computers and programming. He learned all that by himself and no one in his family or work had a clue about his hobby.

 Pamela was the product of his efforts. He worked a bit on her, every day, and he was proud to think that he had created a perfect example of artificial intelligence. She was nice, smart and very intuitive. She was a friend, a daughter and a companion. And now, he had no idea where she could be.