Aviva wasn’t against the sequence on principle. Aviva wasn’t against anything sexual, on principle, not even snuff. Shenar, Tomás had noticed, seemed to take instruction from Aviva’s sexual latitude. During the meeting, Shenar interrupted Aviva several times with searching questions; the kind that put Tomás in mind of a zealot questioning her faith.

“So tell me, what’s the value of, if not encouraging a predilection for snuff fantasies, at least catering to them?”

“The point is,” Anita preened, the limelight of expertise being her weakness, “if someone requires a particular fantasy for arousal, as long as the fantasy does not devolve into hurting their mate, the fantasy itself is not only okay, but not incorporating it would be the same as condemning the couple’s love life. It’s the same kind of issue as women’s fantasies of rape.”

“I’d always thought,” Shenar’s voice was careful, unaccusatory, “that rape fantasies were really fantasies of being overwhelmed, which seems appropriate to sexual behavior. Are you saying that snuff fantasies are the overwhelmer’s counterpart? That all they show is a desire to overwhelm?”

Tomás was distracted by mumbling around the table. He glanced at Frank, who was rapt in the discussion. He appeared to be paying as much attention to Aviva as he was to Shenar. Frank was fair, in that way, although Tomás wondered if Frank would be less driven if he didn’t have Shenar in his bed. Tomás found it difficult to resist polarizing the two women. One was the riddle, the other, the answer. He wanted both. He needed one. He had neither.

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Then, why, although there are male-raper fantasies that correspond to female rape fantasies, are there no female snuff fantasies that correlate to male snuff fantasies? I mean, not of a woman killing someone at the height of sexual arousal, but of women fantasizing about being the victim?”

“Some people like to be smothered during intercourse. Many of those are women.”

Whenever Aviva used her extensive clinical sexual vocabulary, Tomás shifted in his chair, made room for the swelling.

“It’s called ‘hyperventilating’. It’s not the same thing.”

“Remember ‘la petit morte’.”

Shenar shook her head. “I don’t know. You’re the expert.” Tomás noticed Aviva smooth her hair back, baring her jugular. “It’s just that it’s hard for me to discount, ‘as a man thinketh...’, even, maybe especially, when it comes to sex.”

Aviva smiled, an expert’s smile. “Maybe we don’t have nearly as many rapes and sex murders as we would because men don’t do as they think.”

The room was quiet. Shenar was staring into space just past Aviva. Everyone, by now, knew that this meant she was thinking. If someone picked up the beat, she’d wave her arms and insist that she was still talking. “Maybe,” she said, directing her gaze to Aviva, “all the rapes and sexual murders we have now can be accounted for by man’s thoughts.”

“This is theoretical, anyway,” Bob said. “The feds aren’t going to allow us to put a snuff template in a fantasy template package.”

“I’m still having trouble with that idea, too,” Shenar said. “The porn industry already provides templates, very detailed templates, templates that are juxtaposed over experience, become the adjudicators of experience. Providing templates encourages this, instead of encouraging people to look behind the templates and see what their own fantasies are.”

“That’s not going to get two people into a clinch,” Bob said.

“The point of this series, this, whatever, isn’t it therapy?” Shenar asked.

“Yes, but you have to be very careful not to dictate to a couple in the privacy of their bedroom. You don’t want them hearing the therapists voice when they are pursuing sexual congress.”

“I’m trying, Aviva. I’m trying. Wouldn’t templates be a type of voice?”

Bob’s laughter, somewhere to the left. “That an editorial comment, Tomás?”

Had he...? He cleared his throat.

Both Shenar and Aviva turned away from him as though he’d been rude.

“Shenar, look at it this way. We’re getting paid to think about fantasy, about our own fantasy lives. These people are paying to enrich their marriages; they’re not paying to be the subjects.”

“I notice you said, ‘enrich’, not ‘improve’.”

Aviva looked at Shenar as though she didn’t get it. Uh, oh, Tomás thought, here it comes.

But Shenar didn’t respond to that. “I’ll see what I can do about templates,” she said. “I’m going to need some fantasy input. Maybe a poll...”

Everyone laughed. Except Shenar. “I mean it. How am I supposed to know what’s popular?”

Aviva stood and bowed toward Shenar. “I can help you there. I have to agree, your approach is pretty one note.”

Tomás looked at Shenar. She was flushed from hairline to neckline.

Bob guffawed. Now he was up, lunging like a sniveling homo erectus on the trail of a phermone, around the table toward Shenar. He always liked to sit opposite Shenar, Tomás noted. Which was fine. Tomás preferred to view her from an angle, not full face, not profile.

Frank came to Shenar’s defense. “You’ve only seen one piece of her work. Besides, I’d say the theme was minimally risky and well within the prerequisites for a fantasy template, one that might satisfy both partners.”

He must mean the anger-fuck sequence, Tomás realized. Maybe Frank and Tomás were the only two who knew about the other sequence, the school teacher sequence. That one was more than minimally risky.

Shenar recovered quickly. She always did. There wasn’t an ounce of apology about her. She deliberately walked away from Frank, who had begun to advance protectively, and toward Bob’s looming figure. A smile played at her lips. It glanced off Bob before she threw it back toward Frank. Tomás saw it glint off Frank’s retina. He saw Frank’s jaw tighten, his fingers flex. He shuddered at the intimacy of what he’d just witnessed.

It was time, he decided. Aviva.

Text & Graphics © 1999 by Gail Rae Hudson

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