This is Episode 27 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version [] from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store or from Amazon.
Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here
The Date with Winnie: Revealing who was captured
Winnie and I walked with our hands clasped from my car to the restaurant. A chill in the December wind, whisking in from over the ocean, enticed us to touch and share one another’s warmth. We clung closer as we waited in line outside the building. Dozens of people sat both inside and outside.
“We have a one-hour wait,” the cheerful hostess said.
All the restaurants would be crowded. This one presented the most renowned view of the long coastal river in the area. The line into the restaurant was filled with several hard-of-hearing elderly couples shouting their opinions and troubles with their nasal “a’s” and strange pronunciations. Florida had been flooded with those escaping the winter of the North. Because of the path of the main roads, those from the Northeast lived on this side of the peninsula. Those from the middle of the continent lived on the western side. Northerners are easily pleased by their first impressions of these landscapes.
I was glad Winnie would leave tomorrow. My night with her had been anticlimactic and carnal. Her enjoyment was based on her desire for domination, which came from her fear of me. I thought about her all day with my pen and paper nearby. I admired he firm roundness, but I couldn’t muster any passion for looking into her eyes, for kissing her, for embracing her, or for discovering her choices and motivations, for creating her. My pen was silent.
Maybe she bored me because she was merely a body, and I had enjoyed dozens of them recently. I had made love to many others whose minds I failed to learn or whose minds were numb.
I then understood this: To the extent I received pleasure for me, I had sinned; to the extent I had loved them for my own experience and validation of my understanding of love of material things, I had sinned. But what was the extent?
Winnie shifted impatiently as we waited with the tourists.
“We have about fifty minutes. Let’s walk.”
“Sure,” she said. “Where?”
“How about to the top of the bridge?”
We ascended the steep cement next to the restaurant. A current of vehicles screamed by us. Lighted sailboats floated in the bubbling black waterway below. The cold sea breeze threatened to fling us into the cars or into the water.
At the crest of the bride, I stopped. I turned her toward the town, toward the mainland side from which we came. A massive light from Miami or Ft. Lauderdale burst on the horizon south of the town. Yellow hung above the shore. She wrapped her arm around me.
“Jonathan? Will you promise me something?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Will you go out with me again after the New Year?” She shouted over a wind gust.
“I’d love to. But that’s weeks away.”
“What’s wrong with that? You don’t seem happy tonight. I’m afraid I’m gonna be another one of your one-night stands.”
“Oh. I suppose I deserve that. But you also don’t want an extended relationship?”
“No.” She brushed a curl from her eye.
“Neither one of us knows what we’re looking for. I’m certain of only one thing: I’d rather see no other woman against a winter twilight on top of a bridge.”
“C’mon, Jonathan. I don’t even know who you are. I know what company you work for. I know you have a bad reputation. I know you’re gorgeous. I know you in bed. Tell me what else I need to know. Why am I here?”
I couldn’t talk as my mind stumbled around answers.
She looked at me and frowned, then shook her curls around. “Maybe you should take me home now.”
“Wait, Winnie. I don’t know you either. I know you’re beautiful. I know you in bed. I know you’re good friends with Gina and Maureen and Lisa. I know you’re searching for some kind of harmony or something. None of this amounts to much. But it’s worth the effort to find out more about you. Then I’ll know why I’m with you.”
“Can’t you simply accept me for what I am, no matter what I might be? I can feel you judging me.”
“How am I judging you?”
“I’m sure you are. I can tell by how you look at me and the questions you ask. ‘Why did you go into the medical field?’ ‘What do you think your future holds?’”
Am I limiting her, as Lana did to me?
“Winnie, I’m not asking how I show that I’m judging you. I meant to ask: What categories do you think I’m using to judge you? I’d like to understand what’s going on here.”
“You’re constantly trying to determine if I’m good enough for you. Can’t you accept me for what I am? I hate conflict. It upsets my stomach.”
Am I categorizing her?
“I’d really like to know. How do you think I judge you?”
“I don’t know!” she shouted over a ship horn. “You watch me and ask questions, like you’re trying to re-create me.”
I gazed far off down the river, at Santiago’s, its little lights and the armada of boats attached to it. I had not imprisoned her in a judgment. She merely feared me doing so, one day.
“Winnie, I only wanted to learn you.”
“Why? Can’t you leave it alone? And accept me for me. If not, we’ll only end up arguing and hating each other.”
“Why do you think that?”
“It always happens.”
“You seem to want an easy romance, but it’s never like that. It’s not easy for men and women to exist together. It’s frightening.”
“Last night wasn’t as frightening as I thought it might be.”
“But what we did was natural.”
“Natural? Oh!”
“Winnie, the more we know about each other, the more we’ll dislike. But there’ll also be much more to like, right?”
“Usually not.”
“I can’t force you to enjoy me tonight or to enjoy the skyline or the water unless you open your mind a little.”
“My mind is very open. I’m finding my own peace, and it doesn’t come from battling myself, or from battling you. I’d rather be home.”
We looked out over the black water. A sailboat floated below. We could almost touch its mast as it slid under us.
“Winnie, I want you to hear this. It’s for you.” I paused, inhaled, rehearsed the words, and recited:
“When man’s soul lacking she does heist, the beast within is sacrificed.”
“What?” Winnie exclaimed. She rolled her eyes.
Another poem, a reality captured for someone, disregarded, humiliation.
In this moment, I grasped that what is created cannot be forced or pushed; those who are given this life and what’s created within it must accept what’s created for them and granted to them, through that eternal design embedded in them, that which is them – their soul; enlivening these souls, giving life to their potential, required their acceptance.
I pushed on, accepting the coming end to my art.
“Man’s frightful freedom will occur--”
“The soul unfettered flees to her,” Winnie said as her eyes bulged.
“What? How did you--”
“Who wrote that?” she asked.
“I did!”
“Right. What’s the deal with these poems? Who cares? How can you people take this seriously?”
“You’ve heard this before?”
“It was drilled into me,” she said.
“Where did you hear it?”
“Someone read it to me.”
“Not Kevin. That couldn’t be.”
“No,” she said. “My old lover did, if you must know. So what? Obviously you got it out of the same book. It melts you people, like it had some powerful meaning. I’ve never seen such commotion over stupid words.”
“Who read it to you? I need to know where he got it. My poem is floating around out there?”
“I heard several.”
“Who is it? Why did he read them to you?”
“They were supposed to have some great meaning. They had some tremendous effect.”
“But for who?”
Winnie backed away. “No. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“No, just take me home.” She wheeled and started down the bridge.
“Wait!”
She jogged.
“Winnie! What’s the matter?” I caught her arm. This stopped her, and she turned. Warm drops flew on me as she spun.
“I’m sorry, Jonathan. Please.”
“You’re crying! What’s the matter?”
“Please. Take me home.”
***
“After this, if he thinks rightly, and knows to estimate the value of things justly, he will esteem that beauty which is inward, and lies deep in the soul, to be of greater value and worthy of more regard than that which is outward, and adorns only the body. As soon, therefore, as he meets with a person of a beauteous soul and generous nature, though flowering forth but a little in superficial beauty, with this little he is satisfied; he has all he wants; he truly loves, and assiduously employs all his thoughts and all his care on the object of his affection.” Plato, Symposium (210C/D)
Next week: Episode 28 The Crossed-Paths: Searching for the Art Thief
Copyright © 2022 Christopher Rogers.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual events or localities or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Christopher Rogers is the author of the novel Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s-Retro Florida Techno Pro-life Love Story and Conversion Journey, which dramatizes a story about the Catholic conversion of two twenty-somethings in the 90s, interleaving a story about love, hookups, corporate and social culture in the 90s, technical intrigue, and a journey to the Holy Trinity. The novel is available here, at the Catholic Corner, which is on Mike Church's Crusade Channel website or any other major online bookseller. “Virtual Eternity is a contemporary fiction written by Christopher Rogers that I read and fell in love with. Its rare to find a book that treats of our modern hook-up culture and then honors its antithesis: Sacramental marriage. Rogers does this while weaving his characters through a Big-Tech thriller. Christian readers will appreciate this work as entertainment, done right.” – Mike Church Virtual Eternity is also available in serialized form for free; start reading here.
Christopher is married and has helped raise a family of three children, while also working as a human factors engineer and project manager in the fields of healthcare, intelligence, military, aerospace, and manufacturing. He has Master’s degrees in Humanities (Houston-Clear Lake) and Industrial Engineering (Auburn). Christopher belongs to the Discalced Carmelite Secular Order. He is also the author of the novel Dumb College: A Story about the Decline of Western Civilization.
