Clarise Samuels
The Absurd Philosopher
William disliked hotel rooms. There was a light knock at the door. He slicked back his thick blond hair, which refused to turn gray even as fifty loomed up on the horizon. He could not concern himself with his vanity. He was a doctor, and he was paying the stranger on the other side of the door not to care about his looks.
Her name was Natalie, and she looked seventeen. William eyed her skeptically. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-seven,” Natalie replied sanguinely, and he knew she was telling the truth. The truth was something doctors could detect – it was emitted with a fleeting flash behind the eyes. She was wearing jeans, and her dark hair was held in place with a barrette. She sat down on the bed.
“Shall we start?” Natalie asked.
“Not yet.” William needed to talk. “Why are you doing this?” he asked abruptly.
“Doing what? Right now I'm just talking to you,” Natalie offered evasively.
“Couldn't you find another profession?”
“I have another profession. This is just for some extra money,” Natalie answered. “And what is your profession, if you don't mind my asking?”
“What?” William was caught off guard. “Oh. I'm a doctor.”
“Really? We get a lot of business from doctors. Doctors have huge libidos, and they can never let anyone know what they're feeling. I've learned to pity doctors.”
“You pity me?” William asked in disbelief.
“Yes,” Natalie said simply.
“I pity you,” he said softly.
“Why?” she countered with mild curiosity.
“Because you are selling your body and your soul. You have committed the ultimate sin against God and yourself.”
Natalie's brow creased in thought. “Are you religious?” she wanted to know.
“No,” William answered. “I belong to the Episcopalian Church. It's the Church I don't go to. My wife goes.”
“Ah, of course, you have a wife,” Natalie commented knowingly. “And then you ask me why I am doing this. At least I'm not married. Is she also a doctor?”
William gasped involuntarily at the reference to his ethical dilemma, the one aspect of which even she did not have to contend with. “No. She's a lawyer. As for why I'm doing this – I am middle-aged,” he remarked soberly, “and many of my illusions have died. You are too young to let your illusions die. You are too young to sell your soul to the devil.”
“Are you the devil?” Natalie sounded coquettish.
“No. I am just a stressed, discouraged, and lonely man. I am a thinker who is working my way through a difficult stage in my life. Consider me to be a Greek philosopher. I almost majored in philosophy. Pretend I am Plato.”
Natalie laughed. “I don't think so. Amor platonicus this is not.”
William was charmed by her intelligence. “To be honest, I wasn't thinking of platonic love. I was thinking more of the Platonic theory of forms – that every object existing in this physical realm is a poor, fuzzy copy of the original existing in the Heavens, where the ideal version is perfect.”
“Am I to be copied in Heaven – am I a goddess?” Natalie questioned him.
“No, but the ideal version of this relationship exists in the Heavens. The heavenly version would be two people in mutual need who approach each other with love and respect, and not desperation and lust. The fuzzy copy of the ideal we have here on Earth is distorted and rather pathetic.”
“We are not even a vague copy of the ideal,” Natalie said despondently. “We are not even vaguely derived from the gods and goddesses of Heaven. I am a prostitute, and you are a troubled, middle-aged man. Rather than a fuzzy copy of the heavenly version, we are indeed an extremely absurd copy. No one will ever accept that our illicit union is to be justified by our mutual need. We have transcended social boundaries, and we have broken both moral law and the law of the state.”
“No, we are close to the ideal nevertheless,” William insisted. “We are but a hair's breadth away. But this last fraction of an inch appears to be a bottomless chasm.”
“How can we bridge this chasm?” Natalie questioned him.
“We have to have faith,” explained William, now experiencing an epiphany, “and all things will be known to us. We are superbeings and not mere mortals. We are like Zeus and Hera and all the gods of Olympus.”
“Look around you,” Natalie said shaking her head sadly. “This is not Olympus.”
“It is if you believe it is. We have tremendous power and responsibility. We must carry out our moral obligations every waking moment. Otherwise, all is lost.”
“You have called an escort service, and you speak of moral obligation?” Natalie looked incredulous.
”It was a mistake. And I apologize for dragging you into it. Take your money.” William slammed the money down on the table. “Take your money. And never do this again.”
Natalie looked reluctant. “I didn't earn it.”
“I don't want you to. I could have loved you under different circumstances, but this is a travesty of love. I want you to go.”
“What has this to do with love? This is a business transaction,” Natalie said wryly.
“Well,” William noted, “didn't Schopenhauer say every kind of love, no matter how ethereal, springs entirely from the instinct of sex?”
Natalie put the money in her purse wordlessly and headed for the door. “Natalie!” William called out.
She stopped and turned around. “What?”
“What is your other profession?” he asked.
Natalie paused as she was about to leave. “I have a Ph.D. in philosophy,” she replied. “And now I am in law school.”
And she left.
Clarise Samuels is a Montreal author who has published poetry, fiction, book reviews, and translations. Her first novel, Loving Brynhild, is a retelling of Norse mythology and is now in press with Heliand Publishing in Utah. Clarise has a Rutgers Ph.D. in German literature, and her scholarly tome on the Holocaust poet Paul Celan can be found in major university libraries. Visit her web site at renoir.stat.uqam.ca/clarise
