Floating Aromas

In a closed system, entropy never decreases. This sentence from thermodynamics can be applied to communicative systems in which desire, power, and language circulate. What begins as playful exchange necessarily intensifies, condenses, demands ever-new stimuli, until the system reaches its limits.

Nana moves confidently within such systems. She uses hints, side remarks, and overlapping layers of language to bind attention without committing herself. At times, the act itself interests her less than the staging that precedes it. She prefers refined constellations.

Language is Nana’s preferred medium. Language creates spaces of resonance in which others find themselves, lose themselves, and overestimate themselves. Nana knows how to allow projections without surrendering to them. Attention becomes a resource; distance becomes power. What others interpret as intimacy is, for her, a form of controlled openness. She knows that transgression is a cognitive matter.

Merlin, too, moves with some skill within this field of tension. Between him and Nana arise condensations of allusions, quotations, theoretical references. They exist in a self-exhausting intensity, fed primarily by language, glances, gestures. Everything else remains excluded. Precisely this exclusion generates escalation. What matters is the conversation. Words replace actions.

Nana realizes that Merlin needs security. He is a weak seducer. She sees through the game and allows it without losing herself in it. Both test boundaries, but on different levels. Nana sustains delay; Merlin seeks the moment of decision. This asymmetry generates tension.

In parallel, other actors appear—projection surfaces for power, recognition, and social order. Men with status, money, or institutional positions make their offers. Nana recognizes them as soft targets. She observes how men conceal their vulnerabilities, how they perfect arrangements to compensate for inner emptiness. Academic refuges, economic power, cruel politeness—all forms of self-regulation.

We change perspective. From now on, Nana speaks in the first person:

Like everything in this place, the landscape flattered the eye. Nothing appeared accidental; every element seemed choreographed. Palm fronds bowed with a dignity that resisted metaphor. The jungle did not retreat—it yielded—and allowed the ocean to take precedence. Green and blue negotiated their boundaries without conflict; their boundless truce resembled a dual sovereignty.

I had slept on mattresses that smelled of mosquito repellent and damp plaster. I had showered in coin-operated stalls that ran dry mid-lather. But now—here, on this comfortable rocky outcrop beneath the Caribbean sky—I did not feel like someone passing through. I felt chosen. Deep inside me, an anchor dropped soundlessly. It simply sank. And held.

My dress caught the wind. I wished for your hand. I wanted it on my thighs. You were to place it just above my knees at first, then let it travel higher. We were completely undisturbed in our corner. Then I felt your hand—positioned exactly right for a beginning.

*

A hovering terrace, seamless glass, lava stone polished to obsidian, water features—the Caribbean Cliff Lodge rose above the edge of a cliff. The view fulfilled every sundowner cliché. The sun sank ostentatiously into the coral sea. The sky glowed in shades of liquid gold and washed rose with a touch of indigo. Aromas of salt and hibiscus floated in the air. The surf was a symphony. The audience chatted on a rustic, log-cabin-style deck suspended above an abyss. The lounge chairs smelled of leather polish and cedarwood.

You brought me something suitable—this, too, was part of you. You had a feel for it. The right shirt, the apt word, my peaks mattered to you. You were discreet and, in every respect, attentive to form. Nothing slipped from your grasp. You never struck a wrong key. I sometimes felt clumsy beside you, but I knew how much you liked me. With you, I pulled out all the stops.

We drank something with passion fruit and gin. Our shoulders touched. You looked at me as if I were the sun itself, and I could hardly breathe, so stirred was I by your tender desire. I felt your breath at my neck. There was no place in the world I would rather have been in that moment.

You said:

“When you’re here, you almost forget that the world keeps turning.”

On Another Day

The sea was smooth that late afternoon, a silvery veil spread across its surface. At the horizon, the exhausted blue of the sky met the sovereign blue of the ocean.

The beach was almost deserted. On the dilapidated terrace of the “Salt Shed,” we shared a plate of grilled fish and surprisingly crisp fries. We drank cold water with mint. It tasted like things you cannot buy.

You and I embodied the high-end version of a transcontinental nomad couple—digital nomads in globalized home-office mode. We logged into Zoom calls from lodges, Airbnbs, and cafés, pitched projects, optimized workflows, always at the discursive peak. On ranger tours, I impressed with precise knowledge of land rights, glacial erosion, colonial cartography, and Indigenous topography. You were charming, witty, considerate. Every national park ranger fell in love with you and let you go with mild regret.

What our audience saw was a couple on its ideal line—a performative synthesis of education, freedom, and style. Our outer world was democratic, reflective, negotiable. Our inner world was structured. That was my decision. You were my counter-design to the world’s ambiguity. You were my measure. My corrective. My focus. I liked to imagine what would happen if someone did see it. That thought excited me.

But no one saw it.