Strolling through the park on a bright summer’s afternoon.  “What a glorious day,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said lasciviously.

I looked at her eyes and followed her line of sight.  She was watching two sunbathers.

“Lo, what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing, Daddy, I just can’t wait to get home and bang you,” she said while biting her lower lip.

The female sunbather turned over, revealing that she was wearing merely a thong.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, accusatorily.

“Darling, the difference between you and I is that I am an aesthete.”

She rolled her eyes.  “This again?”

“And you are a hedonist.”

“Really?”

“Yes.  Quite so.”

“What makes me a hedonist for looking at the exact same thing you were looking at?”

“I was looking at the entire composition of the sun, the clouds, the green grass, the spatial relations of the various persons and trees upon the sward, the mathematical ratio of the low lying buildings to the rectangular outline of the park’s boundary.  I could go on.”

“I’m sure you could, you pompous ass-thete!”

“While you, my dear,” I continued, ignoring her invective interruption, “were simply thinking about the heat of the sun, the cool of the breeze, the tingling between your legs stimulated by the physical appearance of those two bodies over there, going home, fucking and eating.  That’s what makes you a hedonist and me an aesthete.”

“You are unbearable!”

“Why do you take such offense?”

“Because you’re basically saying that I’m a simpleton with animalistic cravings and you are a cerebral demigod!”

“Darling, but don’t you see – that’s why we’re are made for each other.  You admire that about me and I admire you for your primal desires.  You wish you could be more like me and I wish I could be more like you.  That is the law of attraction.”

“Primal desires?!”

“I don’t mean it in a value-laden sense.  It’s merely descriptive.  As the great philosophers of Utilitarianism – Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. . .”

“Oh boy, here we go!”

“As the originators of that philosophy of pleasure, Bentham, in contrast to Mill, put no greater weight on the enjoyment derived from eating bonbons than that derived from reading Balzac.”

“If you could shut up for ten minutes, I’d love to eat your sword and fondle your ball sack.”

“Darling, when I said ‘sward’ earlier, it was with an ‘A,’ meaning a green pasture.  And the Balzac to which I just now referred was to the French author Honoré de. . .”

“Please, please give it a rest!”

“All I’m saying is that the utils that you get from. . .”

“The what?”

“Utils.  The unit of measurement of pleasure in Utilitarianism.”

“Oh, back to that are we?”

“The utils that you get from seeing a curvaceous and scantily clad female are no better or worse than the utils I derive from viewing a Kandinsky painting.  I’m much more sympathetic to Bentham’s egalitarian theory than Mill’s hierarchy of pleasures.”

“Really?  You?  Mr. aristocrat himself?”

“If, by ‘aristocrat,’ you mean that I subscribe to a ranking of merit, then guilty as charged.  But one can excel in merit while still deriving pleasure from the simplest of things.”

“You are such an asshole!”

“But if pressed,” I said, again overlooking her impulsive outburst, “I would have to admit that I do not subscribe to Utilitarianism at all.”

“OK, I’ll bite.  What do you subscribe to?”

“I think Nietzsche understood that humans are not such simplistic beings as brute beasts, merely out to diminish pain and increase pleasure.  Observation of any great artist shows that the highest exemplars of the human race make great sacrifices and endure terrible suffering for the sake of art.”

“Oh, and what sacrifices and sufferings have you had to endure?”

“The subheading of our blog is ‘the trials and tribulations of dating a nymphomaniac.’”

“I am the source of your suffering?!”

“The source of my art, and thereby, the source of the suffering that I go through for it.”

“What suffering is that?  Having sex with a goddess multiple times a day?”

“No, no, no dear.  It’s the, the, um, creative process.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like this conversation, for instance.  It’s all just grist for the mill.”

“So, conversing with me is a source of suffering for you?”

“No, no.  You take my meaning all wrong.”

“I really don’t see another possible interpretation.”

At this point, we were at our front door.  Just as we arrived, a sun-shower began.

“What a weird season,” said Lo.  “It’s wet like spring, hot like summer, and beautiful like autumn.”

“You just described yourself: wet, hot, and beautiful.”

“What about smart?”

“Lo, you know how I admire your intelligence.”

“Do I?  You just performed an oral dissertation about how I am a hedonist given over to carnal desires.”

“There’s wisdom in that.”

“What does that mean?”

“You are wise beyond words.”

“I know what you’re saying.  You wish I’d shut up and you could simply enjoy my beauty without having to listen to me talk.  You think you’re so smart.”

“No.  I’m just wise beyond your years.”

“I don’t need your stamp of approval.  I know I’m smart,” she said with a grin indicating just how content she was with herself.

“Then why do you get so upset when I talk?”

“Because you say the dumbest things.”

I must have looked mortally wounded by her words because she followed that up with, “I mean that with love.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“The dumbest things for someone so intelligent.  That’s what I meant.”

Once we were inside, I sat down at my computer to transcribe this little conversation of ours.  She was in the bedroom, naked no doubt.  She hollered down the hall for me to join her.

“Can’t you see I’m writing?  Why do you keep distracting me?” I called back.

“You think that life is just writing and that everything else is a distraction.”

I heard the quiet purr of her Hitachi start up, followed by her moans of pleasure.

When I had completed the reporting of our peripatetic discourse, I sauntered down the hall to check on her, following the sounds of her self-copulatory female vocalizations.

Her right hand held the mechanism between her legs as her left held her phone and scrolled through various images.

I turned to leave.

“Hey,” she called to me, “where are you going?”

“It seems that you have matters well in hand,” I said.  “You give no indication of needing assistance.”

“For many species, masturbation is the mating call,” she responded.

“Oh, so you want me?”

“If your superior intellect can deign to do me – a mere mortal full of base desires.”

“Like the immaterial Nous infusing the nether pleroma with its animating spirit.”

I had penetrated her as I spoke those words.

“You’re lucky I’m such a sapiosexual, or else I’d take offense at that,” she said, looking up at me.  “But the mere fact that you not only know what those terms mean, but can use them when fucking turns me on.  And, I might add, your emanation is hardly immaterial.”

Within moments she had reached the apogee of her venereal excitement.

I slowly removed my sword from her scabbard and stood over her recovering body.

“What?” she asked.  “You’re not going to cum?”

“That was strictly for your pleasure, my dear,” I said.

“You got nothing from it?” she asked, insulted.

“Your enjoyment gives me satisfaction.  Now, back to my writing.”

“Good grief!  You’re lucky you have me or you’d have nothing to write about except ideas!”

Later that day, a friend sent an email asking, “How are you two?”

Lo responded, “We’re doing fine.  HH is writing.  I’m masturbating.  Once in a while he puts down his pen and picks up his penis and gives it to me.  But mostly he gives me his stories to edit.”

I turned to her and said, “You know, my writing makes you immortal.”

“And my body makes you mortal.”

“Are you saying that without your body I’d live forever?”

“No, I’m saying that without my body, you wouldn’t even live once.”