Reprimand from Valmont

After bombarding V with another email, I finally got a rise out of him. Well, a reprimand of sorts, actually. Ha ha.

He called me capricious. He said I was impatient. And he told me to stop kissing his ass. He said that there were rules of engagement and outlined them to me. In essence, he told me that I should do my time mopping up the floor before I earn my right to sit at the table. So now, I'm on probation. I've been instructed to keep still until such time that he decides to return my correspondence.

Hmmm. Such a demanding man. Makes me all the more curious though but my purposeful and deliberate whirling around him and his reaction to it enabled me to zone in on him more. My observations:

1. Initially, I offered a position of subservience to him (e.g. mentor-mentee, teacher-student) to give clarity and set the tone of the correspondence. He dispelled this notion and said that we would be equals, sharing in each other's knowledge. And yet, he reclaims power again by assuming the stance of a strict instructor towards that of his apprentice. Which is good. Very good. I like strict. That's the only way I can be reigned in. So in a very roundabout manner, he has acquiesced to the tone that I wanted this correspondence to take. Very good.

2. He has acknowledged my capriciousness and has been quite annoyed with it. That's good, too. When you start from a position somewhere near the lowest rung of the ladder, it will be hard to disappoint. Momentum will build up in the natural progression of things. Of course, there is always the risk that he will consider it a waste of his time (and talent) and just walk away but as far as diversions are concerned, I'm prepared for that.

3. He has disclosed that since I've bombarded him with three letters, he will have to respond to all of them now. He really doesn't have to respond to any of them but that he *feels* he has to says something about him. There is a writer's vanity about him that needs to be fed. That's why he was taking so long to respond. He was actually thinking it out and when you take that much time to mull things over, it's not just the answers you want to dish out but the way you want to dish out the answers so that the "target" (me in this case) will perceive the writer the way he wants me to. Well, it's good that he wants to make an impression.

4. He said that "Patience is the first thing to be learned in seduction; Timing, the next." and he said this in reference to my bombardment of letters. I could have very well reminded him that from the beginning, I told him that our correspondence would be outside the ambit of "seductions" (of course, that too was a ploy) and now that's how he wants this to go which is really where I want to go with him. Nice.

Throughout my correspondence, I have dropped hints at how I would like to be seduced and how it would take a seducer of great skill to accomplish that. I hope that I've appealed enough to his vanity for him to take the cudgels on this one. It certainly would make things a lot more interesting.

So like a good girl, I will sit still. The wait begins.