"Stop that," he said but the recalcitrant monster continued to eat regardless of his wishes.
- I am not Panyaporn any longer, said one of his favorite models one day in his studio.
- Is that so? He smiled.
- You are not drawing the woman you think you are but a stranger of another name, she said.
- I don't mind strangers, he said. As they are strange they are full of unknown possibilities.
Besides, imagining someone as other than pathetically human is terribly erotic. Don't you think so?
- Why are strangers more erotic models, Nawin?
- You mean why are strangers more erotic creatures in general. I don't know, he said playfully. Human beings are quite lovable, you know, their painful journeys, their tragedies. At least I think so. But the first brush stroke or caress of a stranger is not love. It is different. It is uncomplicated, buoyant, and mysterious like melting into the flames of a goddess."
- Nawin, I think that you hide behind your canvas. I think that you are a pervert hiding deep in your paint so that women won't see you for what you are. They believe that you are different. They think that you aren't using them but admiring their beauty when really you are no better than any man who abandons his wife to come to women like me.
- Of course not. No different at all. All men feel the same in being with others. There is no love in it, no empathy, it is simply melting in a flame. Melting… and it is a melting substance that releases its enzymes and eats the source of the flame. Hold still while I draw your chin! That's right! Drawing prostitutes, fucking them, it is all in consuming and being consumed by beautiful flesh…flaming angels if you will. It lacks love because love is baneful to lust and making love… an obstacle to reproduction, you know. Illusions and delusions— life is dependent on them. So you are not Panyaporn. No, I didn't know this but then how would I unless you told me. I wonder why the face and voice are the same, the body, the long hair falling onto the breasts and burying them, and the salient nipples peaking out of the burial demurely.