The Siren's Tale Read Online Free Page B

when it comes to sexual politics.
    I s there any other kind?
    As Elizabeth the First (a great siren) demonstrated, women must lead rather than follow. Human men, like roosters in the hen house, make the loudest noise, but they show more strut than productivity. It is a siren's job to move human society toward a more advanced form of civilization, one based on making love, not war.
    Unfortunately, Marlena, who is blessed with exceptional intellect and sex drive, has allowed herself to become besotted by a prize philandering cad, the brutally insensitive Harry Drake. Harry owns most of the choice development properties in Wyoming, but Marlena is the brains behind his greatest success, the Alta Hotel. Yet she constantly defers to him. Her siren nature is partly to blame.
    She was mesmerized by her first orgasm into falling obsessively in love. Obsessive love is the only human emotion that can entrap a siren, making her a bigger fool than any ordinary female would be. Her upward course delayed, Marlena has voluntarily become Harry's sex slave. And where has the personal relationship gotten her? For years on end, precisely nowhere. Even Chloe, who dotes on Marlena, is annoyed by our cousin's weakness, allowing matters to drift along and vainly waiting on an unlikely HEA with her arrogant, domineering lover.
    Speaking of HEAs, I predict the young woman I spoke of earlier will be inspired to record our entire story for posterity on her magical tablet. Now, won't that be a feather in our fedoras? In my dream, she winks at me and then writes:
    “ The twenty-first century is perfect for sirens. Vampires are so over. Why should they get all the fan mail? LOL.”
    As for Harry, of course he is no vampire, but the man has a cardboard soul. Why else would his wife Lila, a siren who knows a good man when she sees one, spend so much time away from her rich and powerful husband?
    I f I were inclined to take on a new human form, I would choose Lila's. Lila Coffin Drake is a siren of the black-haired, sea-going lineage, and ooh la la!—a hotter, shrewder, wittier siren never graced Goddess Earth. Lila snared Harry Drake only to get her blue-blooded family off her back. Unlike Marlena, Lila does not love Harry. Indeed I believe she quite hates him.
    If I were still among the living, I might get it on with Lila. In the olden days, sirens made love to each other routinely, as part of their sexual education, while preening on the rocks. Then the Victorian Age came along, and all sex, particularly sex between homogeneous creatures, became suspect. What nonsensical prudery!
    There is no telling what Lila might be up to next if she divorces Harry, but I will bet ten to one that Marlena's face is in Lila's crystal ball. I would not put it past the two of them to hook up—whether professionally or sexually is an open question. Or, Lila might snare Bryce Scattergood, that historic preservationist fellow who is sniffing around Marlena. Now there is a hunk. Wake up and smell the testosterone, sirens!
    P erhaps Lila is the one who should have my zither. Chloe told me all about Drake's Roost, the Gothic monstrosity Harry Drake built on Alta Mountain in the ‘60s to compete with the Biltmore family and which now houses his glamorous wife. Not that Lila stays at Drake's Roost for more than a month at a time. She calls Drake's mansion, the darling of Town & Country, a “mausoleum.” Perfect acoustics for a zither, though, and Lila plays her white Steinway beautifully, almost as well as she plays her sexual organs.
    Men have it right. Sexual passion is the single best thing about human life, way beyond spiritual ecstasy, which is pathetic and symptomatic of serious mental illness. Certainly a voracious sex drive has shaped the destiny of our red-haired hope for the future. But given Marlena's rare intellect, one would think she would have figured out by now that her persistent obsession with Harry Drake—the chink in her armor—was triggered by forces