A Quirky, Objectophilia Love Story
"Helena," by Peter Baltensperger
It was when they started to build a new apartment building right next to hers that Helena fell in love with her first crane. She lived on the eighth floor of her building and had an excellent overview of the construction site from her balcony. It was a beautiful and warm spring, and she spent many hours sitting on her balcony and watching all the work going on below. She had never seen a building being erected before and found it fascinating to follow the whole process right from her own apartment.
When the crane arrived and the workmen put it all together, she felt an immediate attraction to the massive machine. There was something very powerful, very masculine, very intriguing about it that drew her towards it and sent shivers of excitement through her whole body. She couldn’t take her eyes off the crane that whole first day, taking in all the details of its structure and its mechanisms, reveling in its massive strength, its powerful presence in her life. She knew right away that this was her new love.
When the day came to an end and the workers secured the construction site and left, she went downstairs and found a place by the fence where she could be as close to the crane as the enclosure allowed. She put her hands on the fence, pretending she was able to touch the crane and caress him through the short distance that separated her from him. She craned her neck to see the top of her tall lover silhouetted against the evening sky and couldn’t believe how lucky she was that such a beautiful thing had so suddenly and unexpectedly appeared in her life.
Tears were streaming down her face, the sight of her lover rising up before her and reaching up into the sky was so emotional, so deeply arousing, so charged with feelings she couldn’t help herself. As she was standing there by the fence admiring her new love, she could feel his warmth reaching out to her, enveloping her, his soul touching hers, his silent presence radiating his own love for her.
She had lovers and love affairs before, but never anything this massive, this public, this out in the open. She knew she would never be able to be beside him or touch him, knew that he would eventually leave again, but for now she was more than happy to just be in his proximity and love him and be loved from a distance. This was the first time she had ever fallen in love with an outside object, and with such a huge one at that. She shuddered deliciously at the thought that she was having an affair with something this beautiful and attractive and so imposing she was dwarfed by his magnificent size.
Her first love was a guitar she spotted in a store window on one of her walks through downtown. She was just walking along on the sidewalk, not looking for anything in particular, when she caught sight of the guitar out of the corner of her eyes. It was leaning against the far wall of a large display window containing all kinds of other musical instruments, looking, at first sight, quite ordinary and unassuming. Yet when she stepped up to the window, she felt a rush of excitement and exhilaration, an immediate, irresistible connection between her and the instrument, that told her right away she had to have the guitar for herself.
She stood by the window for the longest time, oblivious to the people hurrying past her on the sidewalk, unaware of the traffic noises behind her, totally absorbed in the admiration of her first love. She finally tore herself away from the window, went into the store to buy the guitar, and carried him home in his brand new carrying case. Back in her apartment, she put the case on the floor and opened it to look at her lover again, this time from close up and in her own abode.
Her lover was beautiful. She admired the smooth curves, the patterns on his wooden skin, the artistry of the long neck, the metallic sheen of the strings. Then she reached into the case and slowly, carefully lifted him out of his confines. She put her arms around him and pressed him against her, feeling his warmth, his love, his soul. She was a firm believer in the existence of souls in everything on Earth, be it alive or inanimate, natural or man-made, and her guitar was singing to her in her arms, returning her love.
Making the Band: Guitar by Stephen Perry
She kept her lover near her whenever she could, beside her on the couch when she was watching TV, on a chair in the kitchen when she was cooking and then at the table when she was eating her meals. At bedtime, she pulled back the covers, placed the guitar on the bed with his neck resting on the pillow next to hers, climbed into bed beside him, and pulled the covers up over them. Then she put her arm around him, kissed him goodnight, and went to sleep.
After a few days, she performed a beautiful private ceremony with candles all around them and a silk scarf draped over her arm and around his neck. She had never felt this close to anything before. The next day, she went downtown and officially changed her name to Helena Guitar to cement their relationship. It was the most enjoyable and significant day in her life. She celebrated by bringing herself to two shuddering, deeply satisfying orgasms, holding on to her lover the whole time.
When they had spent some time getting used to each other, she arranged to have guitar lessons and learned to play her lover. The sounds she was able to elicit from him, the resonance of the exotic wood, the vibrations of the strings were the most beautiful things she had ever experienced. The guitar resonated through her whole body when she sat on a chair and stroked his strings, producing wonderful notes and melodies. She was touched to the core of her being, their mutual love flowing back and forth between them, stimulating her, arousing her, titillating her body, her mind, her soul.
Yet after a while, she tired of her guitar and her playing. He was still her first love and she kept taking him to bed with her every night, but she wasn’t nearly as infatuated anymore as she had been. Then one day she was walking past a small art gallery and saw a beautiful abstract wooden sculpture in the window. It beckoned to her with its smooth contours and strikingly intricate patterns and she couldn’t resist going into the shop and making him her own.
She still loved her guitar very much and revered him as her first love, but it was the sculpture that she kept around and took to bed with her now and held in her arms. She kept the guitar in a special place close to her bed where she could look at him and feel him from afar, even though the sculpture had replaced him as her main lover. She didn’t have any scruples about making the change. She felt quite comfortable with the concept of polyamory and didn’t see anything wrong with it, especially considering that she was still very attached to her guitar as well.
She had several other lovers over the years, some of them smaller objects like a shiny laptop for a while and a sleek vase she found in a flower shop on one of her outings, some of them a bit larger like a glistening saxophone she fell in love with and always meant to learn how to play but never did.
And now she was in love with her first very large outdoor object. It was a special thrill to her, to think of herself as the lover of such an incredible structure and to feel his love reaching across to her when she sat on the balcony, and into her apartment when she was sitting on her couch or lying in bed. The wooden sculpture became a new ex-lover beside her guitar and she looked at both every night when she went to bed.
She spent many hours watching her handsome lover perform his duties on the construction site, admiring the strength with which he lifted buckets of cement and bundles of construction material a dozen strong men wouldn’t have been able to lift. She adored the ease with which he manipulated his boom with the massive counterweight and floated through the air with his cargo. She enjoyed the dedication of his tireless and unfailing performance as the workers put him through his paces and he smiled at her from afar, acknowledging her admiration.
She still went downstairs every evening and stood by the fence to be closer to her by then silent and motionless lover and simply feel their love vibrating between them, feel her body respond with shivers of delight. When it was time for her to go back upstairs again, she always blew him a kiss and he kissed her back in his own special way. Then she looked at him for a while from her bedroom window, climbed into bed with the knowledge that was right there with her, and went to sleep.
The only thing she really missed was that she couldn’t take even the smallest part of him to bed with her. She considered taking a photograph of him, but it seemed to be a rather unsatisfactory substitute. Nor did she want to go back to her guitar or her sculpture or any of her other lovers. She finally went on the Internet to see if she could find out anything about cranes and before long came across the website of an on-line store that actually sold model cranes. She rejoiced. One of the cranes on the website was a die-cast scale model that looked very much like her own crane outside and she ordered it immediately.
It only took a week for the model to arrive at her door. She lugged the box inside and immediately sliced it open with a knife, removed the packaging, and took her first look at her substitute. He was truly beautiful as well, bright yellow with a solid base, fully operational pulleys, and a hook for attaching loads. She couldn’t believe her luck. She was falling in love all over again.
Slowly and carefully, she lifted the model crane out of the box, attached the base, and stood him on the floor beside her. He was just the right height when she was sitting on the floor. She put her arms around him, pressed her body against him, and kissed him for the very first time. She felt his warmth and his love immediately, and she knew she had made the right choice. Just to make sure, she turned around and looked outside through the balcony door. Her outside lover smiled with approval.
She didn‘t waste any time getting used to her new love since she was already so close to the original outside. She placed all her candles around the living room and lit them, then stood her lover on the coffee table and knelt down in front of him, in full view of her lover outside. She performed an emotional ceremony with her new love, tied a scarf around him and around her wrist, then put her arms around him and kissed him ardently to seal their relationship and begin their life together.
She hyphenated his name to hers, although she didn’t want to make another official name change, and called herself Helena Guitar – Crane from then on. Her love to her crane had, as far as she was concerned, become official, and she would always be his lover even after they would remove him from the construction site again. To complete the ceremony, she carried her model crane into her bedroom and put him on her bed. Then she climbed into bed with him, out her arm around him, focused her eyes on him, and rubbed herself not just to one but to several gloriously shuddering and all-encompassing orgasms, his image reaching deep down into her soul.
She still spent considerable time out on the balcony watching her giant perform, but she always had her model with her and kept him with her when she did her other daily routine kinds of things. She never missed going downstairs in the evening and leaning against the fence to be near her big crane, but when she came back up to her apartment and readied herself for bed, she invariably picked up her model crane and put him in bed beside her.
Thoroughly pleased with herself and exceedingly happy with what she had achieved, she put her arm around the crane, kissed him goodnight, and went to sleep, sometimes with bringing herself to orgasms, sometimes not. She was secure in the knowledge that she would always have him with her even when her outside lover would no longer be there. Maybe she would see him again on some other construction sight, but it didn’t really matter all that much anymore. She had her own model crane now with whom she was able to play and pretend he was lifting and transporting heavy loads around her living room.
Her model crane was fully functional and battery operated so that she could attach a bucket or a small load to his hook, hoist it up into the air, swing it over to another place on her living room floor, and lower it back down. Sometimes she watched her outdoor crane so she could mimic his performance with his mirror image in her living room and have the two of them work together, sometimes moving in perfect unison when she was lucky enough to achieve that effect.
Sometimes for a special treat, she took all her clothes off in the living room and wrapped her arm around her model crane where her outside crane could clearly see them both. Then she rubbed and stroked herself very slowly and deliberately until she screamed out to both of them in the delirious upheaval of her multiple orgasms. She usually kept going until she was simply too tired to make herself come again and often fell asleep on the living room floor, her arms around her model and in full view of her lover outside.
She had never been happier in her entire life.
Originally published October 2009