Bodies and Souls

by John Rechy

  Now in bed she stretched her body, displaying its radiant sexuality. Light wisps—silky breaths—of hair curled between her legs and glistened with sequined moisture in the reflected light of the hot moon flooding in through an invisible wall of glass.

  Tom Bassach, too, stretched his body, emphasizing his greater length. He was twenty-seven years old and on the thin, wiry side—a lanky, long, hairy body; strong slender limbs and impressively ridged abdominals; a basketball player type. He had a thick, dark, aggressively prominent moustache. It was like a patch of his pubic hair!—that's what Mandy thought when she saw him naked and touching it and his groin at the same time.

  She reached over his chest and retrieved two cigarettes from a package on a table on his side. She inserted one in his mouth, held the other in abeyance for herself, and proceeded to light his. “I don't smoke,” he told her. He took out the cigarette and inserted it between her lips. His fingers patted the possibily ruffled moustache. She smiled, an ambiguous smile. She lit the cigarette he had handed back to her.

  “I smoke only between orgasms,” she said.

  For about two weeks, she had seen Tom Bassach at the television station or on location, always coiled in electrical wires or pushing equipment; he was a cameraman's assistant, a grip, something like that. His shirt was always open at least three buttons, showing off puffy dark chest hair. He flirted constantly with the giddiest girls—secretaries, assistants; they obviously welcomed his attentions. “A skinny John Wayne,” Mandy had heard one of them describe him. Mandy fixed her with a petrifying look. Soon, Tom Bassach started coming up to her and asking seriously whether he could be of any “help”—never defining the area of aid. Obviously he wanted to approach her more directly, and personally. He was not shy—that was clear from the way he acted with the other females. So, Mandy assumed, he was reticent with her because, after all, she was a star—a demistar, for now; not the star Eleanor Cavendish, the regular coanchorwoman, was, but getting there, getting there, and soon! He had been holding a coiled orange electrical wire when he asked her, again, whether he could “help.” “How about coffee after the show?” she suggested. Her directness caused him to tangle on the long wire. “Better still,” she said, “if you can get out of that coil, why don't you come over to my house for a drink after dinner? Tonight.” She gave him one of her private cards.

  Here he was!

  On Mandy's queen-size bed.

  “You've got a great body,” he said to her. He felt his cock preparing for a new incursion; it gave a shivering flutter. He began to play with the hairs between her legs.

  “You're not half bad yourself,” she said. She was proud of being able to “relate” to all types of men—poetic types, intellectual types, jocks—once she'd made it with a Mr. Universal—who actually flexed his biceps when he came. A bad fuck. “You cooled off now?” she asked Tom.

  Okay—so she was enjoying it so much she wanted to extend it. Nothing wrong with that. And she'd already come—he'd already made her come, Tom revised.

  Now Tom was a popular man with women. He had one main girlfriend of several off-and-on years' duration, Liz, who called him “my cat's meow.” But for all his sexual experience, he'd known this encounter with Mandy Lang-Jones would be “different” the moment he walked in earlier and she asked him what he wanted to drink—“Wine?” “Bourbon?” “Beer?”—and added: “before we fuck.” That aroused the hell out of him. Yes, he was impressed that she was a star—well, almost, actually very close—but he would soon start the necessary leveling process. He was younger, but with a woman like Mandy that could turn into a plus or a minus. Maybe—this had been at the back of his mind, perhaps midway there and now it moved forward—there might be more in this for him than just a good lay.

  Mandy Lang-Jones lived in an attractive rented house in a cul-de-sac off Sunset Boulevard. One of two bedrooms, the room they were in opened invisibly through sliding glass doors into a very green garden. No flowers. A long swimming pool shimmered under the sweaty moon and, when the wind floated over the water, it crinkled like tinfoil in the silver light. Large, comfortable, the house did not bear a trace of Mandy on it—except by the very fact that it did not. The owner had had it decorated, and she had moved in and left it exactly as it was, with one exception: she had hired a gardener—a horticulturist, he called himself—to remove puddles of cute flowers about the pool and in pretty bunches about the lawn; they had reminded her of the beribboned tufts on quivery little poodles. Mandy didn't like to be “owned by things,” especially anything living, like flowers. Grass was different—it was mowed down regularly.

  “Tommy,” she said intensely, “do you— …?”

  “Tom,” he interrupted her. The moment he corrected her, he realized he hadn't really minded the endearing diminutive—hardly anyone ever called him that, not since he was a kid.

  She didn't revise her designation. “You know what Tantra Yoga is?” she asked him.

  “Yoga? Sure,” he said proudly. “I was into it for a while. I still practice it, but only to do vacuums for my stomach. Keeps it flat,” he pointed out the obvious. “Like this.”

  He stood up, on the floor, at the edge of the bed.

  Mandy leaned on one elbow.

  “You exhale, every bit of air.” He blew out in profound puffs. Then he placed his hands on his upper thighs—and exhaling audibly once more, drew in his stomach, so that it almost touched the wall of his spine. He worked the isolated abdominal muscles like moving knots. He inhaled a great gush of air. “Like that,” he said. He pushed his hair—but not too seriously—from his face and did another vacuum.

  “You're a vain little thing, aren't you?”

  He puffed the air out. There it was again—the enigmatic smile of hers. “I've never been called little before,” he said.

  “What I mean is sex yoga.” Mandy Lang-Jones patted the pillow next to her, so he would join her back in bed. He did. “Orgasms,” she clarified.

  “Oh, I—uh—have to admit that—well, I don't— …” He hated to admit he didn't know what she was talking about—because he was a sophisticated man, knew how to relate to women, especially “the new woman.” With Liz he had gone to a women's meeting once—he was by far the sexiest man there, most of the others were kind of small and squishy—and he got hearty applause when he agreed that, hey, men had given women a “bum deal” for too long. Liz was very proud of him; but that was the same night that he tried to— … “I know about the vaginal and clitoral orgasms,” he offered in substitution.

  Dumb grip. “In Tantra Yoga, there's the valley orgasm as opposed to peak orgasm,” she said. “When you have a ‘valley’ orgasm, you go slow and easy, you relax, stretch it all out, flowing into orgasm, nothing urgent about it, just flows— …”

  Was she making a judgment on his style? He listened attentively; it was important to let women know that a man listened.

  “A peak orgasm—that's what accounts for premature ejaculation.”

  He winced. “I didn't ejaculate pre— …”

  “You didn't ejaculate at all,” she said. “But I don't mean you. I mean, men in general; it's especially important for men to learn to relax, otherwise it's all over—wham!”

  Hell, he could come three times in a short period. That certainly impressed Liz, especially since she never came—though they definitely had a good—a very good—sex life; she said it wasn't important, her coming. He was about to tell Mandy about his orgasmic ability. Instead, he said—starting the leveling, “I don't think I'd like meditating while my cock's in— …”

  “Tantra Yoga makes you learn how to really enjoy sex.” Mandy disregarded his remark. “Great for men because a woman can have multiple orgasms, a man can't.”

  His cock lay limply in its dark nest.

  “Actually,” she said, “there's no such thing as a vaginal orgasm and a clitoral orgasm—just good and bad ones; it all depends on the fuck.”

  “I think for too long men have told women what wo
men feel,” he said in a deep, serious voice. That's what he'd said at the meeting with Liz, when he got another round of applause. He was proud of his liberated observations. His hand between her legs, he touched his moustache—which was much thicker than the hair on her crotch.

  She stroked his cock. Turning sideways, he curled one long leg over her thigh. She thrust her lips against his and pushed her tongue in. He shoved it back and pushed his into her mouth. She thrust it back and continued her incursion into his.

  Mandy Lang-Jones is just getting ready to ball Hotstuffso the giddy secretaries won't even recognize him! Forming her thoughts into precise words excited Mandy when she was having sex. It was like in a documentary, where the voice-over enhances the action—her own inner voice commenting, complimenting, goading.

  Tom Bassach made a surprise attack—one rough stab of his hips. But Mandy intercepted it. She reached under and guided his cock so that it slid from her crotch and up on her stomach.

  “Slo——ow,” she reminded him. “Tan-tra Yo-guh!” she said as if pronouncing a mantra.

  Okay. Slow. He moistened his fingers and drew narrowing circles on her breasts, until they enclosed the nipples.

  “They're dry now,” she said.

  “What!”

  “Your fingers—they're dry now, and it felt real good when they were moist.”

  He moistened them again. This time he concentrated on the nipples. With one hand, he grasped her left buttock—so firm! —and located the bud of her ass—so sensual! Pulling her lips away from his, she aimed the enigmatic smile at him. She retreated just enough so that his cock poked at her belly, the moving causing his hand to slide off the opening at her ass. She clasped his cock between her legs, letting him pump that way. Then she released it, and it slid on her silky flesh, up, down, up, down, moving from between her legs toward her navel. “Floooow— …” she said. His sliding movement increased.

  He could come like this, and— …!

  “That would be a waste.” Her hands, clamped over his back, stopped his motions.

  “Sure would,” he said. He rolled over, facing up. Another drop of moisture had gathered on the head of his cock. She glued it to the tip of one finger, and tasted it. He thought he read her signals—and he reached for her neck, rubbing it, encouraging it downward, his fingers gliding over her fleecy crotch, inching lower, toward her buttocks.

  “I'm really hot,” he said. “Could keep going.” He was about to tell her he could come three times, easy.

  “I've had up to fifteen orgasms in one night, and I could have gone for more, but the man I was with— …” She made a face, reached again over him for another cigarette, the first had mummified in the ashtray, puffed on only once.

  He was glad he hadn't told her he could come three times.

  “Encounter groups, est, primal, Rolfing, going sane, psychoanalysis—I've been through all of them,” she said. “You?”

  “Never felt I needed any of that,” he parried. Yes! Oh, that tone sure changed the smile on her face.

  “You know what they're all about?” she asked.

  “Getting to know yourself,” he recited. “Hey, that's what it's all about, sure.”

  “No—it's all about good orgasms or bad orgasms.”

  He pondered that. Nodded. He started, “Hey— …” and didn't know what to add.

  “It makes you creative—and it sharpens your humanity.”

  “Huh?” He wished he had uttered something other than that sound—which annoyed him when Liz made it.

  “Did you see my series, ‘The Lower Depths’?”

  “I worked on most of it with you, remember?” He felt chagrined; was she pretending? It was true that when she worked, she worked!

  “You think I could have so much empathy for the people I interview on my specials—really get to know what they're all about—if I was worrying all the time about sexual fulfillment? Did you see the segment on those street kids—the malehustlers on Santa Monica Boulevard?”

  Tom remembered that vividly—and the interview with an incredibly beautiful blond youngman in cutoffs.

  “You know what made that a great show?”

  “A good orgasm,” Tom tossed at her. Oh, he was moving on, moving on! He'd allowed her too many. He had to catch up—getting closer to that needed balance, then a slight tilt in his direction, and then! His cock began to stretch.

  Mandy leaned confidentially on her elbow. “When I kept asking that kid how much he made hustling the streets and he wouldn't tell me, I knew why right away—because he'd go for whatever he could make.” Her breasts didn't even tilt, not even slightly. They were so close to Tom's mouth he reached out and dabbed at each of them with his tongue.

  “Ooooo,” she said. And went on: “I got him to say he made a thousand a week; remember when he said that?”

  “Sure—and that's a lot of money for a kid.”

  “I knew it wasn't true,” she said. “So did the cop who talked about those kids afterwards on the show, he told me; sometimes they don't even have a dime to call anyone when they're busted. But I understood that kid. All his friends were standing there. He wants to be a big star; this is his one big chance to be noticed—maybe by someone big. I'd driven up that street; I saw some of them—real cute, too—waiting for hours. I knew how little they'd go for. If that kid had told the truth, he would've been just a little chippy. I gave him an opportunity to triumph!”

  For a full week radio and television spots had shouted, “Young boys earning one thousand dollars a week selling their bodies to older men; watch it all on the news with Mandy Lang-Jones.”

  “You knew it wasn't true, and yet you used it?” Tom was surprised by his uncool eruption.

  “What is truth?” Mandy repeated the famous viceroy's question. “You know what truth is? Truth is what we put right there.” She pointed to the large, blank television screen a few feet away. “That's what makes reality. You think anyone would care about a kid making five bucks a night selling his body? Cheap stuff. Figures! Lots of kids, lots of customers, lots of perversion, lots of corruption, lots of bucks—and lots of viewers!” Again she pointed to the dormant television. “Truth is in there, the moment I turn that set on, it pours out truth, it makes truth; and if no one sees it, it's not there. Like the tree falling in the forest; nobody hears it, there's no sound.” The passionate asseveration cooled. “Besides, it was a public service; it brought lots of attention to those poor street kids—how else would they get that kind of attention?”

  He wasn't sure what he felt. She had coaxed that kid to lie.

  “Now you take child laborers in the fields—right here in the groves of California. Good story, right? Lots of pathos, lots of human interest, pictures that would break your heart. Great story!”

  “Right!” he said enthusiastically. He'd work on it with her. Associate producer— … And on location he'd give her all the good orgasms she needed for empathy. “Great story,” he underscored. “You could even start with— …” he started to contribute.

  “No story at all,” she said. “Sure it tears you apart, right? —kids doing stoop labor in the fields—and illegally—but that doesn't make a story there.” She addressed the television. “People who watch TV, really watch—the ones who give us our ratings or turn us off—their kids could run away, end up on the streets peddling their asses, and if it's for a lot of money, there's got to be a lot of threat. Great story. Now those same people's kids—they're not going to end up in the fields doing stoop labor—so, no story!” She mused, “I learned that right away when I did my first special—on the Mexican women, mostly illegals, who work in the garment district sweatshops, sewing. Exploited? Damn right! By the employers and the Immigration. And I had no ratings at all. Nothing for the TV viewer to relate to. You know the ratings we got on ‘The Lower Depths’? Wiped all the others out. And we accomplished good” she insisted. “Some people really cared about those kids on the street. Who knows?—that one kid might even be able to charg
e one hundred dollars a trick now.” She paused intently. “I might win a prize for that series. … Ready?” She faced him sexily and cuddled his cock.

  “Always.” He crooked his smile. A hairy leg hugged her.

  “Lean back,” she told him.

  He did.

  Her tongue drew a T on his chest, extended the lower part downward, curved the line into a circle enclosing his cock and balls. Then she sucked his cock into her mouth.

  When a woman went down on Tom, he liked to push her head down, rumple her hair, pretending force. Liz hadn't wanted to go down at first, but he'd persuaded her and that excited him; now she did it routinely when they first started having sex. Not that he'd tried, but she'd told him she didn't want him to go down on her—she knew it would “tickle uncomfortably.” That was all right with him, because he wasn't really into that.

  Depending on whom he was with, Tom liked to think or even say words like “cunt,” “pussy”—he'd stopped saying “bitch” that was risky. With Mandy now, his usual routine floundered. Only tentatively, he put his hand on her head—not pushing, not rumpling. She raised her hand, removed his from her head, and held it pinioned at his side.

  The smile again. “Relax, Tommy, I'm doing it.” She looked up at him. Mandy Lang-Jones has your cock in her mouth—but she's in total control!

  He felt the cum gathering. His breathing began to knot. He'd prefer to come in her cunt. Shoot my fucking wad in Mandy Lang-Jones's fucking cunt-pussy! But if he broke the connection, she'd withdraw again, and so he would ride— …