The Sensual Mirror

by Marco Vassi

  Finally, Julia calmed down and Gail’s embrace became looser, warmer. Soon, there was no need for Gail to be holding her at all, and yet neither woman made a move to pull back. Julia’s arms moved up slowly, tentatively, and made their way around Gail’s waist. When the contact was made, the moment and its implications accepted, they fell further into each other’s arms, holding on with all the ardor of lovers.

  As sensitive to each other as they were, each minute aspect of the embrace hummed its separate song. The most immediate, the most obvious, was the pressure of their breasts as they brought their chests together. Neither of them had ever hugged another woman before in quite that way, so intimately, so long. The brief embraces of social convenience with relatives and acquaintances never reached the point at which they could feel the details of the other’s body. Julia’s robe was open and her breasts bare. Gail wore only a thin blouse, two-thirds unbuttoned. The heat where valley met valley climbed to troubling temperatures.

  And yet, it was not quite erotic, for neither was prepared for such a reality. It seems like such a small step, to go from an embrace to a kiss, from a kiss to a caress, from a caress to a penetration. Yet there is a point at which quantitative change become qualitative, and then one is in another realm entirely. Such is the realm of eroticism. At a time when the casual fuck is the official insignia of the culture, when its only rival is the sanctified fuck of marriage, the notion of fucking as a branding of the soul, an alchemical transfusion from essence to essence, has fallen into disuse. Even the cross-cultural borrowing from tantric buddhism has not quite made the point, for those who study its methods and metaphysics tend to see merely technique or discipline or transcendence or union. And in relation to what fucking really is, these qualities are unspeakably petty, although from the point of view of the common person, they are held up as surpassing goals.

  We all know this instinctively, and yet we forget, we have it trained out of us, along with all the other wisdom which is our birthright as children. And we go through all the dreary stages along the path of erotic development so-called, from shy romance to hard-edged debauchery, until we are caught in some mechanical routine, which may be garlanded with flowers of the most subtle sensuality, but remains essentially lacking in meaning.

  Gail and Julia understood, inchoately, dumbly, that under no matter which rubric they might take their clothes off and plunge into the arms of Eros together, they would be transgressing the bounds of social safety, that they would become, on the spot, bound to one another. And even if they casually parted the following morning and treated the incident as a marijuana excess, the mark of erotic love would have been burned into their souls, and there would be no going back from that, for to be born again is as ineluctable in its implications as being born. For each time one is born again, one must die again.

  They disengaged and pulled back slowly. When they were no longer touching, they looked into each other’s eyes.

  “Gail,” Julia said. “I love you.”

  Gail’s eyes were moist. “All this time. Three years. We’ve been in love for so long and never known it.”

  “When we met, there was that sparkle, that joy, that sense of adventure. If you had been a man, I would have recognized it at once.”

  Gail nodded. “What was it? The sex? Is it that we were afraid of sex and so we couldn’t accept love?”

  “There’s no love without sex,” Julia said. “You know that. Not love the way I’m feeling it now.”

  Gail closed her eyes in agreement, and when she opened them she looked out with the trembling ingenuousness of a teenage girl feeling herself turn into a woman for the first time.

  “Do you want to have sex?” Gail asked.

  “I feel it,” Julia replied. “You do too, don’t you? But actually doing it. I don’t know. What would it mean? Where would it lead?” She paused a moment and then her face broke open in a laugh.

  Gail watched her and did not change expression. Julia subsided into a smile. “I just got a picture of Martin and Eliot as we called them in for a conference and then announced the news that you and I had become lovers.”

  Julia grinned and looked at Gail, expecting a smile of corroboration. But Gail was stonefaced. “What is it?” Julia asked finally. “It’s not a cheap joke,” Gail said evenly. Julia’s eyes widened. “Oh Gail, I didn’t mean . . . Hey,don’t be so serious.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be serious?” Gail snapped. Julia was silent for several seconds. “Now I do need a cigarette,” she said. “I think I may have some next to the bed.”

  She got up and pulled her housedress about her, cinching the cord at the waist, then walked over to the far end of the large room She staggered slightly, a bit more affected by the wine and grass and heavy run of emotions than she had realized. She rummaged in a drawer of the night table, found a wrinkled Pall Mall, smoothed it out, lit it, and inhaled with intense concentration, then let the smoke out with an almost exaggerated sigh of relief. She ran her hand over her face, made several gestures which might, if she were an actress on stage, indicate to the audience that she was clearing her head, and turned to go back to the couch. She stopped halfway there. She couldn’t see Gail, but was able to sense her. Some strange and unsettling emanation came from the area behind the couch. A premonition of dread chilled her heart and she rushed forward suddenly, hair flying.

  “Gail?” she called out. She couldn’t see Gail on the floor, and for a wild millisecond surmised that her friend had vanished, utterly disappeared. She turned the corner around the back of the couch, and found Gail lying on its pillows, stark naked.

  Julia’s breath caught in her chest. In her confusion, in the low light, she thought she was looking down at herself. Her experience with nude female bodies was extremely limited. Several times, at the health club, a woman had come into the steam room without a towel around her, but that had been so formal, so public, so in keeping with the context, that Julia could view it the way she might look at photos in a nudist magazine. Before that, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen another woman without clothes on. The only naked female body she was familiar with was her own, and that was precisely the image which her mind hastily conjured to throw over Gail in the same way that a passerby might cover an accident victim with a coat.

  Julia didn’t know what to do. To look or to look away; both were perplexing. Meanwhile, Gail’s figure pulsated almost imperceptibly, and Julia was drawn by its vibration. She lay with her right arm crooked up and over her, the forearm serving as a pillow for her head. Her left arm was by her side, relaxed. Gail’s right leg was raised, bent at the knee so that the angle between it and the left leg, stretched out flat and long at the edge of the couch, was enough to cause Gail’s cunt to appear as the merest hint of black and pink beneath the thatch of thick, curly pubic hair. Gail’s breasts fell, as large breasts do when a woman is lying down, to either side of her chest. Julia’s glance returned more often to Gail’s nipples than to anywhere else, for they were perfectly smooth purple discs, the tips long thin stems now drooping slightly. Gail was breathing deeply, her mouth was open and her eyes, hot mirrors, showed Julia the image of herself.

  “Gail,” Julie said, her voice breaking.

  “Why shouldn’t we be naked with one another?” Gail said.

  “Gail . . . “ Julia repeated.

  “Why shouldn’t we love each other, and fuck each other, and tell each other what’s in our hearts? Is that something that only a man and woman can do together? Who said that, Julia? Who made that law?” Gail smiled abruptly. “Have a seat, sweetheart. Make yourself at home.”

  Julia’s eyes focused sharply and the lines of her face went straight. Something like anger flared. She brought the cigarette to her lips, sucked in the harsh smoke, and blew it out again almost at once. With her free hand she pulled the top lapels of her housecoat tightly together, all at once a prim matron putting a young man in hi
s place.

  “I don’t know that I want to continue this,” she snapped.

  Gail leapt from the couch, her movement so quick, so unexpected, so seemingly opposed to the law of gravity, that Julia almost fell over backwards.

  “Well, how shall I do it?” Gail shouted. “Do you want to be taken by force? Is that the way a man would do it for you?” Gail pulled the cigarette from Julia’s fingers and flung it into the fireplace.

  “What’s so precious under here?” Gail grabbed the edges of the housedress and yanked so violently that Julia’s fingers were pulled loose from their grasp. Gail tugged and pushed, stripping the robe from Julia’s shoulders, and then, in a single sweeping gesture, peeled it off entirely, dropping to her knees to complete the movement.

  Then Julia was also naked. Her eyes flashed fire but her lower lip trembled. She pressed her thighs together but her arms remained at her sides, the hands doubled into fists so that the pectoral muscles flexed and pulled her breasts taut. The two woman froze in those postures of defiance and revolt, of tender violence, stunned that they had come so far.

  The presence of clothing is so fully conditioned an aspect of our lives that its simple removal is enough to be considered a major shift in identity. Whether it is done conventionally, as among nudists; or aggressively, as with stripteasers; or casually, as among people who have lived together for a long time; or radically, as with streakers; no matter what the mood or approach, the event is significant. Because it reveals what are called the private parts, the parts that shit and piss, the parts that fuck and fart, the parts that bleed and ejaculate. So deeply ingrained is our involvement with clothing that a multi-billion dollar business has sprung up based on nothing more extraordinary than photographs of women examining their vaginas as though they had suddenly chanced upon a totally unique discovery. A human being is not free to walk the face of the earth naked, and that is all the comment that need be made upon the entire human condition.

  Julia relaxed by degrees, and in a few moments she was standing there with something approaching naturalness. Gail shook her head, amazed at her temerity. She rose slowly to her feet.

  “All right,” Julia said, smiling suddenly, “‘we’re naked. Now what?”

  “Now we can take it easy and enjoy the rest of the evening,” Gail replied. “We don’t have to do anything special. This is interesting enough, so far.”

  “Well, if we’re going to actually hang around in our birthday suits, then I suppose I’d better make a fire,” Julia said.

  “Fine,” Gail told her. “And I’ll make us some proper drinks and roll another joint.” She glanced at the stereo. “Jesus, I wish you had some music with a bit of beat to it. This is like having marshmallows poured in my ear.”

  “You never criticized my taste in music before,” Julia said.

  The two woman looked at one another wonderingly. Gail snorted, a huff of gruff merriment. “We haven’t even been to bed together yet.” She frowned. “Maybe sex does open the door to disrespect.”

  “But there’s the radio,” Julia added quickly. “You might find a nighttime FM station with some rock.” Julia smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” she added. “Martin didn’t like my taste in music either, but he never had the balls to say so. I don’t mind if you lean on me a little bit. In fact, it feels good to have somebody really relating to me and reacting to me and not afraid to shake me up a little bit.”

  “OK,” Gail said. She went over to the console, turned off the stereo and switched on the radio. She spun the dial to 102 .7 and at once a smooth, raucous guitar, backed by a throbbing base and sinuous drum, slid out of the speakers, changing the mood of the room. The place became darker, more vital, filled with nuances the way a wood is alive with sounds and sharp hidden eyes at night. Julia had turned to begin the makings of a fire, but when the music came on, she glanced over at Gail. Her friend was standing in front of the amplifier, her back to her. She was swaying slightly, doing a tiny dance to the sounds. Julia’s eyes were drawn to Gail’s ass, a tight, soft, vibrant organism that had sprung into life, and was signaling in a language of basic gesture and primitive meaning. Julia could feel the unmistakable urge to go across the room and put her hand on the dark inviting cleft that now shifted and spoke like the shadow of a stick on the sandy bottom of a shallow stream.

  But Gail spun to one side and moved off into the kitchen, her voice trailing behind her. “Vodka tonic all right with you?” she called out.

  “Fine,” Julia shouted, her own voice snapping her out of her reverie.

  She bent down and built the basic structure of the fire carefully. Rolled up copies of the Times, strips of cardboard, thin splinters of wood. She lit it in four places and in seconds it was blazing easily. She put thicker pieces of wood on top, and when flames had begun to curl around their edges, laid on three thick logs. She scooted back, and sat with her shoulders against the couch, feeling the warmth of the fire begin to caress her skin. It was fairly obvious that she and Gail would make love. It had happened suddenly, without warning. Nothing in her life had prepared her for it. And yet there it was. She thought she could guess what it would be like, reasoning that one didn’t have to drink to have a notion of what drunkenness was. She was curious, a bit turned on. But this was already at a level once removed from Gail’s immediate presence. And some arcane voice inside her, one which rarely spoke because it had not been listened to since Julia was five or six years old, before she had had her sense of magic destroyed, now tried to whisper that what was about to happen was enough to rock the very foundations of civilization as it had been practiced for more than ten thousand years. Julia had no political consciousness as such, and women’s liberation was something she vaguely associated with articles in Cosmopolitan. In that sense, she was on a par with countless lesbians for whom the act of physical intimacy between women is a perfectly private affair. The radical middle, that group who understood that the issue is not having sex, but the freedom which having sex implies, would have smiled on Gail and Julia that night. Yet neither of the women had any inkling of the historical ramifications of what they were doing, that this night was both a product of and a movement in the growing awareness that the heterosexual bond, unqualified by homosexual love, and resulting in the rigid, terse, tense form known as the couple, was a relatively rare manifestation, and ought to occur only in those instances when it is consciously chosen by mature individuals who find it organically congenial to their needs, temperaments, and values. To have such a thing imposed ruthlessly upon an entire people is a kind of cultural fascism so profound that those who point it out are inevitably seen as some kind of crank. Among the Indian tribes on the continent, all forms of social erotic forms existed. The European wiped all that out and forced monogamy upon everyone, including such gentle rustics as the Mormons, thus crippling not only those whose inclinations might be toward other paths, but even the true monogamists themselves who had to bear the guilt born of association with the dictatorial decree.

  For Julia, now, however, there was only the warmth of the flames, the insinuating insistence of the music that the pelvis must be moved, the mind must be shaken loose, the heart must expand. And in a few minutes there was Gail, beautiful, young, smiling with a universe of friendliness and warmth. Gail carrying a tray with two chilled glasses and their transparent bellyfuls of cheer, a tray with another marijuana cigarette with its ticket to realms of telepathy and sensual fulfillment.

  Gail sat down. Julia watched her the way a cat looks at shadows. It was extraordinary to look at the hundred common gestures that a person makes, and to see them without the protective coloration of clothing. I really haven’t seen anyone in my whole life, Julia thought. I’ve just seen their clothing. She watched the slight jiggle of Gail’s breasts, the folds at the tops of her thighs as she bent over, and always, the hypnotic center, the living cunt.

  They each picked up a glass. “Here’s to . . . what?�
� Gail said.

  “To now,” Julia replied without thinking.

  “And then,” Gail added.

  Both women hovered around the edge of a smile and sipped at their drinks. The liquor did its job of instant loosening as the alcohol was absorbed into the bloodstream and made its way to the brain. Gail put her glass down, and lifted the joint up, her eyes questioning. Julia nodded, her expression that of a mischievous smile.

  “Will we regret this in the morning?” Julia asked.

  Gail lit the joint, inhaled, passed it to her friend. And once again the ritual was re-enacted, the formal decision to sail on a carpet of sensation into an other-wordly realm in which the concerns of chronological reality lost all substance. The solid world of the morning newspapers, of men in terrible machines killing other men, of a species run amok with its technological toys, of dreary routines in offices five days a week, of small pleasures, of absurd ambitions, of anxiety, of telephone calls from parents wondering why you haven’t been in touch. They would flee all that, even for a brief time, escape into their minds, find an infinitude of curlecues with which to distract themselves.

  Gail took a lungful of smoke, leaned forward, put her lips on Julia’s open mouth, and exhaled, forcing the breath and grass into Julia’s body. It was done so deftly, so effortlessly, that the transfer had taken place before Julia realized that the movement was actually a kiss. Her chest exploded with heat, with the totally unfamiliar sensation of having someone else’s breath in her lungs. Her lips began to tingle almost at once. Gail’s eyes smiled into her own.