Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  I smiled, remembering Leah teasing him about little drug souls.

  I sipped. The taste was completely different from that of MDMA, but fully as horrible, and I said, "Eeeyuck! I'm sorry, but I've got to have juice."

  "Sure," replied the Spartan, "There's apple juice in the 'fridge. At least, now you know what you're covering up, before you cover it up!"

  "I certainly do," said I, "The memory will linger a long, long time, believe me!"

  I put on my dressing gown and sat quietly on the couch through the transition phase - the time between first becoming aware of some change in myself and the plateau. Shura had told me that transition could take anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour, and that the plateau should last about three hours.

  Shura had gone to his study to work, since I had told him I wanted to experience the transition by myself. After half an hour, I got into the bath I'd prepared earlier, and lay down in the warm water, feeling out the nature of the 2C-B, the way it was expressing itself in my body and mind. The first thing I noticed was a slight movement of the hand-towels hanging beside the sink and a faint shimmer of the pale green shower curtain. Visual effects, I thought; wonderful terminology. A few minutes later, I realized that, although my body was all right, the rest of me was not; I seemed to be reviewing my worst faults - untidiness, disorganization, insecurity - as, one after another, they paraded through my mind. I was beginning to feel a rising anger and contempt at the whole miserable mess, when the Observer stepped in with a sharp comment. Then, of course, we have the baddest fault of all - being judgemental and unforgiving toward yourself. You wouldn't dream of treating a friend that way; what gives you the right to treat yourself with any less patience and compassion than you'd give a friend? Cut it out!

  Humor trickled back, slowly.

  All right, all right. I'll be good.

  Getting out of the bath, I realized I was feeling what I had come to call the energy tremor. It was rather nice.

  I put on my beautiful, sexy French nightgown, the pale blue one, and my dressing gown.

  In the bedroom, I looked around at the chests of drawers, the curtains, the floor tiles, and was pleased to note that the idea of Ursula having been here before me didn't seem important.

  That was another reality, and it had nothing to do with this one.

  Shura was sprawled on the bed in his robe. He asked me, "How are you feeling?"

  "Well, better than I did earlier. I went through a few moments of seeing all my worst faults and being both the prisoner in the dock and the execution squad, but it passed."

  He remarked, "You shouldn't be overloaded on eighteen milligrams, unless you're very sensitive to this particular material."

  I assured him I felt fine. Not overloaded.

  "How's your experience?" I asked.

  "Delightful!"

  When I took off my robe, he looked at me and asked, "What are you doing in a nightgown?"

  "What do you mean, what am I doing in a nightgown? It's my very best, sexiest nightgown, and you're supposed to be impressed!"

  He took his own robe off and said, "I don't believe in wearing clothes in bed. How can you feel somebody's skin when you're all bundled up like that? Besides, they always wrap around you in the night."

  I sighed and stripped off the pale blue silk and let it fall to the floor.

  He turned off the bedside lamp, leaving only the radio dial for light, while I climbed onto the bed and lay on my back to examine the ceiling, which was pale cream. Suddenly, he was climbing over me, and I heard myself gasp as his tongue took me over. My eyes closed and my mouth enfolded him.

  Inside my eyelids, I saw a blue sky behind an immense castle wall; there was the knowledge of turrets somewhere to the right, out of my line of vision. I was standing in grass and there were a few small daisies and lots of dandelions around me. The great wall appeared to be built of mossy yellow-brown stones, and I felt quite small, child-sized. There was a sense of familiarity, neither pleasant nor unpleasant; it was my world, where I lived. The part of it that was especially mine, I knew, was the bottom of the castle wall, where it met the high grass. That was where I liked to play, and I moved toward it now, climbing a rise, past the scattered wild flowers.

  Then I remembered where I was, in this life, what my tongue and throat were doing, and what a passionate mouth was doing to me. I was on the bed of a man I belonged with and who belonged with me, and we were making love to the humming sound of a little floor heater and the music of Beethoven.

  Another image took over, in all possible shades of red - coral and pink, purple and rose - all of it textured like the interior of a body, smooth and slippery and strong. We were The Man and The Woman, Shiva and his bride, engaged in the Great Dance, the coming together and going apart in order to come together again. We were a single knot in a vast mesh which linked us to every other human being making love, everywhere.

  We were The Node, that to which all lines of life go, that from which all lines of life come.

  There was a sense of gold somewhere in the red. For an eternity, neither of us moved, neither tongue nor lips nor hands. We were. There was no separation between us.

  Later, we put on our robes and wandered into the kitchen, where the pot of black bean soup I'd brought from home sat on the stove, waiting for a splash of sherry and a bit of seasoning. I turned the heat on under it and stood, leaning back against the tiled counter, waiting for Shura to return from the bathroom. Now the 2C-B was a gentle pulse of energy inside me, just enough to be noticeable if I paid attention. The legs of the red-painted kitchen table glowed, and the room was alive with soft light.

  Suddenly, something was taking shape across the room, next to the table. It was man-sized and dark, black-brown. I couldn't make out features. I was not seeing it as a physical presence, but with the eyes of the mind, and I felt it smiling contemptuously at me, the embodiment of intentional, malicious evil, full of power.

  It was Enemy. I stared at it, anger flooding me.

  What the hell are you doing here? Get out of this placet You can't touch me! I am filled with goodness and peace and my strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure, as l^auncelot said. Or Gawain, or somebody.

  The black man-figure lounged there, elaborately casual, enjoying my anger, radiating superiority.

  What I did then was informed by a knowledge my conscious mind didn't possess. I became aware that fighting and opposing was a spiritual trap, because in order to destroy this enemy, I would have to use his tools, play his game, step into his battlefield, and that he was much better at that kind of fighting than I, and that, moreover/1 didn't want to become good at it.

  I did the only thing I could. I closed my eyes and brought my arms up as if holding a baby to my chest. I visualized a child in the circle of my arms - anyone's child. I dismissed the figure in black from my world and focused all my attention on remembering what it was to love, to care, to nurture, to take away hurt and pain. I stood there and let loving take me over. The act of loving was all that existed, and I remained immersed in it.

  When I finally opened my eyes, the dark shape had gone.

  Shura came out of the bathroom and I poured soup into two bowls and asked him to get a couple of soup spoons. We went into the living room, where I sat him down in a chair and explained that I was going to introduce him to television. Gradually, I said. Nothing too extreme. Something delightful and British called, "Upstairs, Downstairs," which it was absolutely necessary for him to see at least once.

  He muttered a skeptical, "Hmmm," but didn't protest. Within a few minutes, he was enraptured, as I had hoped he would be.

  I sat in my favorite couch corner and decided to think about the encounter in the kitchen for a while before telling him about it. I had learned something, but it would take some time to figure out exactly what.

  Some parts of it are obvious. If you meet evil with hate, you lose. Hate belongs to the dark side. And yes, the temptation to oppose is a powerfu
l force; it's immensely strong. You want to go at him, you want to hit, to strangle, to destroy. And all those emotions are his tools. So maybe the lesson is that ifyou really want to say No to what he represents, you refuse to enter the ring with him at all. You just become what he is not. Love. You become love. And when you do that, he's not there and he never was.

  When Shura and I were in bed later, curling up together for sleep, I said, "Thank you for the 2C-B experience. It was quite extraordinary, and I'll write the whole thing up first thing tomorrow, I promise, and give you a copy for your notebook."

  "Good girl," he said. We drifted into sleep with Mozart playing softly on the radio and the chatter of mockingbirds outside the bedroom windows.

  CHAPTER 25. DRAGONS

  There began a new order of things. Shura would phone during the week, almost every night, just to talk. He talked about trials he had participated in as an expert witness, describing the lawyers and the judges;

  he told me about university politics, about the heads of departments and the students he taught; he would tell me what he was doing in the lab, using chemical terms freely, knowing that I would get what he called "the music," if nothing else - he was well aware that I understood nothing at all about chemistry - and that I would ask for clarification when I needed it. He would, matter-of-factly, tell me what was going on with Ursula, according to her latest letter.

  I would talk about the children, a book I was reading, a little about work - work was too hard, too pressured to talk about lightly, so I avoided saying much about it - and I would listen like an old friend to excerpts from Ursula's letters which detailed her problems and worries, locking myself into Shura's voice, reading the changes, the tension under the casualness. I was careful to say nothing sharp, nothing negative.

  Then, close to the weekend, he would ask me if I would like to come out to the Farm when I was through work on Friday, and I would say I'd love to, as if it were a welcome surprise.

  Never take it for granted, I reminded myself, because it can stop in a moment, and it will, as soon as Miss Germany decides she wants another vacation in sunny California.

  I began keeping a daily journal, writing to myself what I could not say to Shura.

  On the bookshelf beside Shura's bed there was a stereo set which played radio and cassette tapes. We explored each other to music, usually classical. If we turned the dial and found ourselves in the middle of a piece of music we weren't able to identify immediately, we would compete to see who could correctly name the composer. Shura introduced me to Glenn Gould's recordings of Bach, and I brought him some Prokofiev treasures which he had somehow managed to overlook, and Bartok's "Miraculous Mandarin," which surprised and delighted him.

  The long, beautiful legs became familiar to me. The small, rounded buttocks stirred me to admiration, which I expressed freely. His back was my playground, as I showed him what could be done with the tips of fingernails running lightly from thigh to neck; he shivered with pleasure as I smoothed out the gooseflesh with the palm of my hand and began all over again, up and then back down, on the front of his body this time. He did the same to me, expert with the first try, and chuckled as I responded.

  Sometimes on a Friday or Saturday evening, we would take one of his psychedelics, then go to bed. He teased me about something I'd said to him a long time ago, to the effect that I couldn't understand how anyone could take a psychedelic drug more often than once every few years, because there was so much to assimilate, to leam, from one good experience. I laughed and reminded him that he was always telling me things change, life is change.

  "So," I said, "I'm learning new things!"

  "We both are," he replied.

  We both were. Perhaps it was the sense that everything could end at any time, be over with; whatever the reason, we shared our experiences, even our sexual fantasies, each of us withholding only a little, feeling out each other's acceptance as we talked.

  One Saturday afternoon in late spring, we each took 5 milligrams of Shura's infamous DOM, the drug he had told me about, that night in Hilda's study, which had been nicknamed STP on the street.

  He said, "This is a very long-lasting material, babe. You sure you don't mind being in an altered space that long?"

  I said no, I didn't mind, and besides, "You told me it can be a wonderful experience, when you take it at the right level, and I assume you'll give us the right level, and how long is 'that long,'

  anyway?"

  "At least 12 hours, and probably more, depending on your chemistry, and you do tend to milk a lot of extra mileage out of these drugs, you know!"

  I made a nyah-nyah face at him, "You're just jealous, because you come down before I do. It's one of the few advantages of having a slow metabolism; in fact, I can't really think of any others at all!"

  Shura showered while I watched television, then I took my bath, watching the unmistakable undulating of surfaces and rippling of edges develop, keeping an interior eye on the strong energy tremor, observing the first-time anxiety as it mellowed out into trusting acceptance of the state and where it was going.

  I rubbed myself dry with a towel and sat down on the toilet, still naked. Shura had said to me, some time ago, "Don't ever lock a door behind you, please, inside this house. Not even when you're in the bathroom. I have a strong fear of having something happen behind a door that I can't open quickly; it's a left-over from Helen being sick, and I beg you to please observe it."

  I had observed it, faithfully.

  Now, there were footsteps in the hall and suddenly, the door opened. I gasped, "Hey!"

  Shura, wearing his dressing-gown, stood grinning at me. As I frantically grabbed for my towel, he teased, "I thought we were going to have complete honesty in this relationship!"

  "There are limits, Shura!"

  "Limits? No, no! No limits agreed on," he laughed, kissing me on the mouth and fondling my breast before leaving. He closed the door behind him and I sat there, caught between outrage and amusement. Then, an uncomfortable thought occurred to me.

  Is it possible he's one of those people who like to watch things like urination?

  When I reached the bedroom, the bedside lamp was lending a soft, butter-yellow glow to the undulating cabbage roses in the ancient wallpaper. I scrambled onto the bed and sat cross-legged in my robe, looking down at Shura, who was stretched naked on the blanket, pink and shining from his shower, smiling at me. I asked him, doing my best to sound casual and light, "Are you one of those bathroom voyeurs, by the way, or are you just a tease?"

  His hair and beard were throwing off tiny multi-colored sparks, "No, I'm not. And yes, I'm a terrible tease. I have a whole lot of secret fascinations, but that's not one of them. How about you?" Innocent face, wide blue eyes, looking at me. I assured him that kind of thing wasn't my cup of tea at all.

  He asked me, "How is the experience, so far? Comfortable?"

  "Yes, considering that it's - as you said - a pretty strong psychedelic and obviously not for naive and innocent people, I'm doing pretty well. Especially considering that I had to go through the shock of being - being invaded, you know? While sitting on the potty, yet. By the same trustworthy gentleman who asked me to please not lock any doors, would you believe!"

  "I never said I was a gentleman, did I? Did I ever make that claim?"

  I admitted he never had.

  He fiddled with the radio dial, settling on something by Sibelius. Then he folded his arms behind his head and remarked, off-handedly, "Speaking of strange, dark fascinations - "

  Uh-oh - this is going to be important.

  He looked at me, "Have you ever, in your numerous experiences, been tied up or tied someone up, just to see what it felt like?" I replied that I'd never done that, but I'd often had the fantasy.

  He raised himself on one elbow, "Then why did you never do it?"

  "I suppose probably because it would have to be someone I could be really vulnerable with, and there haven't been too many men I've felt I could trust tha
t much. Besides, nobody I've been really close to ever brought it up, and I wasn't about to shock anyone by suggesting it first, believe me."

  "Is it a shocking thing, really?"

  He wants to be told it's all right to have that kind of fantasy.

  "It isn't shocking to me," I replied, "It's what they call 'bondage,' isn't it? From what I understand, lots of people enjoy that. I read a very interesting article - I think in a psychology journal - that said a large number of the men who enjoy being tied up in lovemaking tend to be very powerful people with a lot of responsibility in their lives; people like judges and senators and doctors. It explained that they enjoy the feeling of being powerless, you know, with somebody they trust, because their lives are too full of decisions they have to make and be held accountable for, and being tied up allows them to ditch all that, to be able to enjoy the sexual feelings without having to be responsible for them."

  Shura was silent for a moment, then said, "I've always wanted to know how it felt."

  I thought about it, then said, "I remember seeing a clothesline in back of the house. Do you have any more of it around?"

  "Sure, plenty."

  "I hope you've got the nylon kind, because cotton clothesline is pretty rough, and I don't want to hurt you." I paused, then I leaned forward and squinted at him, "Or - do you like being hurt?"

  "No, I don't."

  "Me neither," I said, immensely relieved.

  "Wait here," he said, "I'll be right back." He put on his bathrobe and left me in the bedroom with the music playing and the wallpaper roses moving. So far, I thought, this DOM is very nice. I was aware, off and on, of the energy tremor. It was still strong, but I was getting used to it.

  Why aren't we always aware of this flow of energy in our bodies? Why does it take a drug like this to make it show itself? Maybe it would serve no purpose for us to be feeling it all the time.

  Shura returned, carrying a tangle of white nylon cord. I laughed, "A gen-yu-ine Gordian Knot!"

  and we set to work to undo the mess.

  We cut the cord into various lengths, giggling when we weren't humming along with Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto, then Shura proposed that we try it out on me first. I said okay, thinking several things at once. First, that it was going to be hard not to feel silly; second, that it was obvious Shura hadn't done this before, which meant he hadn't done it with Ursula; third, that this was something neither of us would consider doing with a companion we didn't trust absolutely.