Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  "Me, too." Shura glowed at me, eyes and mouth smiling, as he took off his robe.

  There was elegant and stately music playing on KKHI which, we told each other, could only be by Handel. Shura turned out the bedside light.

  At the bottom of my tongue there is a deep black sky with stars in it. There's a different kind of magic down there. Wonder how it feels to him.

  I saw a small river flowing between low banks and, on either side of it, carefully tended green lawns sweeping up to mansions separated by flower gardens; there were glimpses of rose trees, marigolds, clusters of blue and violet lobelia, an impression of Greek columns at the front of one great house.

  The land of the aristocracy. Absolutely Handel. Serene, measured, then the delicate, playful notes of the flowers, l^ovely, lovely.

  Sweat trickled across my face. A great ball of scarlet, like a miniature sun, was coming up the river toward me, and I knew what it was. I heard the choking sound in his throat and its explosion into the long, long roar of completion.

  I stayed there for a moment, my head on his thigh, sharing the remnants of the beauty.

  After a while, I got under the covers to lie beside him, and he rose on one elbow, to look down on me. I closed my eyes.

  How easy orgasm used to be, when I was younger. Now, it's a search for the center of my Self; it's hard work, it's a battle to get to an inexplicable thing I can't even name. The threads have to be pulled together by the soul, before the body can release it.

  Rachmaninoff's music was forming huge petals of sensuous violet and pink, with a stamen of glowing yellow. Georgia O'Keefe, without question. Suddenly, a tiny fire caught somewhere, far away. The flame spread slowly, and with it rose an almost unbearable sweetness that flooded everywhere as it drove the line of fire toward me, through me.

  Shura turned out to be right; I milked the 2C-T-2 for over ten hours. Around 8:00 PM, I finished typing my report on the experiment and went to the Master's study to hand it over. He clapped one hand to his cheek and sputtered disbelief at actually getting my notes without the usual wait of several weeks. I gave him a full Brooklyn raspberry and flounced out, very pleased with myself.

  We had some of the soup I had cooked at home, a thick Dutch split pea soup with bits of ham in it, and we sat down to eat in the living room. I turned on the television and found Peter Falk in a rerun of one of his old Colombo murder stories, and for the next hour and a half we both sat hypnotized, moving from our places only during commercials, to go to the bathroom or to pour out more soup.

  The carpets and walls were quieter, now, and the energy charge in my body had long since gentled to a comfortable humming.

  Just before drifting into sleep, my body fitted to Shura's back, I remembered the letter to Ursula, and knew with complete certainty that he would send it.

  CHAPTER 30. ENDING

  It took two weeks for Ursula's reply to arrive. She wrote two pages and enclosed my letter, demanding an explanation. Anger/ hurt, betrayal, outrage, shock, sorrow; they were all there.

  Shura was visibly relieved, smiling broadly as he handed the letter over to me. I read it through and realized that, as far as he was concerned, jealousy and upset were at least consistent with her really loving him.

  I reserved comment.

  It was interesting, I thought, that she had managed to overlook completely - at least, she made no mention of it - the main and certainly positive message. I tried to put myself in her place, as well as I could, and concluded that - eventually at least - I would have felt some kind of empathy, some degree of compassion for the person who had written that letter, for any woman who had been driven to say to her rival: you've won, and I've lost; be happy and make him happy and bless you. In her place, in fact, I would have written at least a thank you note back to the loser. Eventually.

  Everything she'd written added up to a case of hurt pride, which was certainly understandable, but there was no response to my mention of Shura's anxiety and pain. She hadn't even gotten angry at him for doubting her, which I certainly would have.

  But, then, I wasn't Ursula and I didn't have enough information to enable me to understand her life, her surroundings or her way of thinking. I had only Shura's view of her, Ben's analysis, and what I could piece together from her letters, and I was still left peering through a very shadowy glass.

  Wonder why she didn't phone him, as soon as she got my letter? You'd think that would be the first thing she'd do, with all that surprise and outrage and betrayal and so on. Funny.

  One week later, on a Thursday evening, Shura phoned me and said, "Well, I guess this is it!"

  "What is it?" Sinking stomach.

  "She's coming. She's leaving there next Wednesday and arriving here a week from today, this time to stay. She phoned me and said that getting your letter made her realize she couldn't keep postponing having it out with Dolph, so it's done - she's said goodbye, and asked her closest friends to keep an eye on him when she's gone - and -," his voice trailed into huskiness for a moment, then he regained his courage, "Thank you, Alice. Thank you for the letter. That was above and beyond, you know."

  "I know," I said, not letting myself feel anything yet. Not until the phone call was over.

  "Could you possibly come out here for just one last weekend, so we can talk? Is it all right to ask that?" He sounded anxious.

  I have to get my things out of there, whatever I've left around. It's going to be hard -

  everything will be happening for the last time. Maybe.

  "Yes, of course it's all right for you to ask it, and I have to pick up my things, so I'll be out -

  when? Friday evening as usual, or should I come Saturday?"

  There was a moment's hesitation, then he said, "Oh, come out like any other weekend, Alice. I know it isn't, and I realize you'll be going through a hard time, but so will I, you know. It's not going to be easy for me, either, this part of it. But if you - if you can see your way clear -

  Friday would be great. I need to be with you, talk with you."

  "Okay. Friday it is."

  After I put the phone down, I sat quietly with my cigarette, my Observer frantically active. It was telling me to lay out in my mind everything I knew about the situation, to look at it calmly, review all of it, and to try to postpone grieving because there was still a weekend ahead with Shura.

  All right. How do I put off the pain, huh? Part of me is beginning to mourn as I sit here. No way to stop it. And it doesn't matter whether I think she's going to stay forever or not. I still have to go through the closing of the door, as if it were permanent. Because no matter what happens in the future, everything will be changed. Must be changed.

  What do I think is going to happen - what does my intuition tell me she'll do? I think she's going to leave him again. Maybe she'll last six weeks. Maybe even six months. But 1 don't think she'll stay.

  Why do I think she won't stay? Because Ben believes it and 1 want to believe it. No, no - it's more than that. There are too many strange things about this girl's behavior that don't make rock-bottom sense. Anima woman, Ben said, and Ben's pretty shrewd. I hope to God Ben's pretty shrewd!

  I got ready for bed with my interior world split into two levels: one was preparing for the grief-anger-pain, and the other was quietly anticipating the weekend, planning a fast, unemotional gathering up of my various things around the Farm - combs and hairpins and the odd sweater - speculating on whether or not Shura and I would feel like making love. Seeing in my mind the final goodbye, dignified and graceful. Afterwards - afterwards would take care of itself.

  Whatever happens in the long run, I'm going to have to shut off this relationship once more and go through the grieving. For the last time. Never again. No matter what, I'll never go through anything like this again, for Shura or anybody else. Never!

  That Friday, I was greeted by a long, tight hug. Looking into Shura's eyes, I saw that what he'd said on the phone was true: this part wasn't easy for him. He was going to miss me
, and he was already realizing it.

  I went around the house, carefully looking for signs of my own presence and removing whatever I found. I was going to play this one clean, with complete integrity. No little mementos lying around. I didn't want her resenting me any more than she already did; there would be no purpose served by hurting her.

  Boy, what a good girl am I! Well, that's okay. I have some extraordinary memories and my self-respect, and that's not too shabby.

  Friday night, we held each other tightly, without trying to say anything, before turning over to go to sleep.

  The next morning, over our coffee, Shura looked at me with a mixture of feelings in his face -

  happiness, misery, wistfulness - and asked, "How would you feel about having one last experiment with me?"

  I replied that, as a matter of fact, it might be very good for both of us.

  It's either that, or saying goodbye before the weekend is over, because the ache is getting strong. Tummy and chest. A good psychedelic might help me assimilate some of the pain.

  Even if it doesn't, it'll still keep us occupied for a while and postpone the goodbye.

  "I'd like to share with you one of the old great ones," said Shura "It's called DOB."

  "Uh-huh."

  "You should know, it's very long-lasting - between 20 and 24 hours - and it's pretty powerful. I'd like you to know it. That is, if you feel okay about giving it a try?"

  "Thank you, yes."

  "I was considering a pretty hefty dose, three milligrams. It's fully active as low as two milligrams, but I think you're enough of a hard-head to tolerate three/ if you're game?"

  I was smiling genuinely for the first time since hearing that Ursula was coming.

  "It takes between one and a half to maybe two and a half hours to come on fully, so there's plenty of time to adjust to it," Shura said, and got up to do the weighing out. We toasted each other silently, this time. The clock over the sink said 10:53. Saturday morning of the last weekend. Maybe.

  He's hoping all will go well with Ursula and that I won't hurt too much; I'm hoping all will go badly with Ursula and that I won't hurt too much.

  After my bath, I went to the friendly blue couch, and sat curled up in one corner to track the effects. It was a summer day and warm. I was wearing a loose cotton shift, blue with wide stripes of soft yellow, brown and rose. It was years old, worn and comfortable.

  Images and phrases drifted through me as I waited.

  I remembered Shura telling me, one night, that Ursula had never been able to have an orgasm, and my shock at hearing it. I had wondered if he had enough psychological smarts to know what that might imply, and being unashamedly pleased to have that bit of information. It was, I had thought at the time, another flaw in the beautiful, bright, wonderful Ursula.

  Now, gazing out at the great mountain shimmering in the haze, I reviewed what I knew, or thought I knew, about women who could not achieve orgasm - healthy, normal women - and realized I wasn't that sure. Supposedly, they were emotionally immature, or couldn't relinquish control, or were in some way psychologically less well integrated - whatever that meant - than women who didn't have that problem.

  And those diagnoses are usually made by men, aren't they? Which should make them slightly suspect. After all, Walter told me early in our relationship that the only mature kind of orgasm was the vaginal; that needing to stroke the clitoris was childish and regressive, or something like that. Which is why I faked orgasm all the years of our marriage, and waited until I was alone to give myself the real thing; I didn't want him to think me immature. I took for granted that, since he was a psychiatrist, he knew whereof he spoke. Until Women's Lib came along, and articles were written about a lot of things people hadn't written about before, and I finally realized that Walter didn't know a damned thing about women's sexuality.

  I checked on myself. It was the one-hour point, and I was about a plus-one.

  Ursula may well confound all of us. She may turn out to be faithful, constant, deeply loving, all those good things. She may even learn to let go enough to have a full sexual response. With a man like Shura, spending hours and hours making love, it's possible.

  I smiled, thinking back. Early in our relationship, Shura had remarked on the strange habit American women had of shaving their underarms and legs, and told me he liked the way European women let body hair grow naturally. Hair, he'd said, was one of the most erotic things about a woman, and he couldn't understand the desire to remove it from any part of the body. I had joked that it was probably some deep-seated streak of pedophilia in the American psyche, adding that I rather liked body hair, myself, that Sophia Loren certainly looked gorgeous enough without shaving, in her early movies, and that if I ever ended up living with him forever after, I would happily forego the use of a razor for the rest of my days.

  Suddenly, I was aware of a shift inside/ and noted that I'd jumped up to a plus-two within the past 15 minutes. There was a distinct awareness of a change of state, but there weren't any strong visuals yet. Nothing rippled or wiggled. There was an increased feeling of intensity, as if the world was collecting itself to convey a message, but that was usually part of the transition experience with any psychedelic.

  Time to ask some serious questions and see what comes up in answer to them. After all, it may be my last psychedelic experience in a long time. Let's start with a simple one: what is the meaning and purpose of life?

  The answer slipped in almost casually: "The meaning and purpose of life is life."

  Okay. Glad we've cleared that one up. There was more, apparently.

  "All existence is an expression of the One Mind. Allah, The Ground of Being, The I Am, God, are some of the names for that which forms itself, loves itself, hates itself, teaches and learns from itself, gives birth and nourishes itself, kills and devours itself, forever and ever without end." I sat rock still, then took a deep breath and let it out. Sweet Jesus! Try cuddling up with THAT in front of the home fire! I was feeling cold. Transition chill, I thought, and went and got a light cotton blanket to wrap around myself.

  When I was settled back on the couch corner, I tried again. What is love?

  "Love is yea-saying with the heart."

  Now for the nasty one, I thought, the one that always lurks around the corner.

  What about the part of the - God, the It, whatever - that kills and destroys? "It's there in the service of life, to keep the cycle going. On the God-level, destruction and death are part of the yea-saying to life."

  I couldn't stop the process, now. The questions were asking themselves, and the answers were pushing into me instantly, implacably.

  That doesn't explain loneliness, pain, sadism, torture, all the cruelty and suffering! Why does the dark side have to be so dark, so evil, so terrible?

  "For there to be life, there must be duality - yes-no, positive-negative, male-female. For there to be life, the One must become two halves, Yin and Yang, each half defining itself in opposition - light does not know it is light until it meets darkness - and without this duality, there would be only The Seed, and no flowering. Darkness is. Light is. Each grows, changes and elaborates, shaping itself in new ways, expressing itself in new forms, destroying itself and renewing itself eternally." There was a grey, iron weight on my soul.

  I'm stoned out of my gourd. No fun, no fun. Wonder if there's going to be a glimmer of hope anywhere in this.

  "Within the Yin is an island of Yang and within the Yang is an island of Yin."

  Where does THAT leave me, for Pete's sake?

  "Right back where you started."

  A surge of despair threatened to take over; I shoved against it.

  Great. Thanks a lot. Where do you look for compassion, for caring, then, when you need it?

  Where do you look for love in this Godawful overwhelming universe?

  "You look to where compassion and caring are, in the part of the One that loves, the Christ and Buddha, the Great Mother, the Kwan Yin, the countless form
s of love and loving everywhere around you, all of them alive within your Self, as are their opposites. You look to your own heart."

  The image I'm getting is of an awful cosmic indifference.

  "Since we are all forms of the One, there can be no indifference as long as there is a single entity which feels pleasure, sorrow, pain or hope. Whatever a living thing feels, the One feels.

  Whatever a living thing experiences, the One experiences. The One is each of us; the One is all of us."

  J can't accept the idea that half of the One includes so much of evil - what I consider to be evil.

  "Yin and Yang are the law of life and do not need your acceptance. Only you need it, and your need is of your own choosing."

  I wanted to say. Fuck You! but there wasn't any point in being angry and, besides, I knew it would be ignored.

  Js there any other way for me to see all this? Any way to make it easier?

  "Life is the One telling stories about itself to itself. It is all story-telling."

  I couldn't see how that was supposed to make me feel a whole lot better.

  WJmt part do I play in this bloody universe? I mean, of what importance am I in the scheme of tilings, if any at all?

  "With your birth, the universe changed. With the opening of your eyes, the God-mind saw itself as never before. In your ears, all sound was re-created. With you, the One unfolds a new story."

  And this happens with the birth of everything alive, am 1 right?

  "Yes."

  I remembered the book. Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay, who was one of Tolkien's group of fellow-writers in Oxford. A strange, dark and wrenching story. It wasn't the best writing, but it had a great power. I'd read it long ago, and was aware at the time that my conscious mind didn't understand what I was reading, but some other part of me did; it took the images, fought them, couldn't let them go, even when I'd finished the book and gone on to other reading.

  One scene in particular stayed with me. The hero had wandered into a valley where he saw, all around him, plants thrusting up by the tens of thousands, each individual plant totally unlike any other, some exquisitely beautiful, others grotesque and misshapen; he saw each plant blossoming, withering, then falling lifeless, within moments of its birth. The hero looked on in growing horror until, unable to stand the sight any longer, he ran out of the valley.