CHAPTER 5
Lilith didn’t like Mark. That she said to herself, talking to herself to make sure that she really meant it. "He’s a bastard!" she says to no one. Finished combing her hair.
"Boy, are you misreading him!"
"You still don’t know, do you?"
"Of course I know!"
"Yeah."
Yeah.
"Smoky Angel my ass!" a vulgarity not often heard by Zav, not from Lil.
"Smoke and Mirrors is more like it!"
Not gonna get laid tonight, bud.. Mark you asshole!
Mark had liked the sex. Who didn’t? No guy ever complained about it. Not the least he heard. What else was Courting all about?
The Shot shut down disease. The Fix turned the spigot off till Coupling. It was all green light: "Play!"
So, Mark did. Played. But in his own way: screwed, fucked, jammed, rammed, humped, laid, hammered, nailed. He liked "hammered and nailed!" best.
Words which made him "Feels good!" he stroking his rod.
("Feels Bad! Oh, sooooo Bad!")
Whatever a boy would say, no girl would question. Animal terms. Mechanical terms. Farming terms...there were simply no "dirty words" since The Ascendancy. No images called "filthy." No acts which merited the label, "pornographic." Such was the complete erotic victory captured during The Ascendancy with the vanquishing of the practices of the Dumb Faith. Forgotten. This Victory they were revelers within was Forgotten.
Bad of "The Dumb Faith," meaning that "all is Bad." Body and Soul. Terms of the Dumb Faith, not of the Ascended Faith. The human heart, back then, as font of now arcane...now, vastly diluted...beliefs, words, concepts such as sin and guilt. Which when placed at the heart of daily life fomented a primal vision of the "War of the Sexes."
"War" of the Dumb Faith now misunderstood by most but as a Game with no ascensions.
Even for Mark ("Especially for Mark?!") "Bad" is not even Bad as Bad was. The boys, the girls, they do not know Evil Bad. Not even the teachers fully know. ("Someone must!")
Discourse on this has been silent for the last century, left only to the appointed scholars.
Just enough was taught..."To pass your certification test." Some more was taught in the last year but often it was only during the last days that the boys crammed some phrases, jammed some story-line into their heads...soon to be forgotten, vanishing as the test final was submitted. Zav’s notebook’s jottings:
"The unAscended world was divided. People saw Sex as either totally Good or totally Bad. Sex is holy. Sex is sinful. Humans are holy. Humans are sinful. Words which divided, filled with unembracing hatred. No forgiveness! No Regeneration! Everyone went in circles. For decades. For centuries."
Exasperated sigh. Others watching the clock, readying for the bell. More notes: "The Pill hadn’t helped. The condom give-way hadn’t helped. The New Truths were being revealed. That Regeneration wouldn’t be mechanical. Not a matter of procedure, alone."
In those last comments made on the last day, the teacher mutters what she knows couldn’t be fully heard or grapsed... Not by greenies! That, "They simply didn’t Couple. Had no Courting,"
"The Law of Unintended Consequences," Zav scribbles, boldly and in capitals, in the margins as the bell clatters "Class over!"
No further explanations!
The teacher, silently monologuing, assembling loose papers into folders, end-of-the-cycle: War of the Sexes. A Dumb belief. Thank Our Parents we’ve Ascended!
Is this the secret? That the erotic embrace can’t be programmatic?
Zav had been taught, by his parents, about "The other meaning to that Law." Not about consequences, but about intention.
"There can be no consequence where there is no intention." Father? Mother? Guess both said it, one time or another. Many times!
Good Intention. It was everything which Courting was. "Play. You are intended for everyone. Everyone is intended for you. Do not care for the particulars. Not your lover’s personality. Just Play!"
Still, Courting was anything but careless or aimless. In fact, exacting care was given to details. The Rules spelled out the many protocols, definitions, obligations, responsibilities . So, The Rules was a thick book; a veritable tome—the standard gift once thirteen. Not unexpectedly, the Number One book eagerly read by every pube.
Is this the secret? That it can’t be programmatic. That to be Bad, then, is to Ascend? To embrace with Bad Intention?
Zav closed this final notebook. Consigned it to a dark space within his beat-up foot-locker...into a darker space within his mind and soul.
Play was artful. There were defined looks. Her eyes shadowed in that way, with the flash of a thin line of ochre, warned, "Just one." Tonight just one. Singular conflagration. Total consummation! The boy knowing the offer—"Round-the-World!"...that he’d have to bribe the many others to withdraw, stand-back, let only him into this circle of raging fire.
Practicing Romantic Seduction of Just Two—he offers her a flower: symbolizing himself. Protocol 13 stated that it had to be of purple cast: scarlet at best. Without this he could not speak, she could not hear. With it, their night was solitary, like unto a deep well. They threw themselves into each other. Fiery Pit!
She came to desiring this deepening shade of crimson once she had taken so many that she knew that one was all she needed. One through whom she had them all. One who became her Only One because he was All— Everyone.
Scarlet: a girl’s indicating a readiness to advance to Coupling.
Cilla met Mark at scarlet.
Most times, Play was like a choreography. Movement not always dance, but in a practiced manner. Boys moving about the room, spying the moment to move in and become part of the Embrace. Timing it so that they would have their part. She accepting them or rejecting them if they stumbled!...herself, accepting the widening circle, the fuller Embrace as other girls attached.
Rules: there were numerous rules, even rules about rules, which were all an annoyance to the young but of great Purpose to the teachers...they wanted dancing, not a brawl, not a free-for-all, not a downward motion of any sort, no, Politeness and Being Considerate and the Art of the Gift and to capture Poise and Beauty. Rules were like ruled paper, they helped the Greenies to draw the proper notes, to effect the melody, to set the beat. Rules which, without their knowing the young learned so as to Play.
Play was like a Great Wheel which spun magically about the room to which boys and girls hitched themselves and spun, spun, spun into the realm of pure Playfulness—dizzying, altering their consciousness, being whirled into fantasy and fabulous enchantments. Play being, in the norm, a Play of multiples, a multiplying of bodies and souls, of kisses and touches, of fondlings and orgasms...it was the purpose of Courting to express the mutli-faceted personalities of each boy and girl. Not that they discoursed in so intellectual a way! Hardly never. But that they did just Play.
To Play "by the Rules" meant to be intentionally unintentional. To become not personal but collective, then communal. To be so communal as to advance to the next phase, to Coupling which was, in sharp contrast, to become unintentionally intentional.
Zav floundered and flopped about when he tried to straighten out intentionality and unintentionality. What difference would it make? he often queried, seeking answers from his now departed parents—What difference would it make, since I don’t know what it would be like not to be different?
Their parental curse and blessing was "Intend and be intimate." This is all Zav really knew as Bad. How encoded was this message from his parents, his heritage? At thirteen they had whispered the sentence, the practice. As if upon hearing he would know what it meant. Do I?
Is this what I sense about Lil ? Is she one, too? Not that girls got Fixed, but that she’s seeking to become intimate?
He had not whispered the phrase to her.
He had whispered, "Bad," more as a teaser, but she had paused...then assumed "69." But instead of her mouth she placed his cock-head directly upon her forehead, and s
aid to him something he had never heard, "I see you with my Bad-Eye."
He ate her ravenously.
Mark had heard about these "Bad people." Not been taught. "They were wiped out," said simply, but "True?" No one answered. Truth: locker-room type education. You couldn’t tell by looking at a guy. Besides, anyone could make a cut. Have the Fixed scar. But, hell, why do I need to worry?
So, he hadn’t. Didn’t.
For these last six years he's just been screwing away. Preferred, as in "Preferred Vintage," screwing as his motivational word. Liked the ripping movement of the image! Liked to image it when he moved in on her! "Screwed to the floor, bitch!"
Yet there was one thing unresolved. Something had happened¤No big deal! But it nagged him every now and them. When? With whom? That boozer from Fargo? Or that milk-maid from Des Moines. Father! Did she have a set of pails! They made him Moooo!
Whomever. She said, "Don’t!" as she shied away, shielded her eyes.
"Don’t what?" flushed with nervous anxiety that he’d lose his hard. It had taken him too much time this time—Hate long seductions!—to get this one to kneel down and pump him!
She was half-turned on the bed, naked, legs crossed: No open gate?
Shit on this! He rolls her over and hammers his way in...chucking out his image of screw for one of hammer and sledge. ...Fuck!!!!!!!
"She mews about his eyes!" Sarcasm.
"Yeah?"
"She doesn’t get it...it is his eyes!"
Later that night Zav is waiting for Mark. Gotta get his game. Waiting. Thinking. Analyzing. "Maybe he asked because he is?" Naw, no one ever talks about it straight, at least that’s what everyone’s taught. That’s why he so brashly kicks it around—made his parents worried sick. "Just stop blabbing!" his Dad had yelled. But he wasn’t his Dad...Zav knew that.
Mark key-scratches the door...finds Zav up without the Flicker on but with a tall mug of dark wine. "She didn’t put out?!" laughed, a half-mocking, half-sympathetic jibe-inquiry. When he failed to slip the Big One he always drank himself to sleep, so Mark just assumed.
Zav flips him the bird.
"I know you sent her that shit. Don’t Play me with that. I don’t know your Game, but you’ve got them riled up. Both of them."
Mark did not betray his glee.
"You Bad?" Zav struck him with a prosecutor’s mis-directing cross; drunk-hope.
Mark froze the beer lip to lip.
"Is this how Bad people do it? Confuse ‘em? Throw them off the mark? Don’t let her do what she knows she has to do?"
"Joseph Smith be praised." Prayerfully.
Zav realized that he and Mark had more in common than their differences.
Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality Page 5
